CURATORIAL PORTFOLIO SELECTED PROJECTS (2008-2013)
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[one|year|of|curatorial|residencies] 2013 – ongoing A Web-based project in connection with a series of international residencies, in the form of a blog: a curator’s diary developed through the preparatory notes for a play in four acts.
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Tense 2011 – ongoing various physical and virtual locations, worldwide
Tense is a project which can be seen as the program of a fluctuating institution, functioning as a tool for a taxonomy of temporality: each exhibition, performance, panel discussion, public art project or web space brings forward and inhabits a different temporality, a peculiar sensibility of time, hence, a different tense. Through the work of mostly emerging and mid-career artists, it recuperates nuances of thinking about and expressing time that are endangered or have disappeared, as linguistic systems become flattened. It aims at creating a possible vocabulary for an extended sensibility of time. Tense is a dynamic program for an institution of no fixed abode, rather inhabiting a variety of spaces (including the web) and different points in time. It is changing and accretive in nature, but its layering is sometimes disrupted, and its apparent order may not reflect its linear time. Its lifespan is variable, not set forth from the start: Tense is open to self-criticism and evaluation, and will consequently be closed once the need for it to continue will have faded. All projects in the program share a dialogic, collaborative and open-ended approach: no exhibition includes solely already existing works, no discussion will follow/enact a given script; conversely, the project fosters practices of commissioning new artworks and projects, very often developed by the artist in dialogue with the curator(s) and host institutions. Tense is therefore functioning as a frame within which artistic practice is supported: concepts and their formalisation can develop into discourse as well as proposals, and these proposals are taken further to be implemented either directly within the frame of the program, or further developed/realized outside of it. Besides this working process, it is important to note that the artists chosen for Tense’s “mobile chapters” share a similar practice focusing on long processes and in-depth research, as well as a flair for literature, storytelling and science. Furthermore, despite developing very unique concepts and artworks, across a variety of media, all artists share a strong fascination towards time, showing how differing ways of perception (or even different times) are possible. Often working at the boundary between fiction and reality, distilling elements from cultural histories and collective memory, the artists bring forward a strong critique of those processes ruling historicisation and the shaping of knowledge and belief systems. Like time travellers, they not only move easily between media, but also between tenses. By conjugating imagination, memory and anticipation into their works, they instigate the emergence of a rich(er) spectrum of temporalities and experiences of time, as well as offer critical tools to re-think and re-imagine histories. At a time of deep social and economic crisis, a process that leads to enriching our ways of looking and expressing time, critically re-think histories through the lens of mediated and re-imagined realities, towards imagining an extended future, seems to be more and more an urgent concern for artists. Tense wants to bring some of their voices forward, convinced that their works can contribute to a slow cultural shift towards a more sustainable society.
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Dreams’ Time Capsule (tense: future perfect continuous) Itinerant Public Art / Research Project: Version 1.0, public space, Turin, November 2011 Version 2.0, Arkitekturmuseet and Fittja Open (Stockholm) September 2012; Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, part of the artists’ residency ). Upcoming, among others, in 2013/14: The Nordic House (Reykjavik), 5533 / İMÇ (Istanbul), press to exit (Skopje), Federation Square (Melbourne), RM Gallery (Auckland); Casa Tres Patios (Medellìn), Umea European Capital of Culture, 2014.
Dreams’ Time Capsule is a temporary mobile work of public art by Eva Frapiccini, part of Elisa Tosoni’s curatorial program Tense. 4
An inflatable structure with a seashell-like appearance, the piece, whose structure has been especially designed by the artist in collaboration with designer Michele Tavano, is the first phase of materialisation of a process-based, participatory research project, aiming at tracing the evolution of dream states of a largely international cross-section of society. Dreams’ Time Capsule, which can inhabit any public space, from a square to a botanical garden, from a courtyard to a parking lot, from a museums’ foyer to a park, is a temporary audio-recording station, where visitors can entrust their own dreams to a sound archive collecting the oneiric testimonies of the public in a variety of cities. In fact, the work is installed temporarily for a varying timeframe, and is extremely mobile: travelling with the artist in her luggage, it will make its appearance in a number of places worldwide in a long trip lasting for a couple of years, until a substantial number of dreams will be reached. Once the creation of the audio archive of dreams will be completed, it will be sealed and re-opened by the artist, to be analysed together with a team of researchers, only ten years later. A performative work drawing its inspiration from dreams as traces of a collective imagery, Dreams’ Time Capsule requires the participation and engagement of its visitors, whose testimonies of oneiric experiences it collects. It will gently take the public into an extraordinary spatial dimension, projecting him/her outside the immediate surroundings, stepping into a space characterized by deep feelings of lightness and intimacy: the perfect atmosphere for the visitor’s individual recording of his/her own testimonies and memories. Dreams’ Time Capsule is an artistic experiment attempting to understand those archetypes surfacing in dreams, and their variation in time, at the distance of one generation. An experimental version of the Dream’s Time Capsule visited Turin in November 2011 as a test-study structure to be used once, and redesigned into a permanent version that took on board all feedback and comments from the visitors. After a very successful journey to Cairo (The Townhouse Gallery), Dream’s Time Capsule has reached Stockholm (Arkitekturmuseet) and Fittja (Fittja Open / Botkyrka Konsthall) and will travel further around the globe in 2013.
