Supported by Arts Victoria

Damiano Bertoli’s sculptural installation Continuous Moment was composed as a three-dimensional reconstruction of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Das Eismeer (The Sea of Ice) of 1823-4. Known primarily to scholars of German romance culture and students of art history, Friedrich’s painting of a shattered, uplifted ice flow dwarfing and entrapping a wrecked sailing ship, deceptively suggested the reportage of a historical event. ¨Continuous Moment suggested a simultaneous engagement with diverse cultural and historical moments. Through the language of sculptural form, Bertoli’s awe-inspiring assemblage reworked the Romantic landscape tradition, with reference to the contemporary context of Minimal art, and the accumulation of discarded material found on suburban building sites."