About the Exhibition
Curator: Lýdia Pribišová
Free admission
Opening: 16.5. 2025 15:00
Duration: until 30.6.2025
We are launching the Aqua Vitae program with an exhibition by Italian artist Lucia Romualdi, who poetically connects distant waters with the water in Trenčín. We present her site-specific light score composed of rotating slide projections that rhythmically emerge from the darkness.
In her eclectic projects, Lucia Romualdi explored the rhythms of tides, the depths of the sea, and their connection with visual and sound patterns. She created diagrams – scores made up of flows of numbers and geometric shapes. From the dark, light schemes of vessels and barges emerge, evoking distance and imaginative travel, drawings of fish inspired by historical manuscripts, or abstract light signs referencing the movement of oarsmen in ancient boats. This visual composition is accompanied by a piece by Italian composer Ivan Fedele and the sound of Morse code, the rhythm of which reflects the tide heights in the port of Kamsar, Guinea. The sound intervention is an integral part of the work.
An important element of her work is experimental film. Lucia Romualdi transformed historical black-and-white silent films, reducing them to minimalist visual signs that – like the tides – disappear and reappear. In this case, she reworked the film Panorama des rives du Nil by the Lumière brothers from 1897.
Romualdi creates immersive light environments oscillating between poetry and science. Her mathematical lyricism and ephemeral visual language transform space into a mystical emotional experience. In her work, she explores the relationships between time and place, questions fixed boundaries of perception, and perceives space as a constantly changing field of experience. Time, for her, is not just a linear value, but a dimension of space where the present intersects with the past and the future.
About the Artist
Lucia Romualdi was active on the Italian and international art scene since the late seventies. With her conceptual approach, she reflected on themes of ephemerality and reduction – from strict black-and-white paintings to site-specific light and sound installations she called light scores. She lived and worked in Rome and on the Etruscan coast. Since the nineties, she collaborated with prominent Italian composers including Franco Donatoni, Ivan Fedele, Fausto Sebastiani, Antonio Ballista, Bruno Canino, Stefano Cardi, and Claudio Iacomucci. She passed away in 2023.
She exhibited in prestigious institutions such as the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Pecci Museum in Prato, Orestiadi di Gibellina, MuHKA in Antwerp, and MAXXI in Rome. Nevertheless, she preferred venues outside the traditional art context – hidden spaces that she made accessible to the public. She exhibited in Aquarium Neapolitanum, in the Medici Greenhouses in Rufina, in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, in the Basilica of St. Clement, in the Basilica of the Four Crowned Saints, in the Astronomical Observatory in Rome, in Castel dell’Ovo in Naples, in the synagogue in Šamorín, and in the Forte Michelangelo in Civitavecchia.
Produced in collaboration with Archivio Lucia Romualdi and the Italian Cultural Institute in Bratislava.
The Journey of the Work Variazione op. K 10°:
2007 variazione op. K10°_n
light score for 9 projectors and morse code
morse code – Capitaneria del Porto di Napoli – coast guard – January 2007
Studio Trisorio – Naples
2010 variazione op. K10°_Newport
light score for 10 projectors
Ivan Fedele “due notturni con figura”, piano and electronic intervention
National Gallery of Modern Art – Hendrik Christian Andersen Museum – Rome
2011 secondo livello Newport
light score for 6 projectors
Ivan Fedele “due notturni con figura”, piano and electronic intervention
National Gallery of Modern Art – Hendrik Christian Andersen Museum – Rome
Trenčín 2026 is financially supported by the City of Trenčín, the Trenčín Self-Governing Region, and the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic. Partnered with the European Union.
Photo and video recordings will be made at the event and published later.
