Matt Mullican's Hypnosis-Inspired Floor Installation at Palazzo della Ragione, Bergamo

For the 15th edition of the ArtDate Festival in Bergamo, curator Stefano Raimondi invited American artist Matt Mullican to create a site-specific floor installation covering 256 square meters of the main hall in Palazzo della Ragione. The work, titled "That Person's Heaven," is divided into two areas: a black-and-white section featuring drawings and fragmented words produced under hypnosis, attributed to Mullican's alter ego "That Person," and a red section filled with large symbols representing his personal cosmology developed over 50 years. The red symbolizes pure subjectivity and spirit, while the overall installation allegorically represents Paradise as an existential question rather than a religious concept. Mullican, known for exploring the unconscious and irrational, uses hypnosis to access a universal, atavistic self. The festival's theme is silence, which also resonates with Mullican's practice. The installation invites visitors to physically "enter" the work, a concept essential to both the artist and Raimondi, who has curated soft floor installations for a decade.