Exhibitions
Walking on Water: When Body, Faith, and Science Seek Balance with Mercis Rossetti
Mercis Rossetti presents at Can Manyé an exhibition tour born of pilgrimages, impossible gestures and images that oscillate between the sacred imaginary and empirical observation, placing the public on a fragile threshold between belief, physics and visual memory.
When the tangible world comes into contact with the symbolic tradition, a space of high poetic intensity opens up: the most ordinary gestures acquire a ritual dimension and visible matter is allowed to be crossed by invisible readings. In this territory of friction, bodies, spaces and objects cease to be simple physical presences to become containers of collective memory, inherited stories and values transmitted over time. It is from this meeting point that Mercis Rossetti presents Caminar sobre l'aigua at Can Manyé. Espai d'Art i Creació d'Alella, in an exhibition tour that can be visited until March 1.
The project takes shape after a year of pilgrimages that draw a fragmented but intense map: Galicia, Euskadi, Rome, Granollers and the Roca Umbert Fàbrica de les Arts and the open landscapes of the Empordà. A constant displacement that crosses lakes, ponds, washhouses and seas, and that goes into Vatican churches and Roman temples as well as neighborhood parishes, museums and small, almost imperceptible chapels. The journey is not only geographical, but also symbolic and bodily.
Along this journey, the feet defy gravity while coexisting with fantastic animals and formulas that try to explain flotation or calculate the exact speeds that would make the miracle possible. The images that emerge from this process do not limit themselves to representing the world, but rather construct it and make it plausible, holding it in a fragile balance between belief and demonstration.
The path is long and meticulous, made of accumulations and persistent research, but also of errors, tests and rectifications. A process crossed by displacements and accompaniments, by moments of suspension and instability, in which levitating and sustaining oneself become shared experiences. None of this would have been possible without the complicity of all those people who have accompanied the artist, supporting her —literally and symbolically— along the way.
Through archives, graphics, diagrams and images that fluctuate between sacred imagery and scientific observation, the proposal investigates the forces that sustain and destabilize the body. Weight and trust, floating and falling, appear as physical notions but also as metaphors for experiences of faith, risk and memory. In this way, the audience is placed on a perceptual threshold where the gaze, physics and visual memory constantly negotiate their points of equilibrium, always fragile, always provisional.
After projects such as The Jewel , created at the end of 2021 together with Mercè Vila Rigat at the Museum of Painting in Sant Pol de Mar, Rossetti once again places his work in the Maresme region with Walking on Water . The exhibition delves into a delicate border where the image becomes a common language between science and faith.
Movement, far from being just an object of analysis or symbol, is revealed as a form of knowledge. A choreography where faith, science and nature intertwine to give rise to a poetics of the body that oscillates between the sacred, the empirical and the instinctive. The exhibition thus starts from an almost impossible gesture: moving slowly over surfaces charged with sacredness. Step by step, the project builds an itinerary in which movement becomes a test, tension and learning.
