Andrea Galvani © Time is the Enemy #1 and #5, 2018-2021
C-prints mounted on aluminum dibond, white wood frames
Approx. 206 x 156 x 7 cm, framed
Installation view at Galería Curro, Guadalajara
Photo by Noemí García
Courtesy the artist and Galería Curro

TIme is the Enemy

If things fall, it is due to [the] slowing down of time. Where time passes uniformly, in interplanetary space, things do not fall. They float, without falling.

–Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time

When we look at the sky, we are looking at the invisible stratification of time. Layers of different temporalities, superimposed, passing at different speeds. The idea of uniform time inherited over millennia is an illusion. Time passes differently at the mountains than it does at the sea, it passes more rapidly at our heads than it does at our feet. Transiting from high to low, moving down, we return from future to past, inverting the structure of time through our passage.

Time is the Enemy is a new body of large-scale photographic work by Andrea Galvani. Collaborating with professional skydivers over the course of 3 years, testing different technologies and experimenting in different locations, Galvani’s photographs capture bodies free-falling at dusk—crossing the border between day and night. Travelers suspended in twilight, in the transit of light, these solitary figures evoke vertiginous sensations of ascension and decline, elevation and the fall. To produce these images, Galvani jumped alongside the skydivers, documenting their journey through the atmosphere as they cross temporal layers, gravitating to the Earth where time is slowed down. Freezing a dramatic action, Galvani’s immersive photographs are infused with spiritual weight—evoking themes of isolation, loss, desire, mortality, sacrifice, and redemption.

Andrea Galvani © Time is the Enemy #9 [Study on Terminal Speed], 2021
6500K neon, white blown glass, paint, electricity
Approx. 214 x 160 x 5 cm
Installation view at Galería Curro, Guadalajara
Photo by Noemí García
Courtesy the artist and Galería Curro

Andrea Galvani © Study on Gravitational Waves [50 Times Greater than All the Stars Combined], 2021
Cobalt blue neon, hand-blown glass, metal structure, paint, concrete base, electricity
Approx. 186 x 104 x 22 cm
Courtesy the artist and Galería Curro

For most of human history, our understanding of the Universe has been illuminated by light. Scientists have relied almost exclusively on electromagnetic radiation (visible light, X-rays, radio waves, microwaves, etc.) to study the cosmos—information that has served as our astronomical eyes, allowing us to look deep into space and time. On September 14th 2015, we evolved ears, extending our cosmic senses and opening an entirely new realm of observation we did not have access to before. For the first time, a team of scientists heard and recorded the sound of two supermassive black holes colliding a billion light-years away—a faint ringing tone that was the first direct evidence of gravitational waves.

Illustrated by the sublime cobalt-blue glow of Galvani’s neon sculpture, gravitational waves are the invisible cosmic ripples in spacetime caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted their existence over a century ago in 1916. Accordingly with his groundbreaking general theory of relativity, these cosmic vibrations would travel at the speed of light, carrying with them information about their origins, as well as clues to the nature of gravity itself. Conveyed by these gravitational waves, power 50 times greater than the output of all the stars in the universe combined vibrated a pair of L-shaped antennas in Washington State and Louisiana known as LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) in late summer 2015.

Andrea Galvani © detail of Time is the Enemy #3, 2018-2021
C-print mounted on aluminum dibond, white wood frame
Approx. 206 x 156 x 7 cm, framed
Courtesy the artist, Galería Curro, and The RYDER Projects

Andrea Galvani © Time is the Enemy #3, 2018-2021
C-print mounted on aluminum dibond, white wood frame
Approx. 206 x 156 x 7 cm, framed
Installation view at Art Paris Art Fair, 2023
Courtesy the artist and Fabienne Levy, Lausanne and Geneva

Andrea Galvani © Study on the Malleability of Time [Light Cone], 2021 (left)
Andrea Galvani © Study on Parachute System Flight Dynamics, 2018 (right)
Drawings from the artist’s sketchbook
Courtesy the artist

Andrea Galvani © Time is the Enemy #1 and #5, 2018-2021
C-print mounted on aluminum dibond, white wood frame
Approx. 206 x 156 x 7 cm each, framed
Installation view at Art Paris Art Fair, 2023
Courtesy the artist and Fabienne Levy, Lausanne and Geneva

Andrea Galvani © Study on Cherenkov Radiation, 2021
6500K neon, white blown glass, metal structure, concrete base, paint, electricity
Approx. 172 x 102 x 22 cm
Courtesy the artist and Galería Curro

Andrea Galvani © Time is the Enemy #1 and #5, 2018-2021
C-prints mounted on aluminum dibond, white wood frames
Approx. 206 x 156 x 7 cm, framed
Installation view at Galería Curro, Guadalajara
Photo by Noemí García
Courtesy the artist and Galería Curro

Andrea Galvani © Time is the Enemy
21 October 2021 - 30 January 2022
Exhibition view at Galería Curro, Guadalajara
Photo by Noemí García
Courtesy the artist and Galería Curro