The growing seasons and the related rituals have influenced the development and habits of the greatest societies since antiquity. Starting from the work Nutrice (Cradle) by Maria Lucrezia Schiavarelli, we will try to understand how the relationship between humans and nature has changed over the centuries and how this produced different outcomes from a cultural, philosophical and social point of view. Founder and manager of almost CURATORS Pia Lauro will be presenting the talk – in close collaboration with the artist -; also, Rosanna Figna (Agugiaro & Figna Research and Development) will be attending the talk to enhance the debate over modern cereal production.

During the fair, the talk area will be hosting the work Nutrice (Cradle) by Maria Lucrezia Schiavarelli. The work is inspired by the artist’s autobiography and employs ritualism to evoke the bond and connection existing between man and nature through culture and food. Rousing from Steiner’s anthroposophy, the installation portrays the tradition of rural societies and their foundation on the cyclic nature of the days of the week, the planetary motion and the growing seasons to mark the rhythm of life since antiquity. The seven most important seeds for human nutrition are sewn on large cloths and represent astronomical, astrological and mythological symbols.

The project was born in collaboration with Villa Contemporanea as a double exhibition at both Atelierhof Kreuzberg in Berlin and Villa Contemporanea in Monza to present the work of the Italian artist in Germany.

Seeds of identity

a talk in the framework of Art Mise en Place

January 25 2015, 3 p.m.

Set Up Art Fair

Autostazione delle Corriere

Piazza XX Settembre, 6 – Bologna

Sam3 (Elche, Spain, 1980) lives and works between Murcia and Madrid. The publication Arte Español Contemporaneo 1992 – 2013 (La Fábrica, 2013) includes him among the most important Spanish contemporary artists. His public interventions with large black anthropomorphic silhouettes are visible all over the world. Sam3’s “shadows”, as he calls them, reflect on the human condition: between refined poetry on one side and sharp irony on the other, these figures imply alternative meanings and often very provocative and subverting ones.

The silhouettes by Sam3 aspire to overcome the constraint of the human life and its temporary condition. The anthropomorphic figures represent the individual’s effort to reach a monumental glory set in a boundless eternal time. Such illusion is then interrupted when the silhouettes are driven purely by their emotions, leading them to short-sighted objectives, self-destructive fights, dictatorial conducts. They face the edge of existence. Sam3 uses a great variety of artistic techniques, from sculpture to murals, experimenting with videos and animations. For Monumental the artist will present at Wunderkammern a complete new series of artworks, ranging from ceramics, using black and white colours, to new works with graphite and ink on paper and canvas. Before the exhibition opening, he will produce a public intervention in Rome.

His exhibition Monumental is part of the new art project by Wunderkammern titled Limitless that will bring to the gallery five of the most important artists of the international Urban Art scene: Sam3 (Spain), L’Atlas (France), Sten&Lex (Italy), Alexey Luka (Russia) and 2501 (Italy). This project explores the concept of limit in its diverse forms and manifestations.

INFO

artist: Sam3

title: Monumental

opening: Saturday 4th October, 7pm

curated by: Giuseppe Ottavianelli

critical essay by: Peter Bengtsen

dates: 4th October to 8th November 2014

institutional patronage: Rome’s 5th District

With the support of: Cultural Office of the Spanish Embassy in Italy

Media Partners: Nufactory, Zero, almostCURATORS

Technical Partners: Eurostars Hotel, Colorificio Dagostini/CBD, Eurograph, CIAO CHECCA, Casale del Giglio, Alfani, Trebotti

WUNDERKAMMERN

Via Gabrio Serbelloni 124, Rome

web: www.wunderkammern.net

email: wunderkammern@wunderkammern.net

tel: +39 0645435662

free entry

opening hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 5pm to 8pm. For appointments, call: +39 3498112973

Since a few decades, we are witnessing the birth of several sculpture parks or sculpture gardens all over the world and especially in the USA. These amazing open-air contemporary art museums give credit not only to the old European legacy of gardens in Renaissance villas (these were, indeed, parks with contemporary sculptures!), but especially to the more recent example of Land Art and its site-specific works, which often modified the geography of the location selected by artists. The reason why this phenomenon can be considered typical in the US goes back to the enormous natural areas of the American landscape, which was inspirational also for the gigantism in some minimalist works. These enormous sculptures involved the creation of great public spaces, where visitors could enjoy large-sized artworks, which got hardly set in museum buildings. Hence, this led to a very successful integration of art with landscape, culture and nature, in the aim of getting to environmental awareness involving visual arts, architecture and city planning.

