Experimental films at Berman Contemporary's Project Room (223 Creative Hub)

09 Jul 2025

Experimental films at Berman Contemporary's Project Room. Photo: Berman Contemporary.

Audio and visual come together in Iadema's work. Photo: Berman Contemporary.

Prints of stills from 'Un_i[n]verso'. Photo: Johannesburg in Your Pocket.

Video works by Italian composer, visual artist, and performer Gianluca Iadema take centre stage in the second edition of Berman Contemporary's Project Room at 223 Creative Hub in Rosebank, offering a distinct art experience. Iadema's ethereal audiovisual piece, Un_i[n]verso, is on show until Wed, Jul 30, 2025. Here's why you need to go to Berman Contemporary to see it.

What is Berman Contemporary's Project Room?

Get drawn into powerful projections with *Un_i[n]verso*. Photo: Johannesburg In Your Pocket.

The traditional white cube experience of art is best suited for static mediums and, in focusing on what is sellable, more conceptual and large-scale projects can be overlooked. Through the Project Room at 223 Creative Hub, Berman Contemporary creates a space for works that are experiential, research-focused, and which utilise sound and film. This is a welcome addition to Joburg, which lacks dedicated spaces for works of this nature and, in this way, is somewhat behind international norms in the art world.

And it's fitting that it should come from Berman Contemporary, a gallery that has carved out a distinct image for itself, thanks in part to its focus on emerging women artists in South Africa. This gallery is already a place where you can find new takes on old forms, unique materials and mediums, and conceptually exciting works – the group exhibition Happy women's day, I guess… is a wonderful introduction to the varied artists it represents. The Project Room adds to this, and provides experimental and genre-defying works a platform in Johannesburg.

The second instalment: Un_i[n]verso

Prints of stills from *Un_i[n]verso*. Photo: Johannesburg In Your Pocket.

223 Creative Hub is a beautifully designed building flooded with natural light; its white walls give it an airy feeling as you move through the gallery spaces. Co-curated by Stefano Pisci, director of Studio Gianluca Iadema, and Milla Peerutin, the Project Room offers a stark contrast. As soon as you step inside the darkened room, the experience is one of immersion and contradiction. The first part features prints which appear to glow on their paper, but the undoubted highlight is at the back, where Gianluca Iadema's work is projected onto the walls.

An accomplished composer, visual artist, and musician, Iadema cuts across music, video, and installation, creating works that distort meaning and materiality. In the audiovisual piece Un_i[n]verso, panning footage of vast lifeless landscapes is joined with ambient soundscapes that Iadema creates from pixel readings of the images on screen. The image cuts and the sound breaks, grows more uncomfortable, as cartographies and architectural grids collapse into each other. Buildings and structures in states of decay and destruction fold into carved out land, vast and dense. The sounds thrum in your ears. You wonder: Are these objects really formless and empty? And then, quiet.

*Un_i[n]verso* lights up Berman Contemporary's Project Room. Photo: Johannesburg In Your Pocket.

Un_i[n]verso does not just absorb you, it thrusts you into a seemingly strange world where transparency and solidity, light and dark, disquiet and harmony, coexist, before reminding you that this is your world. There is a meticulous beauty to the chaos in Iadema's work, and through audio and video software, he creates a dialogue between image and sound, highlighting their relation to each other.

The artist's text for Un_i[n]verso reads, "It is the viewer who is the subject and at the same time the observer of the work. The works reveal themselves as an immersive experience due to the viewer’s position in the story." This experience can be quite disconcerting, and the works are meant to be evocative. The best way to get a sense of Un_i[n]verso is to watch it for yourself, and for this you have until Wed, Jul 30, 2025 to see it at Berman Contemporary at 223 Creative Hub.