The poetry of remixing as a multidisciplinary approach to art
Felice Limosani is a point of reference in the field of Digital Humanities and expert in expressive vanguards and emerging languages. His artistic research hybridizes humanistic disciplines with the most advanced contemporary technologies, generating synesthetic works and perceptive environments. His approach, both aesthetic and pragmatic, has defined new expressive languages capable of updating and enhancing cultural heritage. Through his remix of art, Limosani seamlessly works for galleries and museums, universities and benefit projects, reaching a wider audience and especially new generations.
“The work of art outlives its author, no longer limited in time and space, but continuously evolving, implementing methods of use with multimodal forms and languages for greater social sharing and the democratization of culture.” This summarizes the thoughts of an artist who has skillfully combined the mixing concept with the multidisciplinary approach of his aesthetic intended, above all, as a tool for reflection.
Felice Limosani has always been a catalyst of languages, a singer-songwriter, and a multidisciplinary artist capable of transforming thought into a sensorial experience and vision into a journey. Apulian in origin, he immediately discovered his talent as a creator of contemplative dimensions. His artistic excursus is unconventional: from the DJ consoles of Raya in Panarea and the Bain Douche in Paris between the 80s and 90s to the London publication of the hit “Limos: the night goes on” and creation of the first MMS messaging app later acquired by Nokia, Limosani has been exploring and experimenting with new artistic languages and interactions with the digital world.
An artist in everyday life, he created the LUISAVIAROMA concept, one of the most acclaimed and pioneering retail experiences in the world. His in-store installations, focused on the artistic idea of enriching people beyond the shopping experience, have transformed concept stores into spaces of culture and artistic cross-pollination, becoming a case history study for the Future Concept Lab of sociologist Francesco Morace.
The passage from the years of fervent experimentation with the public to the homage of “Dante, the Eternal Poet” was briefer than one might imagine. An experimenter by vocation, Limosani explored the union between the magic of immersive technologies and the fascination of the experience by creating the first contemplative and sensorial Divine Comedy installed in Brunelleschi’s Cappella Pazzi for the celebrations of the Supreme Poet and subsequently acquired by Harvard University for its Digital Collection section.
For Felice Limosani, every aspect of his career was seminal for his own creative process, and today he is a protagonist, alongside the greatest artists of the 20th century, of the anthology of modern and contemporary art by TornabuoniArte.
Precisely due to his ability to connect aesthetic and sensorial languages with advanced interfaces, placing the human factor at the center of technological and cultural innovations, Felice Limosani is called upon today to talk about the contemporary world through his interpretation of art that experiments with space through site-specific works, artistic re-working, the digital re-elaboration of existing masterpieces, and writing, understood as both musical and verbal storytelling.
To define his career, we can mention some of his latest works such as the environmental installation “La Stella di Dante” [Dante’s Star] in Florence or the widespread artwork #UntaggableStories of Locorotondo. His artistic re-working transformed Gustave Doré’s animated engravings for “Dante, Poeta Eterno” [Dante, Eternal Poet] at the Cappella Pazzi in the Santa Croce complex, and the digitization of some of the most famous sculptures of the modern artistic panorama animated, for “Pensieri Illuminati” [Enlightened Thoughts], the UNESCO site of Montecatini Terme. The concept of writing is overextended by the artist, who reworks it both in musical and poetic terms: this is the case of kinetic audio sculpture “Fragments” presented at Miami Art Basel or the latest work “Le Mani dell’Umanità” [The Hands of Humanity] shown, starting on April 7 2024, in Piazza Duomo for the “From the Heart to the Hands” exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan. But what perhaps best summarizes Limosani’s artistic vision today is his work “Pezzi di Pace” [Pieces of Peace] commissioned by Roberto Casamonti – one of the most authoritative international art gallery owners who appreciates “the visionary nature imbued with thought and poetry” – and which aims to connect the environment and spectator in a sensorial experience that wants to encourage reflection. The work, presented for the first time in Florence in September 2023, will be shown at MiArt 2024.
This summarizes the figure of a multifaceted artist who, starting from the cut-and-mix philosophy of music, has transformed unpublished and personal studies into aesthetic and contemplative interactions with the public.
Felice Limosani has exhibited his works on commission at Accademia di Francia Roma; Collezione Roberto Casamonti Firenze; Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze; Institute of Italian Culture NY; Louvre; Miami Art Basel; Opera di Santa Croce Florence; Mies Van der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelona; Palazzo Strozzi Florence; Palazzo Vecchio Florence; Sketch Gallery London; Triennale Milano; White Chapel Gallery London.
Furthermore, he has created interdisciplinary projects with Andrea Bocelli, Mira Calix, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino chorus, Stefano Mancuso, James Mollison, Francesco Morace, Morgan, Alessandro Preziosi, and Luca Zingaretti. His multidisciplinary studio works under the legal status of Benefit Company to develop novel models of common benefit with an impact on society and the environment.