Francesca Cigola, architect and essayist, has been carrying out a research over the identity of the American landscape for many years. The outcomes of this research are well presented in this volume: Art Parks. A Tour of America’s Sculpture Parks and Gardens, which is the first complete collection of the most important open-air sculpture gardens of North America.
From large parks in boundless natural environments, to small gardens in urban contexts, from private to museums collections, Art parks is a truly reasoned, solid though portable, guidebook, which is ordered by themes in three long chapters: Leisure Spaces, areas devoted to free time, idleness, and relax; Learning Spaces, designed for learning and hosted in museums and public spaces; Collectors’ Spaces, those parks devoted to collecting, where works from private collection are shown; finally, the section Additional Parks whit a complete list of additional parks.
To the brief, though thorough, general introduction, specific profiles ensue with illustrated and detailed descriptions of every garden and beautiful pictures of landscapes and artworks. Among the great artists: Alexander Calder, Lewis DeSoto, Olafur Eliasson, William Tucker, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Henry Moore, Isaumu Noguchi, Louise Bourgeois, Mark di Suvero, Jean Dubuffet, Andy Goldsworthy, Donald Judd, and many more… (The complete index of artists in the appendix section is five pages long!). Every profile is a small essay about the story and mission of the park with a hint at useful information at the end of the page: web site, artists, and bibliography.
The book, thanks to both its format and contents, gets to the right balance between specialist essay and instructive guidebook for art and nature lovers.

Info

• Title: Art Parks
• Author: Francesca Cigola
• Editor: Luca Sassi Editore (Ita ed.); Princeton Architectural Press (En ed.)
• Year of publication: 2013
• Price: 24,00 €
• Pages: 224

www.sassieditore.it

Jean-François Perroy, better known by his pseudonym Jef Aérosol (1957, Nantes), is an uncontested pioneer of international street art. Without discrimination, he creates portraits of public figures and notorious personas, of anonymous characters, street artists, passersby, beggars, and children alike: all are preferably depicted in black and white, and characterized by an enigmatic red arrow, the artist’s renown signature and “brand”. Actors in the contemporary visual panorama, Jef’s protagonists seem, ultimately, to all look alike, as if both the consequence and contradictory mirror of the same collective tissue that defines them.

For Anony(fa)mous, his first solo show in Italy, Jef will investigate the fine line between absolute fame and complete oblivion through iconic shapes and stereotypes – both renown and anonymous – in search of the hidden place where extremes meet and are identified, to then be cancelled out, infinitely. Famous characters and everyday people, young and old, alive and not: they are depicted together in order to highlight the pure humanity of each. Without distinction, in an entertaining, open challenge to existing mechanisms of contemporary communication, capable of glorification and condemnation, of establishing importance and invalidity of private lives equally worthy of attention and respect. As Jef reveals to us: I starify the anonymous and I anonymize the famous. I take them all back to their “human status”, insisting on the fact that, famous or not, we’re all the same and a star is a human being before anything else.

The artist has collaborated with galleries, museums, and institutions of the highest international esteem. Among his works is the legendary Chuuuttt!!!, a 350 square-meter piece executed next to and in collaboration with the Centre George Pompidou in Paris.

The artist will be present at the opening, and will sign select copies of his catalogues.

As a preview to the exhibition, the artist will realize a permanent installation on the walls of the Institut français – Centre Saint-Louis (Largo Toniolo 22, Rome), on 20 May at 7pm. Other street-art installations will be created in various locations around, an ideal beginning point and continuation of the works on display in the gallery.

The exhibition Anony(fa)mous is part of the larger project Public & Confidential which involves five of the most influential street artists on the international scene. After Dan Witz (NY), Rero (Paris), Agostino Iacurci (Rome/Nuremberg) and Aakash Nihalani (NY), Jef Aérosol (Lille) will conclude the series.

