508 Loop Detected is the debut solo exhibition of Eva & Franco Mattes at the gallery. After 15 years of exhibitions abroad, the pioneering duo of Net Art, also known as 0100101110101101.org, returns to Italy with their latest artistic production, including sculptures generated with artificial intelligence, a video installation, a kinetic sculpture, and a site-specific intervention on the facade.
In the early 1990s, Eva & Franco Mattes recognised the increasingly influential role the nascent Internet would play in shaping contemporary culture. They began devoting sleepless nights exclusively to exploring this new medium: its possibilities, pitfalls, and implications for content creation and dissemination, foreseeing the penetration of the Internet into every aspect of our lives. This intangible network of digital images that constitutes our online existence is actually physically based on computer servers scattered worldwide, and this materialization of images and data lies at the core of Eva & Franco Mattes’ new works.
The exhibition’s title, 508 Loop Detected is an ironic reference to an error code in website programming when the computer detects an infinite loop. The concept of the loop recurs in various ways in the exhibition, from the sculptures of Personal Photographs, which are actual infinite circuits, to Roomba Cat roaming the Hall, to the photographs in the Up Next video, demonstrating the impact the circulation of images can have on our lives. The show begins and ends with a site-specific intervention overflowing from the gallery facade, creating a strong visual contrast between the eighteenth-century architecture of the palace and this sulfur-yellow alien infrastructure that, emerging from the exhibition space, expands onto the balcony toward the street, circulating its files even outside. Just like the internet, the artwork crosses the invisible barrier separating the private space of the gallery and the public space of the square below.
