Romeo’s Balcony
metal bars, iron boxes, paint, hand-sewn sequins on canvas, plants
290 x 355 x 490 cm

text by Marco Meneguzzo
June 29th – October 14th, 2013
a project for ArtVerona Art Project, courtesy ArtVerona, Musei Civici di Verona, Teatro Nuovo and Studio La Città, Verona
Juliet’s House Courtyard Verona

Romeo’s Balcony is a fable that lives on the edges of our world; it is a fantastic monument.
This is a work that was formed through the aesthetics of its plans; these recreated an archetype for an architectural tale of love from the past to the present.
On Romeo’s Balcony there is paraded a collection of prêt à porter vases of flowers, as though Vivienne Westwood, Alexander Mc Queen, and Jean-Paul Gaultier had worked together to create visual tales about the middle-classes, their vices, and their habits. Here the cosmic fact of fashion is rounded off by the presence of life: genuine flowers that bring with them the marks of everyday reality.
Specifically created for Juliet’s courtyard, the installation unites architecture with humanity’s social needs and allows Shakespeare’s myth to stray into a territory halfway between reality and imagination, in a fantastic dreamlike universe where thoughts, childhood memories, obsessions, real and dreamed-of facts magically mix together. Like an excavation into cinematographic memories, it mixes together the films Romeo e Giulietta; 8 1/2 by Fellini; Network by Sidney Lumet; and Bellissima by Luchino Visconti, to the point of making Romeo the boy next-door in the style of Truffault.
Just as with the ephemeral constructions and machines made for celebrations during the Baroque period, realized for commemorating coronations or war victories and bringing the population together to experience and extraordinary event, so Romeo’s Balcony celebrates the Love Event of humanity, and its manifestation transforms the semantic value of the location.
The performance follows in the footsteps of Shakespeare’s drama and revives the passion of Romeo and Juliet by way of a vision influenced by Italian comedy. It has been realized together with the collaboration of the Teatro Stabile di Verona and its director Paolo Valerio. Romeo’s Balcony is an idea that is concretized and becomes a place where we encounter an experience within a dream.

Photo credits: Michele Sereni Time lapse video: K Studio, Verona
Read the full text by Marco Meneguzzo