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Installation views from the Stockholm events
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Installation views from the Turin event
(all images ŠEva Frapiccini)
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(tense: t.b.d.) W 0°6’ E 18° 06’ Performative Lecture th
Glasburen, Stockholm, 15 May 2012
Longitude, the key geographical coordinate derived from time, is appropriated and transformed in the paradoxical form W 0°6’ E 18°06’ (coupling two temporary longitudes: Gasworks, London and Glasburen, Stockholm) to indicate an apparently impossible physical location. It assumes the metaphorical function of anchoring the speakers’ practices within a system of conventional relations, yet allowing freedom of positioning themselves along their respective systems of reference. W 0°6’ E 18°06’ does not aim to fully describe the three practices called to the stage, rather it seeks to highlight through three voices common concerns and different visions on a number of preoccupations deriving from everyday and speculative experience. Sharing a similar methodology of work that at times crosses the boundaries between the role of artist and curator, although with different outcomes, artists Anastasios Logothetis, Mariana Caló & Francisco Queimadela, and curator Elisa Tosoni have created open-ended projects, extending across consciously undetermined time lapses. These projects function as defined frames for a large, and mostly indefinite, number of chapters identifiable as changeable mobile units abstracting different experiences of time. Such “mobile chapters” are elements classified within, and synthesized into precise systems serving as reference maps: they are the abstracted days of a three-months diary (Logothetis), the pictograms from an alphabet created by the artist themselves (Caló & Queimadela), or a vocabulary of verb tenses borrowed from different languages (Tosoni). Each has an autonomous life, yet at times chapters are combined in a number of possible permutations, generating a wider spectrum of meanings. It is only through the accumulation of chapters over time, like sediment on a shore, that the breadth of these projects becomes tangible, yet retaining their distinguishing character of potential. The evening is meant as a celebratory discussion on time and artistic process, and will unfold through the format of performative lectures and dialogues, addressing amongst others ideas around risk-taking, integrity, trust, vulnerability, proposals, open-endedness, laziness. 8
Anastasios Logothetis - The Possibility of a Beach During a 90-day long trip spent in isolation on a beach in Crete, Greece, during the summer of 2010, the artist documented the passing of every day in writing. These partly theoretical, partly narrative and poetical texts are then slowly translated into artworks of various format (film, sculpture, installation, painting, performance). Every day becomes the backbone of a show that can stand on its own. Yet, the distinct discontinuity of sensibilities between each days reflects a natural instinct to create and display a multiplicity of characters; breaking up the norm of what can be called a language. The aim is to create a non-language with inherent connections that can only be discerned over an expanded amount of time. For (tense: t.b.d.) W 0°6’ E 18°06’ Anastasios will be in The Model, a performance taking the form of a lecture. He promises the audience: “by taking you through an alternative reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet I want to try out something on you. In fact this can only be done with your help. Rather than a definite theory I will lay out a set of issues in the format of ideas under development, propositions if you like. Showcasing vulnerability together with a charming certitude I will aim to subvert and change the meaning of, and thus the relationship between, the terms curator, artist and theoretician. All to fit into The Model”. Mariana Caló & Francisco Queimadela - Gradations of Time Over a Plane http://marianacalo-franciscoqueimadela.blogspot.se/ Started in 2010, Gradations of Time over a Plane is the ongoing result of a combination of field work and extensive research into popular, scientific and artistic perspectives on the relationship between mankind and the passing of time. The project is structured through non-sequential chapters embracing film, photography, illustration and sculpture, and presented in immersive installations, establishing new relations between the chapters themselves. Started as a contemplative enquiry into the peculiar landscape of Northern Portugal, Gradations of Time over a Plane continued to capture temporal essences of a number of different cultural and physical landscapes across Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. Elisa Tosoni – Tense www.elisatosoni.com/tense/html (website launch: 15.05.2012) Tense can be defined as the program of a fluctuating institution, functioning as a frame within which artistic practice is supported, as well as a tool for a taxonomy of temporality, or a vocabulary for an extended sensibility of time. Each exhibition, performance, panel discussion, public art project or web space it includes brings forward and inhabits a different temporality, a peculiar sensibility of time, hence, a different tense. Through the work of mostly emerging and mid-career artists, the project aims to recuperate nuances of thinking about time, and expressing it, that are endangered or have disappeared, as linguistic systems become flattened, and to extend the potential and imagination of how mankind relates to time.
