Last week I went to see a rather disappointing exhibition at our local Gallery of Modern Art, and the Contemporary Art Pavilion is just nearby, so I thought I’d try my luck a second time and see if the works on exhibition would make up for the wasted trip.
There are two main things at the PAC now: a collective of artists from India, curated by Ferran Barenblit, and an installation in the so-called projection room upstairs, titled Bad Trips and Broken Promises / Even Flowers Must Die.
INSOMNIA is the collective name of a project born in New York in 2019, from the encounter between the documentary photography and videography of Thiago Dezan and the multifaceted visual arts practice of Infinite, rooted in underground and countercultural milieus. Their projects weave together these distinct but complementary artistic approaches, constructing a visual language that interrogates reality by excavating what is often invisible, overlooked, or repressed by cultural institutions and collective narratives. The result is a compelling and urgent artistic intervention centred on themes of visibility and suppression, memory and trauma.
The installation’s title itself suggests a dual meditation: Bad Trips and Broken Promises evokes disillusionment and systemic failure, while Even Flowers Must Die gestures toward the fragility of beauty and the inevitability of decay. The works on view range from photography and video installations to painted and mixed-media surfaces, drawing heavily on imagery originally documented for journalistic and real-world contexts.
Presented in dialogue with the broader PAC seasonal program — including the collective exhibition India. Di bagliori e fughe — this project reinforces PAC’s commitment to fostering critical engagement through contemporary art, positioning Bad Trips and Broken Promises / Even Flowers Must Die as both a reflection of and a challenge to the moment we inhabit. That, alongside the show at the Gallery of Modern Art, brings back the artistic complex of the Royal Villa to the foreground of a social and political debate that’s most urgent and compelling.
No Comments