Hedonism and Entropy of Diego Marcon's La Gola
Text: Dora Jedináková
Vienna’s Kunsthalle transformed into a space of strange ambivalence: a theatrical stage and a morgue, a lavish feast and a funeral hall. Diego Marcon’s exhibition La Gola confronted the viewer with two extreme poles of human existence—sensory pleasure and physical decline. The Italian artist, known for his experiments with film as a medium, createed a world where grotesque, melancholy, and the aesthetics of puppet animation meet the choreography of death and indulgence.
La Gola is a complex multimedia installation that explores corporeality, perception, and the transcendent ambivalence between the material and the ephemeral. Even before entering the exhibition space, visitors are stopped by a monumental red curtain, evoking the scenography of an opera theater while also referencing the ritualistic separation of the profane from the sacred. This gestural element symbolizes the transition between two ontological modes—the external world and the fictional reality of the installation.
Beyond this threshold, the viewer finds themselves in a compactly designed red interior, where the curtains, floor, and walls create a homogeneous space oscillating between theatrical opulence and the claustrophobia of a hermetically sealed environment. The monochromatic red aesthetic not only references the performative history of theater but also, through its visual intensity, evokes the principle of affective overload—a state in which sensory stimuli are simultaneously fascinating and unsettling.
At the center of the room stands a three-row arrangement of red cinema chairs, their emptiness alluding to the absence of bodies—an absence of viewers they might otherwise accommodate. This aspect can be interpreted in the context of post-cinematic theories reflecting on the transformation of perception in the digital media era. The projection thus does not remain a passive experience but actively engages the viewer in constructing meaning. As soon as I take my seat, the space resonates with the monumental organ music of Federico Chiari, recorded at the Cathedral of Sant’Alessandro Martire in Bergamo. This sacred element lends the film a liturgical dimension, creating a tension between the sacred and the profane, the transcendental and the corporeal.
On a screen, a film appears that at first glance resembles hyperrealistic CGI animation. The characters move subtly, mechanically, at times almost stiffly. Upon reading the curatorial text, I learn that Marcon used actual mannequins, digitally animating their eyes and certain visual elements (blinking, rain, lightning). This combination of the material plasticity of physical objects and digital reinterpretation creates an uncanny ambiguity—is this a simulation of reality, or real objects transformed into a different perceptual mode? The film consciously defies conventional cinematic storytelling—lacking clear dramaturgy, its temporal structure oscillates between repetitive sequences and narrative fragments that continuously disintegrate and reassemble. In this sense, Marcon’s work not only explores the boundaries between reality and fiction but also challenges the viewer to actively reconstruct meaning—a process as dependent on subjective experience as on the visual and sonic material of the film itself.
It is evident that La Gola is not merely a simple cinematic work but a multi-layered aesthetic structure that balances between communication and silent introspection, between explicit meaning and ambiguity that constantly shifts depending on the perceptual context. Marcon operates on the boundary between neoclassical melancholy and postmodern irony, referencing a broader discourse on visual representation in the era of digital simulation. Engaging with this work is not a passive experience—it is a ritual of passage, a moment of epiphanic revelation in which stable points of perception dissolve, confronting the viewer with the fundamental ambiguity of existence itself.
La Gola is thus an exceptional example of contemporary artistic thought, capable of merging technological precision with existential pathos, creating a work that is not just a visual representation but a living mechanism for contemplating our relationship to reality, time, and corporeality.
The film La Gola is a 15-minute poetic composition divided into eight episodes, resembling an opera libretto or an epistolary novel. It unfolds through an exchange of letters between Gianni and Rossana. Gianni describes a lavish feast with unrestrained ecstasy—detailing the dishes, the textures of the food, the way it melts on the tongue, the aromas permeating the space. Rossana, in contrast, speaks of degeneration and death—her mother’s decline, the slow decay of the body, the fading of vitality. This contrast between hedonistic excess and physical entropy forms the core of the film. Marcon plays with paradox: the more vividly the feast is depicted, the more acutely the awareness of impending demise deepens. As if each bite were merely another step toward inevitable ruin.
One of the most striking aspects of the film is the use of puppets with digitally animated eyes. Gianni and Rossana have precisely modeled faces, yet their movements are stiff, lifeless. The eyes—traditionally a symbol of animation (in its original Latin meaning of “bringing to life”)—appear paradoxical: though they move realistically, their gaze is unnaturally empty. This puppet aesthetic is no coincidence—Marcon has explored the theme of immobility and artificiality in previous films (The Parents’ Room, Monelle). In La Gola, the puppets become a metaphor for the dead body—one that still attempts to communicate, still exchanges letters, yet whose fate is sealed.
Marcon’s La Gola can be understood as a modern version of the Baroque vanitas—an iconography reflecting the transience of life. Baroque paintings often featured still lifes with lavish foods, expensive wine, and skulls, hinting at the inevitable end of pleasure. Marcon translates this idea into contemporary audiovisual language—his feast is monumental, yet doomed to decay.The work oscillates between fascination and repulsion, between pleasure and dread. Its dialogue with the tradition of existential grotesque—from Beckett to Buñuel—is evident. The La Gola exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien is not merely an artwork but a philosophical meditation on desire, impermanence, and the grotesqueness of human existence. The film takes place in a space where a banquet becomes a requiem, where pleasure transforms into a premonition of decay.
© Diego Marcon. Courtesy the artist; Sadie Coles HQ, London; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève for BIM’24, Kunsthalle Wien and Kunstverein in Hamburg, photos: Iris Ranzinger
© New Translation 2025