23. 9. 2025. – 9. 11. 2025.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb
Although the relation between the museum and the cinema is not an obvious one, we can begin by observing that, as institutions of visual knowledge, they are connected through the phenomenon of cultural motion, which affect how we perceive the surface of the world. Giuliana Bruno, Surface
In an age of dispersed attention, driven by the dominance of screens and visual stimuli, the debate about the role of the film dispositive can be interpreted as an anachronistic attempt to interpret a semi-conscious reality into which we have long since stepped into, or as an evocation of a time when cinema had a multi-valued role. Furthermore, for decades now, comprehensive digitalization has contributed not only to the creation of new mechanisms for the circulation of moving and still images, but also to the way we experience them. By multiplying the various possibilities of image production and exposing viewers to the euphoria of the visual[1], the gaps and distances necessary for constructing meaning and free interpretations have narrowed to the utmost limits, conditioning the affective and cognitive experiences of the viewer.
From the very beginning of her artistic career at the intersection of film and the visual arts, Rosa Barba has been committed to deconstructing established modes of presentation in order to explore the limits of the visible, and the spatiotemporal frameworks of potential narratives.
Dealing with the immanent aspects of the medium – the materiality of film, as well as studying the principles of how the film projector works, the creation of image and sound, or the role of text – Barba approaches film as a set of elements which she then fragments, isolates, and connects into new orchestrated wholes. Playing with fragments, almost literally, disrupts the established hierarchy of relationships within the grammar of film, at once enabling an expanded experience of film, or rather understanding it as a sculptural and spatial installation.
Manipulating hybrid narratives, which often span fact and fiction, and articulating the exhibition itself as a series of stages to be freely experienced and deciphered, Rosa Barba has dedicated the past thirty years of her artistic career exploring the different elements of cinema, tailoring a poetics of the meaning of the visible that acts as a counterweight to the experience inherent to conventional film. Her interest in the ways in which film shapes space and time has resulted in the establishment of new relations between the work of art and the observer, who, in addition to becoming more aware of the specific characteristics of the medium, enters into a dialogue with the unstable aspects of reality that Barba’s works regularly critically examine.
The exhibition Meaning Distances for the first time presents the work of Italian artist Rosa Barba in Croatia, and includes a selection of film installations that connect a sculptural approach to the medium, moving compositions of color and sound, and a penchant for documentary-fictional narratives that reveal the vulnerability of nature and the similarities between artistic research and scientific studies.
The kinetic sculpture Enterprise of Notations (2013), from a series of works influenced by structural film, establishes a space for speculation about the nature of documents and the way we perceive the flow of time. The absence of an image during the continuous projection of a blank 16-mm film creates the impression of time standing still, evoking a sense of wonder and creating space for a dialogue of associations or a poetic play of meanings. Barba’s research suggests that the tendency to speculate can also be detected in science, specifically astronomy, which, like film, involves dealing with aspects of light, time, and distance. With the video installation The Color Out of Space (2015), the author momentarily sets aside the materiality of the film strip in order to project a film composed of astronomical shots of celestial bodies through a series of colored glass panels. The soundscape is formed by a collage of intertwined narratives, which, although they seem indistinguishable and go beyond the reach of ordinary perception, establish relations between distant meanings. Color Studies (2013) is part of a body of work in which Barba explores the limits of the visible, with a particular focus on the different properties of color. As two opposing 16-mm projectors project beams of light onto a small film screen, overlapping fields of color and endlessly repeating variations create subtle abstractions that leave room for new insights. Aggregate States of Matters (2019), a 35-mm film shot in the Peruvian Andes, refers to the physical conditions of the landscape already in its title, as well as to the consequences of melting glaciers on the collective experience of life of rural Quechua communities, which are among the most threatened by climate uncertainty. The parallel between a celluloid tape and the impressive landscape, permanently inscribed on it – a landscape that is disappearing at an incredible rate – is explicitly emphasized by the film installation which, in an attempt to extend the lifespan of nature, shares with film its fragility and impermanence.
The works presented in the exhibition Meaning Distances are imbued with an inescapable sense of the limitations of human perspective in the face of the unstoppable movement of the world. By rejecting unambiguous and dominant narratives, Rosa Barba creates a space in which gaps, intervals and discontinuities collectively participate in establishing relationships between distant layers of meaning.
Nika Petković
[1] Rosa Barba, On the Anarchic Organization of Cinematic Spaces - Evoking Spaces beyond Cinema, 2021.
Rosa Barba
The Color Out of Space, 2015
HD video, color, sound, 36 min, 5 colored glass filters, steel base
Exhibition view: FARBE IST PROGRAMM at Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, 2022
Courtesy of the artist and Sammlung Hoffmann
© Rosa Barba / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
© Simon Vogel, 2022 / Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH