Gift to Entropy

Renato Leotta

Curated by Stefano Rabolli Pansera

Renato Leotta’s Gift to Entropy, presented simultaneously at Bangkok Kunsthalle as a prefiguration of the upcoming work at Khao Yai Art Forest, investigates the relationship between potentiality and entropy as two fundamental forces through which form emerges and transforms. Rather than understanding form as a fixed configuration, Leotta approaches it as a temporary condition produced by the interaction of matter and energy. His artworks are diagrams of forces: they reveal processes that are otherwise imperceptible.

Throughout his practice, Leotta has developed a particular sensitivity to the relationship between natural phenomena and their representation. Light, gravity, water and vegetation become both the subjects and the agents of his work. Photography, film, sculpture and installation operate as instruments through which these phenomena are registered, preserved or allowed to unfold. His artistic gestures are remarkably restrained: rather than imposing a configuration upon matter, he establishes the conditions through which matter might reveal its own possibilities.

At Bangkok Kunsthalle, the exhibition brings together two bodies of work that explore the relationship between preservation and transformation.

The first consists of a pile of old aluminium film cases containing 16 mm films shot by the artist, recording extreme close-ups of flowers. The camera approaches the flowers so closely that the act of filming seems to exceed the possibilities of vision. It is as though Leotta were attempting to capture not their appearance, but their fragrance. The image approaches the threshold of another sensory experience, suggesting the possibility of perceiving through sight what can only be experienced through smell. Yet the films remain enclosed within the aluminium cases. The images are withdrawn from visibility, preserved as something precious, almost as though the fragrance of the flowers itself could be collected, stored and protected from disappearance. The containers become repositories of a sensory experience that cannot actually be contained. What is exhibited is the promise of their appearance and the impossible evocation of their fragrance.

The second work consists of folded sheets of red paper collected by the artist from a Chinese paper shop in Chinatown. The sheets had traditionally been used for writing chūnlián (春联), traditional Chinese New Year couplets written in gold or black ink on red paper as expressions of blessing and good fortune. Removed from their original ritual context, the sheets retain their folds and physical traces accumulated over time. Leotta pins them within a transparent plexiglass case whose height corresponds to the full length of the paper when completely unfolded. Suspended in this condition, the paper is subjected to the continuous force of gravity. Its folds may gradually relax, allowing the sheets to extend further towards the bottom of the case. The work proposes an almost imperceptible movement towards a final configuration in which the paper would become completely flat and reach the base of its enclosure. Yet this condition can never be fully realised. The folds will never disappear entirely, and the paper will never achieve the absolute flatness towards which it tends. The dimensions of the case
therefore establish a limit that exists conceptually but remains unattainable in reality. The work is defined not by the achievement of a final form, but by the perpetual movement towards it. Both installations exist in a state of suspension between what is present and what remains
unattainable: each artwork reveals its own potentiality. The fragrance is suggested but cannot be experienced; the paper slowly unfolds without ever reaching its final configuration.

At Bangkok Kunsthalle, images remain concealed and paper unfolds towards an unattainable limit. At Khao Yai Art Forest, an architectural enclosure protects the growth of vegetation while gradually surrendering its own boundaries.

Between the inaccessible fragrance, the unattainable form and the uninhabitable architecture, Gift to Entropy reveals that every form contains the inexhaustible potentiality of becoming itself.

This program is in collaboration with Istituto Italiano di Cultura Bangkok, Khao Yai Art Forest and Bangkok Kunsthalle