Artist: Jef Aérosol
Title: Anony(fa)mous
Opening: Thursday 29 May, 7:00pm
Curated by: Alberto Milani
Critical essay by: Viviana Checchia
Dates: from 29 May to 19 July, 2014

Public support: Rome’s 5th District
Cultural partners: Institut français – Centre Saint-Louis, Institut français Italia, Nufactory
With the support of: Nuovi Mecenati
Partners: Eurostars Hotels, Necci, Colorificio Dagostini/CBD, Eurograph, Casale del Giglio, Alfani, Trebotti
Media Partners: Exibart, Zero, Graffiti Art Magazine, Juliet Art Magazine, Titolo, Design and Arts Magazine, ArtNoise, almostCURATORS, Le Grand Jeu, Arshake. 

WUNDERKAMMERN
Via Gabrio Serbelloni 124, Rome
Web: www.wunderkammern.net
Email: wunderkammern@wunderkammern.net
Tel: +390645435662

Free entry
Opening hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 5pm to 8pm. For appointments call: +393498112973

It is about this December American edition of Vogue, where photographer Annie Leibovitz and stylist Grace Coddington produced a particular service where model and actress Jessica Chastain is playing the role of the protagonists of eight works of art.
The ability of the photographer in reconstructing the compositions, studying lines, colors and lights is summed up with the stylist’s sensitivity, which was able to find the most apt high fashion attire, with the result of a series of shots worthy of competing with the charm of the original works. The selection of the paintings, splendidly reinterpreted by Vogue, is exceptional and alternates more famous works with pieces less known to the public.

The actress, who is Oscar candidate, appears in all her splendor and, wearing high fashion clothing, is able to perfectly identify with the atmospheres of these wonderful art pieces: her diaphanous skin and fire red hair enhance her delicate look which seems to be recalling that of a Pre-Raphaelite muse. Indeed, the cover starts off exactly with a painting which is considered by many as the emblem of such art movement for its form, colors and iconography: it is Flaming June (1894-95) by Frederic Leighton, one of late Victorian Age masterpieces. The slight make-up and lips with a vague smile bring back all the ethereal naturalness of the original muse who lays down on a red drape, wearing a perfectly modern and suggestive calendula yellow dress by stylist Olivier Theyskens.

In the article opening page, warm colors prevail once again with tonal modulations in the model’s hair, who is lying in an room with an Oriental ornamentation, on a low-rise mattress, while she is absorbed by her thoughts and lifts her arms up to let them rest on her head. Although she is framed from a different perspective, the setting, the prurient and dreamy pose follow those of Henri Matisse’s Odalisque in Red Culottes (1869-1954). Also, the dress, which is by Marc Jacobs, is close to those Turkish trousers which give the name to the painting.

The whole atmosphere, instead, change completely in the next shot where the color scale goes from sky blue in the background wall to the dark cerulean blue in Alexander Wang’s dress, passing by a shiny aqua green in the young actress’ eyes, penetrating as those of the lady in the painting Le Retour de la Mer (Back from the Sea) (1924) by Félix Vallotton.

Wearing a gray dress by Oscar de la Renta, Jessica identifies with the interpretation of American President Grover Cleveland’s wife, who was portrayed by Anders Zorn in 1899. The distinguished beauty, the marble candor of the setting, the background grooves bring us back further in time: she is a statute in a Greek temple.

For another stunning shot, the actress plays the role of Ria Munk, who was portrayed by Gustav Klimt after her tragic death between 1917 and 1918. It is one of the most beautiful female portraits by the brilliant Austrian painter, as well as one of his last works. Leibovitz’s shot combines all the charm of the technique, Klimt’s iconography and style, which is still the favorite inspirational source for fashion designers (please look up the photographic series made up by Steven Meisel for December 2007 Vogue Italy and called “Vogue Patterns”). Vera Wang’s chiffon dress, decorated by hand, perfectly reproduces the unfinished quality of the painting (the dress and the floor are just sketched with charcoal); the background is extremely rich in floral motifs and comes alive as a real blooming garden.

Through a skilful play of colors and lights, photography is also able to reproduce Vincent Van Gogh’s confused brush strokes. In 1888, the Dutch artist portrayed a young woman from Arles and gave her the name of Mousmé, as the Japanese girl from Pierre Loti’s tale, which particularly enthralled the painter. Compared to the painting, the photograph is horizontally placed; however, it is still traditionally arranged with the model standing over a monochrome background. Clothing is designed by Alexander McQueen and reproduces the very same decorative play of the long row of red buttons in the vertical stripes coat, which gets lost in the cloud of a big polka dots skirt.