In Milan, at Palazzo Reale, from April 7 to July 31, 2024
LE MANI DELL’UMANITÀ
The digital work of artist Felice Limosani for the exhibition “From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce&Gabbana” The hands as a primordial means of knowledge, a tactile language, and the first tool of contact with reality for human beings. This is the profound meaning that inspired Felice Limosani in his digital work, “Le Mani dell’Umanità” [Hands of Humanity], which will welcome the visitor as the opening of the exhibition “From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce&Gabbana” scheduled from April 7 to July 31, 2024, at Palazzo Reale in Milan.
An AI graphic re-working — in deep learning and LDM — of the author’s two hands, transformed into bronze sculptures and animated by an evocative carousel capable of bringing back (a distinctive feature of all of Limosani’s works) the echo of the sculptural tradition of past centuries through digital technologies of the latest generation, gives the observer an opportunity for reflection that is both intimate and poetic.
“The desire is to narrate the countless facets of human existence through the prism of our most faithful companions of expression: our hands,” says Limosani. “In this work, hands are messenger of a profound meaning that reflects on the impact of our actions, the authenticity of our gestures, and the transcendence of how, through them, one can create or destroy.”
This real experience evokes the emotional and creative intelligence of the most peripheral organ of the human body, of which only human beings are the privileged bearers.
“They become the symbol of a broader truth that reflects the soul and reveals our life in all its complexity. The universal language of touch metaphorically invites us to recognize, celebrate and meditate on the creative or destructive power that each of us brings, from the heart to the hands,” concludes Limosani.
Like most of the works by the artist — who made Renaissance Florence and its multidisciplinary tradition his stylistic signature — contemporary visual language interacts with his original soundtrack and text composed in verse, embracing the invitation of the guiding theme of the exhibition, which creates a renewed idea of Humanity “from the heart to the hands”.
PEZZI DI PACE
by Felice Limosani
TORNABUONI ARTE From April 12 to 14
MIART Pavilion 3 | Stand A104-110
An invitation to rethink Peace as a cultural prerequisite; a desired but constantly disregarded condition due to the inability to quell conflicts, the denial of civil rights, religious and ethnic tensions, and environmental disasters.
This reflection is the basis for Pezzi di Pace [Pieces of Peace], the sculpture by Felice Limosani on display at Galleria TornabuoniArte from April 12 to 14 for the 28th edition of Miart – the prestigious appointment with modern and contemporary art in Milan.
The site-specific installation — commissioned by Roberto Casamonti, one of Italy’s most authoritative collectors, and curated by Sonia Zampini, the director of the collection bearing his name — is a rotating obelisk of mirror-polished steel on a reflective surface of water. The installation was exhibited from September 22, 2023 to January 28, 2024 in the historic heart of Florence, at the center of the enchanting Renaissance courtyard of Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni, the home of the Roberto Casamonti Collection.
Felice Limosani – recognized for his multimodal and interdisciplinary approach – worked on the meaning of Peace through the visual medium: an obelisk entirely covered with a highly technological steel sheet that, enclosed within the perfect geometric lines of the Renaissance courtyard, rises to the height of the first arches and reflects the light and surrounding architecture by slowly rotating. It is an ancient shape retracing history, “like when the army of ancient Rome occupied Egypt and took away the obelisk of Heliopolis which, besides being proof of the conquest, represented the cultural identity of that place, with all the implications linked to the mythological symbolism it represented,” explained Ms. Zampini.
Conceived as an installation full of poetic, symbolic, and metaphorical but never political references, Pezzi di Pace contains a specific meaning in each of its elements, as the artist himself explains: “The obelisk is not just a memorial, whose etymology leads back to the Latin verb monere (to remember), but in this case it is meant to be a peremptory and assertive symbol. Its static and ecstatic condition,” continues Limosani, “represents the balance between concreteness and dream. The rotation alludes to the continuous and evolutionary process of life, mixing reflections and perspectives, truth and perception. Simultaneously, steel speaks to us about strength and endurance, universal values that determine the growth and development of every living condition. In the polished and mirrored surface of the work, reality is reflected and with it also the wish for peace as a persistent condition, always in place, underlying our consciences and gestures.”
The work perfectly reflects the artist’s research focused on recognizing the spectator’s sensitive perception and contemplation in relation to the environments that generate sensory experiences and reflections on reality. The installation, after the harmonious dialog that took place in the courtyard of Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni – a symbolic place which itself expresses memory, culture and beauty – continues its narrative through a limited edition, 2.5 meters high, exhibited in the TornabuoniArte Galleries and exceptionally at Miart 2024. It is a work in which every conceptual and physical limit is reduced to achieve visual harmony that allows all the elements involved to interact and integrate with one another; an ideal conjunction between heaven and earth, between the human dimension and the place of ideas; it is a desire to complete and balance opposites: us and the world, us and others.
“Pezzi di Pace is an evocative title, in such a dark historical period, dominated by wars, environmental disasters and social injustices. I would like, with this work, to contribute, in our own small way, to ensure that peace can be achieved in all of its dimensions for us and for future generations,” said Roberto Casamonti.
A book, published for the occasion by Forma Editions, presents the artist’s work with texts by Sonia Zampini, Felice Limosani, Cristiano Seganfreddo and Jeffrey Schnapp. The first part of the book is dedicated to the project, while the following section analyzes the main works created by the artist during his career.
