ongoing - Sept. 28

Luisa Rabbia was last year’s artist-in-residence at the Isabella Gardner Stewart Museum. The Italian-born, Brooklyn-based Rabbia was surrounded, of course, by the paintings, sculptures and arts collected by Gardner, more than a century ago. When it came time to make a video, Rabbia was struck by one of Gardner’s five travel scrapbooks – a photo album of her 1883 journey through China. What Rabbia did in her 26:30 video is stitch together Gardner's photos – people, buildings, walls, nature – and add computer-designed animated video components. It’s called “Travels with Isabella” and its up at the Gardner Museum. It closes after this weekend, Sat. Sept. 27 and Sunday ept. 28. “It’s a journey made with Isabella,” Rabbia told us at the opening in late June. “I was impressed with her photographs. She represented all these human beings and took us on a journey through the sense of loss with the passing of time.”

   Rabbia, with music assembled by Fa Ventilato, used Gardner’s photos to make a video that moves along left to right at a slow, steady pace – the images float across the giant screen, in a small dark room at the back of the Museum. There’s no “action,”  drama or dialogue. Rabbia likens “Travels to Isabella” to what a passenger on a train might see from the window as the train makes its trip. (Gardner’s trip was a tad more exotic that your average train rider’s experience, of course.)
     There is an overwhelming sense of tranquility and curiosity. What’s coming next? How will Rabbia’s artistic choices interact with Gardner’s photos? You wonder about what Gardner saw back when and how Rabbia sees it now. How consanant or dissonant they are.  It should be noted that the film begins with birth and ends with death, but it’s played on a loop and Rabbia says you can enter the video at any point and leave at any point.
   A royal blue ribbon snakes through various scenes, going in and around people and places. Rabbia sees the ribbon as representing roots and growth – “the roots of trees, veins of the planet, the start of a universe, the cycle of growth.” There are images of the sky, clouds, bursts of fire erupting, snow, rain, lakes.  Birds fly around the Temple of the Sun. It’s abstract in part, but not jarringly so. “The abstraction,” says Rabbia, “allows the viewer to enter his own journey.” It lends itself – like much of the art at the Gardner to contemplation and calmness.
   “Rabbia is a surreal storyteller,” says Pieranna Cavalchini, the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Gardner. “The artist literally draws us out of one world into another. Her narrative deals with loneliness, solitude, angst, as human figures, endless roots, trees, all drawing fragments from her past work float in parallel with portions of the Museum’s highly detailed photographs of images of imperial China. The low-tech, computer-designed and animated video is steeped in a sense of loss and nostalgia, conveying intensity, ambiguity as well as a sense of quiet theatricality. This fantastical narrative is actually a study on the human condition.”
    Ventilato put the music together from tapes of music by classical musicians made during Gardner concerts. He then edited, tweaked, and toyed with them. The effect is much like the ambient music Brian Eno started making in the ‘80s. It’s never dominant, but it’s essential to the experience.
   The full title of the show is “Luisa Rabbia: Travels with Isabella, Travel Scrapbooks 1883/2008.” The apparatus used to create the film is open-PLAYER video technology which utilizes encouding and playback technologies to ensure synchronization and playback of HD streams.
    See the exhibit, take a respite from the heat, relax as it gently stimulates you, enjoy the courtyard garden, and, then, by all means explore the rest of remarkable art collection, which includes works by Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Raphael, Degas and Sargent. No, you won’t find that lovely Vermeer there (“The Concert”). That was one of the works stolen March 18, 1980, in the biggest art theft ever in America.  Naturally, if you know anything about this the Gardner would be happy to talk to you and if you help bring the criminals to justice there’s a pot of gold awaiting. But it’s been 18 years and no one’s seen anything or heard a peep. Admission: $12. Hours Tues- Sun 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Check the website below, too, for a varieity of after-hours events.

280 The Fenway, 617-278-5156 www.gardnermuseum.org