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Anastasios Logothetis performing “The Model�
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Elisa Tosoni introduces Tense, and performs a reading of a passage of I. Calvino’s Invisible Cities
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Over a Skype connection with their studio at Gasworks, Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela discuss their working process and the project Gradations of Time Over a Plane
All images ©Nina Øverli
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On the Survival of Butterflies at a Time of Omnivorous Consumption (tense: present perfect continuous) Proposal for a group exhibition – curated as part of Alois (E. Tosoni with B. Meneghel and G. Cortassa). Project shortlisted in 2011 for 2012’s programme, Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna) Exhibition Concept In recent years, the spread of technology and its manifestations appear to have provoked some kind of reaction - across a variety of cultural fields - to the very mental attitude it generated. If the refinement of information technology techniques creates an all-encompassing - yet superficial - approach to knowledge on one hand, on the other the possibility to access infinite information disorients, shaping new forms of self-defense. In this sense, we can recognize a trend expressing the strong longing for other cultural forms and the recovery of elements of the past. These fresh readings of popular culture as well as traditional customs allow for a new evolution through the retrieved sedimentation of information and the re-appropriation of contents. Such need can be ascribed to a deep desire of the contemporary human being, who not only attempts to collocate his ego within the social fabric - hence searching for his roots at a time of historical suspension - but also tries to recuperate the intangible heritage, as well as the objectual dimension of reality, in order to counterbalance the evanescence of virtualia. On the Survival of Butterflies at a Time of Omnivorous Consumption addresses these themes through the concept of meme. The cultural parallel of a gene, a meme is a self-replicating unit of cultural information, which can be transmitted by the brain or a symbolic memory device, and can be passed on from an individual - or a culture - to another, being subject to mutations and adaptations throughout its evolution. The choice to concentrate on the concept of meme rises from a profound analysis of recent years cultural and historical situation, and the reaction, shared by many international artists especially of the younger generation, to investigate and comment on their glocal cultural roots. Thus, by adopting the ethnological acceptation of memetics - with its focus on the evolution of different cultures and societies - as its very kernel, the exhibition comments on the survival, permanence and propagation of elements of intangible heritage and folklore within the personal and collective economies and rituals of contemporary lives. It brings together a selection of artworks evoking, appropriating and abstracting customs, languages and mythologies, and moulding fragments of new ethoses. Ironic and poetic propositions that bridge past, present and future, without falling into the dangerous trap of nostalgia, these artworks move beyond the shaping of “personal histories”. By unearthing lost customs and habits from their home countries, as historical investigations on extinct civilizations, or as attempts of letting yet unknown traditions from ancestors' places emerge into the present, the artists move beyond the mere re-enacting of age-old acts and rituals. When acted out, these reproductions are resonant of the original, but at the same time filtered and imbued by today’s civilization and society: they add a new value generated by cultural evolution to the ancient meaning, as it is typical of the meme transmission. They contribute to generating a fertile substratum for a wider anthropology toward a universal shared vision on History and Culture, and a contemporary archive for a (not to be) forgotten past. No restriction is given to the choice of media: the exhibition, which brings together the works of 15 international artists, presents a clear balance between the use of video, installations, twodimensional pieces and the element of sound, permeating also a number of filmic and sculptural works. On the Survival of Butterflies at a Time of Omnivorous Consumption offers a strongly synaesthetic experience to the visitors, immersing them in atmospheres where their senses are sharpened in the process of recalling, re-learning and recuperating, transforming and processing. The intensity of an old song, the physical presence of a certain forgotten object, the possibility of taking part in a real tradition which is somehow still happening, the symbolic value of old and new myths all evoke the very depth of the stories these works are telling. Sharing a high level of complexity through their formal and theoretical layering, they allow for a variety of engaging readings, contributing to generating intense experiences, outcomes themselves of a stratification of cultural passages. List of Artists 13