The only photograph in which the model is not wearing any dress is paradoxically the one which is inspired to Magritte’s La Robe de soirée (The evening gown) (1955). We know that Magritte’s titles are always misleading and apparently very far from the submitted subject. The shot as well remains enigmatic for its obscurity: the red hair stands out from a stretched light blue background within a turquoise sky and a quiet sea: the moon, which holds from time immemorial the reference to night in a free meaning association, stands for the unknown and mystery.

The last shot is inspired by Julia Margaret Cameron’s photos: she has been producing intense and profound portraits following the stylistic language of Pre-Raphaelites painters. Leibovitz reproduced this distinctive character: that use of focus, which is sometimes even stretched to the “out of focus”, disregards clearness and aims instead at researching plastic effects, which are possibly close to Leonardo’s sfumato.

“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”; hence, this is a law of physics which we can apply also to art history, to the evolution of representational culture, to the ensemble of icons which constitute our shared visual imaginary.

Credits: www.vogue.com

Info

• Title: Ti racconto l’arte del ‘900

• Author: Svjetlan Junakovic

• Editor: Artebambini

• Publication Year: 2011

• Price: 18,50 €

• Pages: 45

]]> https://www.almostcurators.org/en/zoom-benedetta-falugi/feed/ 0 https://www.almostcurators.org/en/lui-chi-e-silvia-giambrone/ https://www.almostcurators.org/en/lui-chi-e-silvia-giambrone/#comments Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:26:20 +0000 http://www.almostcurators.org/?p=1331 Silvia Giambrone was born in Agrigento in 1981. She has been living and working in Rome since 2002, when she got into Rome Fine Arts Academy.

The personal element is fundamental to her work: this, together with universally recognized themes, is one of the various research fields of her artistic production. One of the most important among these is certainly the case of body, which is at the same time fertile research field and active tool to develop different projects: in “La viola e un poco nervosamente” (2010), the body of the artist abandons its social identity representation to play the role of a musical instrument: Silvia disappears, the artist disappears and gets replaced by an object which has a specific function, that is playing music. In this performance the heartbeat rhythm becomes the arrangement for an improvised melody underlining how our society gets actually influenced by the context where things appear and by labels they get. Silvia Giambrone shows us that a half-naked body is not necessarily an object of desire, something which is instead always maintained by today’s media bombing of images.
Following this, the performance “Eredità” (2008) is based on the analysis of seduction techniques and especially on the everyday habit of make-up: the artist attaches fake metal eyelashes on her eyes, symbols of the cosmetic habits to which women are forced from time immemorial because of the cultural legacy imposing on them to be pleasant to men’s eyes.
Silvia Giambrone’s body is then the target of a laser which is drawn on her naked skin in “Sotto tiro” (2013): the artist is subject of an unknown and unmotivated threat, that is the actual being within reach of a laser which turns her into a convicted victim. Such intrusive light signal might also represent the harassing gaze which is impossible to escape from and which violates personal intimacy causing discomfort.
“Teatro anatomico” (2012) is a performance presented on the occasion of the collective exhibition “Re-generation”: an embroidered collar is sewed on the artist’s neck. The brutality of the needle piercing her flesh contrasts with the simplicity of the artist’s reaction: she shows off her collar as an accessory which at the end of the performance has made her more beautiful, pleasant and feminine. This performance conveys a strongly symbolic message: the collar represents both religious and political authority (priests’ white collars, but even more the collars of those well-pressed shirts underneath powerful men’s coats), as well as rigor, recalling girls’ school uniforms and smocks. The fact that the collar is being sewed by hand inevitably refers back to feminist artistic production and culture, as well as to Italian women’s past condition which regarded to sewing as one of the few activities allowed.
Silvia Giambrone appropriates this technique and one of the first works where she employs it is “Il Pizzo” (2012): tiny fragments of blue lace cover the faces of female figures in her parents’ wedding pictures. Lace turns into a mask which hides these women’s identity: on the one hand, times has now changed them so much that they cannot even recognize themselves in those pictures anymore, on the other hand, this also implies the paradoxical possibility of preserving them from fading paper, which will make them completely disappear. Also, the artist leaves only the faces of male attendants in order to better underline how the theme of female beauty is again indelibly tied to the dictates of male culture.
Lace as the proof of an old female tradition tied to Southern Italy and to those female ancestors who spent their time sewing: these are the key concepts of the work “Made in Italy”. Our country is still strongly anchored to its past and this cultural weight, which is both a dead weight and a treasure to pass on posterity, is represented by a plaster block with stamped molds of collars. Giambrone’s “Made in Italy” is a mirror of nowadays society which once again portrays women in a condition dependent on men.
However, sewing is not useful to only create pretty and decorative clothes ornaments: proof of this is “Eroina” (2012), the hooked reproduction of the molecular structure of heroin. There is both a strong contrast between the concept of crochet hook itself and the final result, as well as a subtle meaning game around the title of the work: heroin, indeed, might be associated both with the drug and a powerful female figure come to rescue society.
One of her favorite communications media is writing. Language is the tool which allows Silvia Giambrone to create her “Autoritratto – Io nel settembre 2009 all’altezza di un universo senza risposte” (2010), where everything revolves around the concept of subtraction: there is, indeed, physical subtraction when she gets rid of all the letters which make up the title of the work from moving sheets with the letters of the alphabet. Inspiration for this piece comes from Carla Lonzi’s “Sputiamo su Hegel” which deals with the theme of the actual possibility for the subject to exist regardless of the dialectic condition which defines him, that is out of a definite context where he exists unwillingly.
Words meet the body in “Translation” (2009), a performance which investigates the relationship between language and reality: the language we speak is considered just like Law, a code which defines everything; however, someone’s hands simultaneously writing the same sentence in different languages help showing the illusion of the idea that there exists a correspondence between words and real objects. In the same way, the commandment “You shall have no other gods before me” is translated into another language and simultaneously written in two different ways by the same person, showing how the concept present in those words gets actually betrayed.
Attention to words is found also in “No Enemy” (2008), an installation with big and heavy wooden letters covered with lead which invade the foyer space of the third level of MART in Rovereto. The absence of space between the words “no” and “enemy” initially confuses the beholder who hardly understands the meaning of those words. Once again the artist unmasks the ambiguousness of language and the meanings attached to it.

