Gea Vision Opening

Gea Vision is a gallery for NFT and digital art in Bologna, at Via Goito 7 in the historic centre, and Federico Clapis was the artist chosen for its grand opening. The invitation presents the evening as the Gea Vision NFT Gallery Grand Opening under his name.

The opening was built around a video mapping installation. The invitation already sets the scene: two of his best-known sculptures, rendered in white stone, float in orbit above the Earth together with everyday objects, a hard hat, a folding chair, a refrigerator, an anvil, like debris drifting in space. One is the pregnant torso with a fetus holding a smartphone, from the Connection series; the other is the Babydrone, a drone carrying a newborn in a cloth sling. In the gallery the projection filled the upper part of a wall, so that the Babydrone seemed to hover over the crowd against the curve of the planet, while visitors gathered in the dark below and Federico Clapis stood among them.

The installation brings together the two sides of his path: sculptures first made as physical objects, then turned into digital works and set in motion, in a cosmic landscape that recalls his works on space and on the future of the human species. The opening of a gallery devoted to NFTs in a city known for its art fair and its university also shows how digital art was looking for permanent physical spaces in Italy, beyond fairs and temporary events.