Adel Abidin (1973, Iraq. Lives and works in Helsinki, FI) - Bread of Life, Video installation, 2008 James Beckett (1977, Zimbabwe. Lives and works in Amsterdam, NL) - Beckett-Beaumont, Installation, 2006 Tereza Bušková, (1978, Czech Republic. Lives and works in London, UK) - Spring Equinox, Video Installation, 2009 Roberto Cuoghi (1973, Italy. Lives and works in Milan, IT) - Šuillakku, Sound installation, 2008 Oppy de Bernardo (b. 1970, Switzerland. Lives and works in Locarno, CH), new commission Evelina Deičmane (1978, Latvia. Lives and works between Riga, LV and Berlin, DE) - Nje Mechtaj Nje Dumaj (Do not dream and do not think of it), Installation, 2007 Ruth Ewan (1980, UK. Lives and works in London, UK) - A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World, Sculpture, 2003-2011 Luca Francesconi (1979, Italy. Lives and works between Milan, IT and Paris, FR) - new commission Giorgio Guidi (1982, Italy. Lives and works between Brescia, IT and New York, US) - Il dolce Sculpture, 2009 Katarina Lundgren (1978, Sweden. Lives and works in Stockholm, SE) - a selection from the series The Last Resort of Ethnicity, C-prints, 2008 Ciprian Muresan (1977, Romania. Lives and works in Cluj, RO) - Untitled, Video Installation, 2010 Maria Domenica Rapicavoli (1976, Italy. Lives and works in London, UK) Four Virgins and a Bed, Video , 2007 Raqs Media Collective (Collective founded in 1992, in India. They live and work in Delhi, IN) Sleepwalkers Caravan (Prologue), Single Channel Video, 2008 Matteo Rubbi (1980, Italy. Lives and works in Milan, IT) A selection from the series: L'Italia in Cerchio, plus a new commission, Installation, 2010 Benjamin Valenza (b. 1980, France. Lives and works in Lausanne, CH) Don Quixote Hip, Sculpture, 2009 Public Program We strongly believe butterflies should not be kept captive between four walls with the illusion of freedom. For their very protection, we feel the best strategy for survival, flying against the daily routines of omnivorous and unavoidable consumption, is to perhaps mark them, open the windows and take a risk: some may not ever make it back, others may transform their new surroundings and create new colonies. Similarly, On the Survival of Butterflies at a Time of Omnivorous Consumption would not be successful if it was to stand still under glass, without extending its reach beyond the set limits of a traditional exhibitory format. For this very reason, we have designed a public program that stems from the heart of the exhibition, has its first manifestation within its boundaries, slightly altering its content at regular intervals, and exceeds it, developing three niches for survival, each dedicated to a specific subject. Conceived not only as a fundamental moment of encounter between artistic practice and the visitors, the public program offers a range of lifelong-learning experiences and recreational activities meant for all ages and cultural backgrounds. Its aim is to work closely with the other organisations and groups in the local area, to involve not only the habitual visitor, but attract new groups or individuals, to develop in them an interest - and a gently revolutionary longing for the survival of butterflies. Literature Literature is one of the fundamental components of any culture, a necessary area of inquiry in the quest of ethnological memetics. In particular, the ancient practice of storytelling - shared in every culture as not only a means to entertain, but to educate, instill moral values and preserve traditions – is still in use in contemporary literate societies for transmission of intergenerational family knowledge. An oral narration of events, storytelling is characterized by improvisation (Omer’s Odyssey, or Beowulf, are, for example, usually taken as transcriptions of traditional oral-narrated stories): voice recounts were – and are - often accompanied by a visual support of particular gestures, clothing, and sceneries, in some sort of extemporaneous theatrical representation. In heavily literate and urbanized societies, other media (written and televised) have substituted this way of sharing local histories and customs. The reflection on traditions and tales triggered by works such as, for instance, Raqs Media Collective’s Sleepwalkers’ Caravan (Prologue) and Guidi’s Il Dolce (The Dessert) can be extended beyond the exhibition, through a weekend of storytelling with workshops and performances. To widen the discourse, a poetry slam evening and weekly a tea-time literature 14
reading could be organised. All these activities would be designed in collaboration with, and delivered by local practitioners. Gaming Matteo Rubbi’s work L’Italia in Cerchio, consisting of a collection of lost Italian board games, is the ephemeral element within the exhibition itself, as the game on display will be changed at regular intervals, to allow visitors to perhaps return, and see and play a different game. To strengthen the connection with the host venue, the idea is to commission the artist for the production of a new piece, a forgotten local board game developed with the desirable partnership of local groups, with which we would also like to co-host a day of tournaments and friendly matches. With the artist himself playing game master and the experts to guide the players through the day, we expect people of different ages, interests and backgrounds to interact and share their knowledge of tactics, tricks and traditions. (For the occasion, all the rulebooks will be translated into the local language and English.) Talks The public talks program will give the audience the possibility to encounter and debate with researchers, discussing the conceptual