Silvia Giambrone has been collaborating with various galleries: Il ponte contemporanea, Roma; Galleria Bonomo, Bari; Galleria Deanesi, Rovereto; Galleria Biagiotti, Firenze and starting from 2012 Galleria Doppelgaenger, Bari.

She has recently won the Main Prize at Kaunas Biennial.

Among her personal exhibitions: L’impero libero degli schiavi, Galleria Doppelgaenger, Bari (2012); Parallel Borders, Roma, curated by Mark Mangion (2012); Sotto falso nome, Fondazione Spazio13, Warsaw (2011); Fuori di me, Spazio Ferramenta, Torino, curated by Susanna Sara Mandice (2011); Invito all’opera, Galleria Il ponte contemporanea, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva (2010); More to come, Upload Art Project, curated by Silvia Conta, Federico Mazzonelli, Julia Trolp (2010); Speaking your language I learnt how to hate you, Galleria NextDoor, Roma, curated by L. Benedetti (2008).

Among her main collectives, the most recent ones are: KAUNAS BIENNAL UNITEXT ’13, National Museum of M. K. Čiurlionis (20013); Refuse, Ex Mattatoio di Testaccio, La Pelanda, Roma, curated by Roberto D’Onorio (2013); SUBJECTIVE MAPS/ DISAPPEARENCES, Parallel Borders 1 / Monuments & Shrines to Capitalism curated by Mark Mangion for Malta Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Iceland (2013); MEDITERRANEA 16, Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (BJCEM), Ancona (2013); Autoritratti. Iscrizioni del femminile nell’arte italiana contemporanea, MAMbo, curted by Uliana Zanetti, Bologna (2013); Vetrinale, Roma, curated by Cecilia Casorati, Micol di Veroli e Yuri Elena (2012); Re-Generation, MACRO Testaccio, Roma, curated by Maria Alicata e Ilaria Gianni (2012).

www.silviagiambrone.com