Go over like a lead balloon

A boundless drop

Ambrosia – Elisir d’immortalità

Velocemente viene, velocemente va

Because all we have is (t)here to lose

Ambrosia Booklet

No Time to Die

A personal exhibition developed over one thousand square meters in five site-specific works for TanExpo at BolognaFiere, curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (in 2022). In the biggest European funeral service fair the artist made three services to buy immortality truly purchasable.

Go over like a lead balloon

Participative multimedia installation
6x2.5m wall, digital drawing printed on canvas, digital drawing printed on high-wear carpet, graphite on 15x15cm paper, ambient sound, video-animation projection (continuous loop), foldable brochures distribution
2022

“The first work is a wall projection of monumental dimensions that urges the audience to gather for a collective viewing. On this long wall, a series of luminous entities appear and disappear depending on how the natural light filters into the exhibition space. These faint presences were realized by filming a number of people who simulated falling into a void and were then portrayed and animated by the artist's hand using the rotoscope technique. Those immortalized by Sciorilli fall from above like stars, remaining in a state of unreal suspension. They toss and turn in the void finding a dimension of illusory eternity guaranteed by an artifice, namely the looping of the video. This cyclical walk annihilates the concept of beginning and end but only in an apparent way: from one moment to the next the projector could be turned down simply by pushing a button. What happens to these souls when the piece of art isn’t exhibited or the show is closed? Are they still guaranteed immortality or are they condemned in limbo?" excerpt from Carolina Gestri’s text for the catalogue.

A boundless drop

Multimedia installation
6x2,5m wall, digital drawing print on 5x5x15cm box, black glass globe, 50x50x200cm cabinet with a plinth, 11 graphite drawings on 15x20cm paper, a5 flyer distribution

Trusting the sphere implies taking the initiative regarding our idea of faith and hope because everything lies in what we attribute to the amulet: it is our faith in it that charges it with energy. The formal element of the sphere is also a kind of archetype for Sciorilli [...] now, we don't see the marble, and not because it would turn us into a statue of salt, but because it would distract us from its meaning or, better, from what really matters for the artist: the journey, not the destination; to gamble your life, not to win the prize." excerpt from Davide Dall’Ombra’s text for the catalogue.

Ambrosia – Elisir d’immortalità
Ambrosia – Elixir of Immortality

Participative installation
6x2,5m wall with recess, digital drawing print on fabric, bottle with digital drawing sticker print label, graphite and crayons on 15x15cm paper, tables, chairs, roll-up digital drawing print 80x200cm, waiters, distribution of stapled leaflets a6

“A perpetually postponed possibility; a promise of salvation; the afterlife or an elixir of long life.
And it is the elixir of long life which is the protagonist of Danilo Sciorilli's installation - specifically ambrosia - a term of Greek origin composed of the privative alpha, denoting negation, and (μ)βρότος, (m)brotos, that stands for "mortal". It is the opportunity that Sciorilli offers to escape death, to deny it, to postpone it. Consistent with his poetics, which explores the concept of death in a dimension that moves between both the personal and the collective, Sciorilli invites viewers to reflect on existence and the meaning of its end. Is it possible to postpone death? Yes, says Sciorilli; yes, if one decides to believe.
But believing in not dying is in fact, not believing in life itself. It is believing, as Feuerbach wrote, in the truth of fantasy, as life is defined by its limitation and living is defined by the awareness of one’s mortality. And this is perhaps what Sciorilli wants to communicate…” excerpt from Linda Fossati’s text for the catalogue.

Ambrosia Booklet

Velocemente viene, velocemente va
Easy come, easy go

Three-channel video synchro installation
Three 6x2.5m red walls, three video animations, video in the Schlieren photography technique, 3'12''

"Gino De Dominicis is blunt: death is caused by time, which, with its entropic flow from before to after, brings about ageing. This is the caducity of man: the last step is that subtle line that leads directly to a “better life.” The solution is then simple: if one could freeze time, one would not age and, by remaining still one would achieve immortality.
Immortality is therefore directly associated with and proportionate to immobility. Almost an oxymoron, but certainly logical. And art, which is physiologically immobile and immutable, is a perfect living being because it is itself immortal and immutable.
Aware of this assumption, Danilo Sciorilli prefers to stage our conditions regarding death: how we behave when faced with it, as to create a short circuit that ignites our senses. The irony that permeates his work, the exaggeration of social codes in times of mourning and remembrance, allows us to disarm mortal logic by brandishing it from within. " excerpt from Federico Palumbo’s text for the catalogue.

Because all we have is (t)here to lose

40x40cmMultimedia installation
Video-animation 3'34'' on led-wall 4,5x2m, black-on-black weave curtain 5.6x2.7m, graphite on backlit perforated board with dimming led 40x40cm

"As Franco Battiato rightly stated: 'We think we are eternal, and this is our misfortune. At school they do not teach us how to die; instead, the ancient Egyptians built a whole civilization around death’. In ‘Cause all we got is here to lose, the artist represents the exit from the scene, the spectacular death, probably the most appropriate epilogue to a spectacularized life (in the now well-established society of the spectacle). In this sense, the video animation appears dry and peremptory, definitive, and unsettling at the end of the brilliant proselytism on immortality developed in the exhibition fair, yet a note of irony is always present. That bitter and dramatic irony is also an important characteristic of the cinematographic source explicitly cited by Sciorilli in his work." excerpt from Valentina Tebala’s text for the catalogue.