kernel of the exhibition. Speakers will include some of the artists in the exhibition, the members of Alois curatorial collective, historians, sociologists, ethnologists and other professionals. The idea would be to deliver a talk with experts a few weeks before the exhibition opening, so to generate interest in the subject and curiosity towards the exhibition, whereas the second talk should take place once the exhibition is installed. Talks will be performed mainly in English, translation will be provided where necessary. Artworks (all images ©the artists) ADEL ABIDIN, Bread of Life Bread is in many cultures viewed as the source of life, both physically, as an ancient, traditional food consumed daily, as well as spiritually, as the manifestation of holiness on earth. In Abidin’s hands, the hard, crispy Egyptian bread becomes an irreverent musical instrument, in a strongly ironic comment on the traditional systems of values. The resulting video, Bread of Life is a playful depiction of a small, informal drum orchestra, formed by four rhythmic musicians who would normally earn a living from playing music for belly dancers in nightclubs. JAMES BECKETT, Beckett-Beaumont The Beckett-Beaumont is an official tartan, a fabric originally used to roughly mark clans, families and districts in Scotland. In his piece, James Beckett chooses to use this cultural reference as a raw material for a playful, yet meaningful speculation over the use and transmission of traditions from a particular point of view, fusing together history and ethnology. In his tartan, the spacing, colours and thickness of the lines are taken from digestive results of the experiments of William Beaumont, the father of gastric physiology (1785-1853). The colours of the lines relate directly to the means of cooking, their thickness to the digestion times, whereas the position in the tartan represents the foodstuff. Beckett’s very interest in this historical occurrence testifies once again the complexity of a theme - the one of meme's transmission - which potentially embraces plenty of shades, yet converging in a strongly cultural field of research.
TEREZA BUŠKOVA’, Spring Equinox Tereza Bušková’s piece clearly focuses on the documentation and reenactment of the ancient rituals practiced by the Moravian people in her native country, Czech Republic. The London-based artist 15
chooses the rural village of Ratiskovice - one of the oldest in Moravia - as an ideal setting for a cultural portrait of this memetic past, aiming at closely investigating the reality of folklore and those rural traditions people still faithfully enact. On these very basis, she asked some residents of the village to dress up in their traditional costumes - which they still do when they go to church on Sundays - and to reenact these same traditions, therefore mixing the old and the new. As an outcome of this research, Bušková realized a video quadrilogy (of which Spring Equinox is the third chapter) where lifecycles and the changes of season are celebrated, as well as important rituals throughout our lives, such as marriage. The work’s title itself comprises a meaningful recall to the artist’s interest in the four seasons’ cycle, and spring becomes symbolic of rebirth. Reflections over individuals, society and nature plays a fundamental role too, as well as the contemporary aspects of disquieting an uncanny imagery, which could recall that strand in contemporary art enacted by Matthew Barney or Nathalie Djurberg. ROBERTO CUOGHI, Šuillakku Šuillakku is the Akkadian name for prayers of purification in Assyro-Babylonian rituals. It comes from a much more ancient compound word, “shu-il-la”, meaning “raised hand”. It is an imperative, like vade retro, to cure or to protect oneself. Cuoghi, in this work, represents the lamentations for the fall of Nineveh, destroyed in July 612, BC: starting from images, he reconstructed what he could, using materials that would have been available at the end of the Bronze Age - mainly rattles, sistrums, bamboo reeds flutes, horns of antelopes and rams. The artist played an Ethiopian ritual stringed instrument, together with a Tibetan drum used for exorcisms, to record some spells, and a red drum used for celebrations in the Far East, adding to this an overdubbing of his own voice reciting Akkadian spellings, ending up with the sound of a gigantic ritual which marks the pauses in the ceremony. In the artist’s words: “Šuillakku is a flow of sentiments in four phases, isolation, rage, negotiation and depression. Having to structure the lamentation, I used the phases of psychological adaptation to the experience of death. Šuillakku is a population faced by its fate, caught between a death sentence and its execution. Its structure comes from the manuals for the care of the terminally ill. Our idea of submission comes from the Israelite tradition, while Šuillakku has the arrogance of a battle chant, of people accustomed to using its God.” OPPY DE BERNARDO, new commission Oppy de Bernardo will be commissioned a new piece, an installation that will manifest itself outside the exhibition space and possibly beyond (somewhere in the city). De Bernardo acts as an illusionist: as he plays with deconstructing reality into reliable fictional universes, he skilfully makes the viewers believe his fiction to be real. Blending together sacred with profane, folk tales with autobiographical elements, literature with reality, and filtering them