Love to the Letter and the Letters Spelled Death, 2022
Paint, carved polystyrene, sound-absorbing foam, projected video, and sound
Approximately 10ft x 30 ft x 20 ft
Paint, carved polystyrene, sound-absorbing foam, projected video, and sound
Approximately 10ft x 30 ft x 20 ft
Exhibition's Press Release:
Love to the Letter and the Letters Spelled Death is Jonathan Latiano’s inaugural solo exhibition at the Boston Sculptors Gallery. For this exhibition, Latiano creates an immersive experience, filling the gallery space with mounds of thousands of hand-cut fragments of sound absorbing foam. While deeply unnatural in origin, the mounds emulate natural formations, creating a uniquely “human” environment.
The piles of foam coalesce into two opposing mounds in opposite corners of the gallery. On one of the mounds stands the skeleton of a southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum), gazing out into the gallery space. Across the gallery on the opposing mound sits the holographic image of a human cellist. The cellist’s music fills the gallery space as she solemnly serenades the rhino skeleton, her music both a love poem and languid memorial.
What serves as a love letter to the southern white rhinoceros now may ultimately be its obituary. Humanity’s unique capacity to love is matched only by its unique capacity to destroy. Love can motivate, love can propagate, love can safeguard, but all the love in the world cannot bring something back from the dead. This artwork strives to depict the beauty and fragility of the natural world, the artificiality of human society, and the complicated passion, rage, and sorrow of the conservation movement. It is a monument to a species on the brink of extinction and a memorial to the future that may soon be written.
Love to the Letter and the Letters Spelled Death is Jonathan Latiano’s inaugural solo exhibition at the Boston Sculptors Gallery. For this exhibition, Latiano creates an immersive experience, filling the gallery space with mounds of thousands of hand-cut fragments of sound absorbing foam. While deeply unnatural in origin, the mounds emulate natural formations, creating a uniquely “human” environment.
The piles of foam coalesce into two opposing mounds in opposite corners of the gallery. On one of the mounds stands the skeleton of a southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum), gazing out into the gallery space. Across the gallery on the opposing mound sits the holographic image of a human cellist. The cellist’s music fills the gallery space as she solemnly serenades the rhino skeleton, her music both a love poem and languid memorial.
What serves as a love letter to the southern white rhinoceros now may ultimately be its obituary. Humanity’s unique capacity to love is matched only by its unique capacity to destroy. Love can motivate, love can propagate, love can safeguard, but all the love in the world cannot bring something back from the dead. This artwork strives to depict the beauty and fragility of the natural world, the artificiality of human society, and the complicated passion, rage, and sorrow of the conservation movement. It is a monument to a species on the brink of extinction and a memorial to the future that may soon be written.
Video walkthough
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Opening reception with live cellist performance
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