Grazia Toderi

About

First gaining critical attention in 1993 after participating in the 45th Venice Biennale, Grazia Toderi is often referred to as one of the most important contemporary artists, working in the fields of video projection and installation art. Toderi is recognized for her iconic use of aerial images of nighttime metropolitan cities. Works such as The Trail of Angels (La pista degli angeli, 2000), Florence, Stars of Earth (Firenze, stelle di terra, 2000), Mirabilia Urbis (2001), Invisible City (Città invisibile, 2003) have entered the anthology of contemporary art as the finest examples of video projections where cities such as Rome, Florence, and London are explored through an unfamiliar viewpoint, transforming  each city into a magical and mysterious territory, mirrored between sky and earth.

For her first solo show at Braverman Gallery, Grazia Toderi is showing a multichannel video installation called Red Map from 2018, influenced by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Fascinated by the use of images taken from already existing shots and the dynamics of spectacle, which Toderi understands as an occasion for encounter and coming together, she works on images of stadiums, arenas, and large historical theaters, where imagery, appearing in continuous transformation, tackles the relationship between time, light and energy. In this work, cities are shown through oval shapes--an homage to the ancient tradition of terrestrial and celestial mapping, the planisphere, and to the sockets of our eyes--optical tools that convey images to our head/world.