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

Agostino Iacurci (Foggia, 1986) is one of the most promising artists on the Street Art scene. In his works of synthetic forms and bright colors, through an essential language, he is capable of driving multiple layers of interpretation. A cynical and intelligent irony positions Agostino’s tales on the perennial threshold between innocence and artifice, serenity and catastrophe, in a magnetic tension that is the interpretive key to our very existence.

Since 2008, the artist has been painting stories on the skins of buildings and in urban spaces: he has created installations for Living Walls in Atlanta, the Bien Urbain Festival in France, the 2011 Outdoor Urban Art Festival in Rome, together with students at the Saba School in Algeria, inside the courtyard of the maximum security wing of the Rebibbia prison in Rome in collaboration with detainees, for the 55th Venice Biennial for the project B2B, on the glass facade of the Fubon Art Center in Taipei, on the Oberkampf M.U.R. and on the Tour 13 in Paris. His works have been showcased in numerous exhibitions and festivals in Europe, as well as in Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States.

The exhibition Small wheel, big wheel examines the subject of play as a moment of suspension in everyday life, and the founding of new conventions. If on one hand play is, in fact, the space for freedom of imagination, on the other it is based on any given community’s adherence to a set of rigid rules, even if temporary. Countering this severity, though, is an enormous fragility, due in part to its inherent transience, and to the looming possibility that an unexpected event might break its spell. Play is simultaneously both a timeless “magical space” (Huizinga, 2002) and an “uncertain island”, characterized, according to Caillois, “by randomness, by the ambiguity of the costume, and by the disconcerting effects of vertigo” (Rovatti, 2013, 9).

The exhibited works explore the delicate and complex symbioses that are triggered by seemingly simple actions. Extremity, hazard, devotion, impermanence, and obsession are just a just a few of the myriad ingredients of play that have profound parallels in the creative processes of artistic production. In conjunction with the project Public & Confidential, Iacurci focuses his attention on the atemporal dimension of the playground: that place symbolizing the discovery of play as a social practice and public space where first encounters occur and cultural parameters take shape. New works by the artist will be showcased: drawings, paintings, objects and installations in public space that compete to outline the portrait of a “tenderly stiff” humanity in its rediscovery of uncertainty.

As a preview to the show, the artist has created the public piece Zero infinito on the facade of the building of I.I.S.S. Di Vittorio-Lattanzio, on via Aquilonia, near the gallery.

The artist will be in attendance at the opening.

Small Wheel, Big Wheel 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) and Rero (Paris), it’s now Agostino Iacurci’s turn (Rome/Nuremberg), followed by Aakash Nihalani (NY), and Jef Aérosol (Paris).

Photo credits: Giorgio Coen Cagli

Artist: Agostino Iacurci
Title: Small wheel, big wheel
Opening: Saturday 8th February 2014 – 7pm
Curated by: Giuseppe Pizzuto
Art critique by: Elena Giulia Rossi
Show dates: from 8 February, 2014 to 22 March, 2014

Institutional patronage: Rome’s 5th District
Partners: Nu Factory, Eurostars Hotels, Necci, 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

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

Rero (1983) is an artist that examines the codes of our society, an in particular the codes of image and language. Notorious for his in situ pieces in public, urban spaces natural environments, his work revolves around language: single words, phrases short and long, that engage the reader based scenario in which they are placed. Rero systematically crosses out messages with a thick black line. This détournement distinctively characterizes his research on the negation of the image, one which testifies to the very process of thinking. It denounces a possible censorship and self-censorship that recall concepts linked to physical and intellectual private property of a piece of work, an object, a place, or even a person. When developing these themes, Rero launches his research with the acronym WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get – the perfectly encapsulates the visual overdose present in contemporary society.
Rero has titled his first show in Italy Supervised Independence – a term that has been used in the past with regards to the status of Kosovo, a Republic that is now technically defined as independent, but still not explicitly legally recognized by the international community. Supervised Independence is the oxymoron that the artist utilizes to examine the challenges and defeats of our society. A rhetoric figure with which Rero demarcates our time, which seems entangled in impossible definitions, like “fair trade”, “ethical investments”, and the “sustainable development” of a system in exorbitant expansion.
In conjunction with the gallery’s fifth anniversary, the show organized by Wunderkammern will exclusively showcase new works, and will be characterized by a range of expressive mediums. The combination of antithetical words will spark reflection on the contradictions that arise during the formation of collective memory, which focuses on the future though firmly rooted in the past. This applies specifically to the city of Rome as well.
As a preview to the show, the artist has created a public intervention on the wall of the DAMS building at the Roma Tre University, the fruit of a collaboration with Wunderkammern and NUFactory. In collaboration with the Institut Français Centre Saint-Louis, the artist will also make a performance, Tuesday 26th Novembre at 7 pm, that will be streamed on the Institut’s website, leaving a permanent installation in their Rome location, at largo Toniolo 22. In the days thereafter, Rero will create other public installations in different locations around the city, continuing to investigate the individuality of people in the public and private spheres, and the thin line that separates them.

The artist will be in attendance at the opening and will autograph select copies of his catalogues.

Supervised Independence is part of the larger project PUBLIC and CONFIDENTIAL, which involves five of the most influential street artists on the international scene. After Dan Witz (NY), it is Rero’s turn (Paris), followed by Agostino Iacurci (Rome/Nuremberg), Aakash Nihalani (NY), and Jef Aérosol (Paris).

Artist: Rero
Title: Supervised Independence
Opening: Saturday 30 November, 7pm
Curated by: Giuseppe Ottavianelli
Art critique by: Achille Bonito Oliva
Dates: from 30 November, 2013 to 25 January 2014
Cultural Partners: Institut Français Centre Saint-Louis, Institut Français Italia, Nufactory
Institutional patronage: Rome’s 5th District
Technical Partners: Eurostars Hotels, Eurograph, Alfani, Casale del Giglio, Trebotti
Media Partners: Exibart, Zero, Graffiti Art Magazine, Juliet Art Magazine, Titolo, Design and Arts Magazine, Bloggokin, ArtNoise, almostCURATORS, Le Grand Jeu

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