Great Western Wall

A permanent installation commissioned by the Municipality of Civitella d’Agliano, a small commune in the Viterbo province north of Rome, Great Western Wall was inspired by the original medieval wall. While onsite leading a workshop, Wolf was struck by the relationship between the city’s historic wall and its surrounding badlands. The stones in the surrounding valley act as a portal to the city in the same way that the old door in the medieval wall connects the exterior of the city to its interior. These two architectural tropes—mingling the natural and the manmade—employ a parallel structural logic of transition, one enters into the other.

Always attuned to the possible effects of light, Wolf highlighted this recurrence by photographing a stretch of clay furrows in the surrounding valley and affixing the image to the original wall of Italian tuff stones. What we are left with is a black and white fragment of the architectural landscape superimposed upon the wall that generates a repeated image of the surrounding area through the reflection of light. At the same time, light is transmitted back onto the surrounding badlands, continuing the symbiotic relationship between city and valley.