Thunderstorms (Temporali) is a work composed of lights that intensify with every lightning strike in Italy.

In order to achieve the work, the artist collaborates* with Meteorage, a company that manages a network of sensors located throughout the national territory, detecting in real-time all the lightning strikes that occur in Italy.

Through a simple principle of electrical detection, Garutti’s work reveals to the viewer the relationship between art and the primordial energy – the generative and universal power – of nature; it reaffirms the value of the artwork as a tool mediating between humans and the world.

“What matters most in art,” says the artist, “is the mystery of the visual event, and Temporali speaks the enigmatic language of light and the primordial forces that cause its appearance.” Metaphorically, Temporali gathers all the Italian skies into one point and transforms the installation site into a mysterious space of revelations.

The artwork operates using advanced technologies, yet its installation is formally elementary and essential: the viewer’s attention is not on the form it assumes but on the wonder of the event they witness. As is customary with Alberto Garutti’s public works, an integral part of the artwork is the caption, a mechanism for dissemination and activation of the work. It becomes a device capable of establishing a dense network of correspondences between the viewer, the installation site, and the sky.

*From 2008 to 2019, the realization of the artwork was made possible thanks to the support of the SIRF (Italian Lightning Detection System) of CESI (Italian Experimental Electrotechnical Center)