Conceived as the visualisation of a summer love story, each work in the exhibition represents a phase in this journey—from the arrival in a yet-unknown place, to the first encounter, infatuation, intimacy, and, eventually, departure. The exhibition follows a fictional character whose account of his summer fling at times veers into the personal and the political, reflecting on this universal experience of love through a queer lens.
"K. arrives at the seaside spot he rented for the next few weeks. He wanted to escape those feelings of panic and hackneyed dynamics that keep him stuck in a loop of trial and failure back home. How long has it been now since depression loosened its grip on him? Must be more than a solid year and still the rebound from that emotional explosion continues to shake the walls of all places he lays eyes on. Why is it even difficult to remember?, he asks himself.
He was there, he knows what happened. This is some bullshit, he thinks, but the memories feel broken anddifficult to access. He’s been wrongly questioning his past for so long that he now knows emotional autopsy cannot be a form of spiritual recovery.
Spotify decides to play ‘Doomed’ by Moses Sumney at random and all of a sudden the
shadows of his unresolved past cast themselves on the walls of the room, like a veiled presence descending out of nowhere.
Time passes and the awareness of geographical distance between him and his daily life gives way to a teenage-like feeling of mindlessness and ease he hadn’t felt since 2019. He spends his days between the beach and the house, waking up at 6 am to go have a run and a cold dip in the ocean. He even managed to find some weed on the second day, to make the night feel less lonely and its inhabitants more interesting.
The sceneries are beautiful — sandstone cliffs and pine forests all around. A local told him an octopus once stuck to his leg while he was swimming. Since then, he’s been going into the ocean with a harpoon strapped to his body. It was funny and scary to picture and it made K. ask himself when was the last time he had a problem that wasn’t of psychological nature. Maybe that’s what loneliness does to you, he thinks.
After a week of resistance and suspiciousness, K. finally gives in. The habits of the holiday replaced the vicious cycles of life as he knows it, and the restlessness he arrived with dissipated into quiet being. If he keeps his head low and his thoughts even lower, he thinks, he’ll go back home a new person. [...]
– Extract from Samuele Visentin’s text written to accompany the exhibition
