“Mirror, mirror on the wall” is the intriguing title of the exhibition by Italian artist Patrizio Travagli that will open at the Embassy of Italy on April 10th. On view until June 1st, the exhibition is organized by Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington DC. With his works, Patrizio Travagli invites us to turn our attention to the disturbing singularity of the mirror. How many times have mirrors deceived us? How many times, even if for a few moments, have we believed that the reflected image was a window or a door, an entrance not to Wonderland, as it was for Lewis Carroll’s Alice, but to our own common, everyday world?
In the “Mirror, Mirror On The Wall”, Travagli asks you, the viewer, to become the piece of art. Your reflection in the mirror is the launching point for questions about identity, illusion, and reality.
The reflection is perceived as an antinomy: the Other and the Same, Everything and Nothing, Identity and Difference. The mirror’s surface is the event horizon that allows this dialogue to happen with the fascinating power of illusion. The word illusion comes from the latin in lusionem, that means to get into the game (lusia). It refers not to a mere representation of appearance, but rather to an authentic recreation of reality.
“Patrizio Travagli’s body of work projects us in a surreal and joyous dimension that reproduces a dinamic environment that costantly evolves: each experience is personal and unique,” said Armando Varricchio, Italian Ambassador to the US.
Travagli has already shown his pieces at Villa Firenze, official residence of the Italian Ambassador in Washington DC, as part of the initiative Artists in Residence to provide Italian artists with a unique space to exhibit their art and installations.