through the means of the double literary and ethnographic memories of Italy, Switzerland and other countries he finds himself immersed in, the artist reflects on the very processes at the basis of the creation of contemporary memetic mythologies. His interventions in institutional spaces, as well as in the fabric of the public realm, develop through an anthropologic analysis, and translate into installations often characterised by an iterative and performative element, tainting them with the flavour of rituals. Pieces like Ca nun ce sta nisciuno - for which the artist invited an Italian immigrant to perform at ArtBasel a Neapolitan folk song after work - and Everything was to be done, all the adventures are still there - a video illustrating the strong traditional economy around the production of spaghetti in Canton Ticino - and Radix (in collaboration with Aldo Mozzini) - a fictional celtic archaeological excavation deconstructing our perceptions and assumptions on prehistoric mythologies - all make the viewer question the relationship between historical truth, fiction and reality, gently unveiling things we didn’t know about ourselves.
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EVELINA DEIČMANE, Nje Mechtaj Nje Dumaj (Do not dream and do not think of it) A record-player playing a vinyl stands on a platform beneath a glass box, looking like an ethnographic museum relic. The disc is cut in the middle and glued together from two sides. Each side has different songs recorded, to typify two different epochs: on one side is Deičmane’s grandmother’s favourite Latvian song, which she grew up listening to, and that was later forbidden; but stikll, singing this song to herself connected her back to her country and her identity. This song becomes a different one on the second half of the record, now it is a Russian song, associated to a different era of her life. The jumps between the songs create a new musical noise, like the noise that grandmother says the radio makes today. A video capturing the elderly is projected close to the record player. Her face changes and so tells about different periods in her life and memories stirred by the songs heard. What Deičmane’s records play is a feeling of daze and unbelonging, the struggle of a generation torn between its tradition and a new, imposed, history. RUTH EWAN, A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World Ruth Ewan’s work consists of a CD jukebox containing an ongoing archive the artist started in 2003. Placing itself at the threshold between digital and analogue technologies, the piece features a growing collection of the so called ‘protest songs’, addressing a spectrum of social issues - some directly political in motive, some vaguely utopian, and some others chronicling specific historic events. The tracks could all be described as progressive in subject matter. This musical archive currently contains over 2,000 tracks - with no more than two by the same artist - which are ordered into over seventy categories such as feminism, land ownership, poverty, civil rights and ecology. These include Hebrew folk songs, tunes by Robert Burns, Leadbelly, and Joan Baez Crass’ ‘Bloody Revolutions’ (1980) and Louis Lingg and the Bombs’ ‘Madonna is a Corporate Whore’. A major feature of the piece’s nature is doubtless the potential interaction with the spectator - who therefore turns into a user: Ewan’s work is displayed as a classical jukebox, from which one can choose to hear songs for the different categories. This way, the very cultural gene of the political and social issues the tracks embody can be transmitted throughout time, by providing an ideal link between an ongoing past and the very present the viewer lives in. LUCA FRANCESCONI, new commission For On The Survival of Butterflies at a Time of Omnivorous Consumption, Luca Francesconi will be commissioned a new work - which will be developing from the landmarks of his artistic research so far, while looking at the very concept of meme. His practice has always centred around such issues as rural culture’s historical roots, folk art and anthropological aspects of the sense of sacred, as long as the reciprocal relationships between objects and the exhibition space. Starting from a strongly theoretical reflection over the very basis of these themes, Francesconi’s installations take shape as intimate collections of humble materials - which often translate into the simple tools of rural culture. Wood, glass, ceramic, plastic, clay, alluvial soil and so on, take on a metaphysical and anthropological significance in his interpretation of reality, while reflecting on the links between history and the traces it has left in art and life. The genesis of agricultural rituals, which the artist has been analyzing in his practice over the last 17
two years, is one of the main fields of research which can serve as a theoretical and formal starting point for wider reflections, such as the concept of internal space and established space, the necessary conditions that allow an entity to manifest itself. This way, Francesconi shows us a possible path which, based on the simplest traditions, aspires to universal meanings. As the artist itself stated: “I am interested in artistic traditions that are “humble”, anti-historical, that don’t make it into the books. People decorating country churches, taverns, dance halls, stables, allegorical floats for the devotional practices of rural Catholicism…”.
