Exhibition “Inside colour. Through the material and light”

The exhibition “Inside colour” is intended to draw attention to the theme of the physical and mental perception of colour and its effects on individual personalities. The exhibition itinerary is structured into seven Volcanoes – white, red, yellow, green, blue, violet and black – each of which is a stage in an experience devoted to colour, presented as the sum of material and light. Michele De Lucchi reflects: “Colour in itself does not exist; it is light, energy and vibration of particles. Yet we are accustomed to attributing it to materials. The entire exhibition revolves around this relationship between material and light, between tangible and intangible, between reality and imagination”. The intention is to trigger a thought, an emotion that leads to awareness of what surrounds us and of its complex interconnections. On the sides of the cones, made of earthy, colourful materials, space is given to the pieces of the naturalistic collection of the MUSE, selected on the basis of the colour of reference of the volcano. The circular surfaces are a new way of proposing the “wonders” that were found in the Gabinetti Scientifici [Scientific Laboratories], where objects belonging to the realms of nature were collected to conduct observations on the real world and to unveil its secrets. There are over 100 exhibits on display from the “Muse Collection”, representing, each in the various chromatic variations, the manifestation of life and nature in the zoological, botanical, mineralogical, petrographic and paleontological spheres. Among the wonders that visitors can admire, a rare example of ‘Crocus’ Flowers, known for their violet-coloured petals that announce spring; the ‘Starry’ Heron with streaked plumage in the tones of yellow; the allochromatic Mineral, ‘Cuore di Vignola’ [Heart of Vignola], which irradiates colours different from the type of light that illuminates it; the Leaves of the now extinct Glossopteris fossils plants, dating back to over 250 million years ago, coloured orange by iron hydroxides, the demonstration in nature of the theory of continental drift; the white stone Pietra Pedrazzite, a geological mystery of volcanism and the rocks of the Dolomites. The volcanic rooms host the monochromatic sonic and visual installations, which encourage a personal immersive experience, like bathing in colour with the body and the mind, where the light of the volcano is defined by a precise wavelength to which there corresponds a sound at the same frequency. Stefano Zecchi explains: “The exhibition is a walk in which the experience of colour builds knowledge, enabling emotions, interpersonal values to be developed. In the volcanoes the visitors must be immersed in a tumultuous, breathless, perceptive, imaginative, sensory complexity. An emotional path devoted to colour and its perception”. An exhibition staging that leads from the material to light. The symbolic crater of each Volcano enchants spectators in visions of sonic images. Suspended, circular, hypnotic, in the dissolution of forms and solid bodies, the artistic videos reveal atmospheres poised between dream and reality, unconscious and conscience. In a magical relationship of light and darkness, epiphany and prelude to life. Visual and musical narrations, where the perception of colours, reality and the observer’s eye become a sole event, concealed in which is the amazement at beauty, between perceptive illusion and the life of the soul, knowledge and experience. An unprecedented exhibition that proposes investigations along the exhibition route, through the projection of a short film of author interviews. Dialogues on colour, seen and interpreted within the scientific sphere of Physics and Chemistry, Biology, Psychology and the Human and Philosophical sciences.