GIORGIO GUIDI, Il dolce (The dessert) Il dolce (The dessert) is a poetic condensation of references to traditional social practices in the North of Italy, which are slowly disappearing and are now limited to some families in the rural outskirts of small towns. By combining the refinement of beautifully handcrafted lace and painted ceramics with the violence suggested by old knives, Guidi creates a crossbreed between a decorative pot, a funerary urn and a drum. It functions as a sealed repository of traditional craftsmanship and folkloric acts, to preserve a ritual of collective violence and social cooking, symbolic of the roughness of last century’s Italy. As people used to slaughter a pig in the house and prepare a dessert with its blood transforming a barbaric act into a moment of familiar joy - the piece describes both cultural memory and those relationships connected with the family rituals around the preparation of this cake. KATARINA LUNDGREN, The Last Resort of Ethnicity The Last Resort of Ethnicity is an ongoing research project, started in 2006, documenting the Swedish-American communities in the United States. Lundgren describes, through diaries, short stories and photographs, historical places, monuments and cultural events that in various ways relate to these groups, and comments on their expression and degree of assimilation of the Swedish culture, looking at how values, traditions and symbols are rooted within, and have adjusted to the American context. The Last Resort of Ethnicity comments on“symbolic ethnicity”, the ethnic and social identity that can be characterized by a fictitious kinship - that was first described in 1979 by the American sociologist Herbert Gans as an ethnicity only applied on certain occasions depending on the context. On The Survival of Butterflies at a Time of Omnivorous Consumption includes a selection of eight photographs from the series. CIPRIAN MURESAN – Untitled The concept of ceremony - beside the ones of ritual and symbol - can be considered as one of the most meaningful when trying to draw the notion of meme. From this point of view, it is easy to relate it with the conceptual field of religion, in all the different shades the word itself can carry. Untitled aims to tackle this very question from a contemporary point of view, by showing us a dislocated, and hypnotically effective version of the baptismal ceremony performed in Orthodox churches. In a generic white space, where certain props recall a religious setting while others disorient the sense of location, family and friends witness the passage of the child from an existence outside the religious norms, to one of obedience and promised redemption, of spiritual give and take. The script of the performance is the canonical text of the Orthodox baptism, yet the sacrament itself is undertaken by a character thoroughly, intolerably out-ofplace: Santa Claus. The striking heterodox nature of the protagonist is permanently negotiated between the dutiful performance of both text and ritual gestures, and the possible, parallel interpretations the work breaches. Muresan’s video highlights the confusion that Christianity itself seemed to stage, in its use of symbols of rejuvenation and promises of delivery, and of the 18
current, converse confusion where spiritual life is engulfed in a world of capital production. For the artist, Santa Claus elliptically articulates an economy of the soul, self and social body, one which we enact throughout the year, and in which Christmas is only the anticlimax.
MARIA DOMENICA RAPICAVOLI, Four Virgins and a Bed Sicily, among all southern Italian regions, is perhaps the one where age-old traditions are still observed the most. Every important celebration in life has its own ritual, passed from generation to generation, and impossible to be neglected. A wedding ceremonial demands that the bride's girlfriends prepare the bed for the marriage night a few days ahead of the wedding itself. In Rapicavoli's video, four girls - chaste and unmarried, to comply with the tradition – prepare the bed with meticulous care and attention, smoothing out all unwanted folds and strewing rice and candies under the pillows as a good luck token for the new couple. All this occurs under the watchful gaze of the bride's mother. The artist's intent is to reflect on the concept of identity in relation to social stereotypes, and on the importance of inherited folk habits in contemporary society. Yet, the earnest with which she probes cultural conventions ends up taking on a comic twist, and she waxes ironical on the endless details involved in this kind of ritual and on the fact that the girls' virginity is merely presumed. Still, frozen on a digital support, Rapicavoli’s portrait of this tradition turns into a present-day memento of the never-ending and unstoppable evolutionary process of human civilizations. RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE, Sleepwalkers Caravan (Prologue) Sleepwalkers Caravan (Prologue) is a single-channel video presenting the wandering figures of a Yaksha and a Yakshi, mythic male and female guardian spirits of natural treasures hidden in the earth and in trees’ roots, and keepers of riddles in different Indic and Buddhist traditions. Raqs Media Collective appropriates the image of the two stone sculptures originally from The Reserve Bank of India, where they were placed in 1950 in protection of the state’s welfare - and symbolically removes them from their pedestals. Free to float in a contemporary, muddy urban landscape of a riverbank, the wardens seem to be walking back and forth, with the blank gaze of sleepwalkers. Yaksha and Yakshi’s ethereal dimension questions their very function as guardian spirits: are they entering the gates of the city, or are they leaving it? Is their protective mission accomplished, or is there no hope left?
MATTEO RUBBI, L'Italia in Cerchio The use of games as a theatre for socialising and transmission of traditions is one of the main focal points in Rubbi’s practice. The artist offers spectators the possibility to sit down and play the board games he creates, based on prototypes which never entered the market, and hence do not have clear rules: the interaction of the audience, and its making up rules becomes necessary. This suspended situation generates a connection between past and present - as if the original meaning of the game itself had been frozen and was awaiting to be reenacted by the 19
following generations. Rubbi’s work is a subtle and thoughtful reflection not only on creative intuition and imagination, but also and above all on the possibility of “rules” as a product of negotiation and cultural tradition. First showed in 2010 at Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan, L’Italia in cerchio was born as a site-specific installation, realized with the collaboration of a number of artists and friends asked by Rubbi to themselves create the games. This very feature confirms the piece’s value as a living row material, over which the artist and the community could work and create new meanings time by time. For On The Survival of Butterflies at a Time of Omnivorous Consumption, we will commission the artist to research traditional and lost Greek games, and create a new one. BENJAMIN VALENZA, Don Quixote Hip Benjamin Valenza’s piece requires to be read in the frame of his research as a whole. The Swiss-based artist centres his practice on the possible mutation of meaning within the processes of cultural transmission, also in broad temporal and contextual systems: in doing so, his attention mostly focuses on the elements of oral traditions and linguistic translation. His sculptures, yet maintaining a clear formal aspect, are intimately linked with this very aspect of linguistic research, which becomes, in its speculation, a method for the construction of the work of art. In this context, Don Quixote hip represents a living testimony of the artist’s concern with poetry and language, as part of a semantic reflection. The brass megaphone here featured as a sculpture inside an open wooden case - is in fact the instrument he utilises in his literary performances. Both a metaphor and a physical object borrowed from real life, the piece aims to recall some sort of an epic journey, through which a story is told passing from generation to generation. This way, a cultural and linguistic code is transmitted throughout space and time, through History and books, yet maintaining itself inside the very context of daily life.
Proposed floorplan, Kunsthalle Exnergasse
Views exhibition model (built for Kunsthalle Exnergasse)
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(all images ŠElisa Tosoni)
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Museo Caneira | la fisica del possibile (tense: present simple) Solo exhibition Galleria Alberto Peola, Turin, September – November 2011
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Some Installation Views
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(all images ŠEva Frapiccini)
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Se non sapessi disegnare, disegnerei (If I could not draw, I’d draw) (tense | nonfuture) Proposal for a solo exhibition Se non sapessi disegnare, disegnerei (If I could not draw, I’d draw) is a new video installation by Italian artist Giorgio Guidi (b. 1982, Brescia; lives and works between Milan and New York). In a room illuminated solely by the light emitted by a projector, the visitor is to lie down on some cushions and stare at the ceiling, onto which a sequence of hundreds of naturalistic drawings is projected. Due to the direction of the light, and the irregular surface, the projection screen (an approximately 1.5 square meter stucco decoration created by using a piece of traditional lace as a mould) is not entirely visible. Furthermore, the drawings appear to have blurry edges, and the images look slightly fragmented due to the angled and uneven stucco decoration. In Se non sapessi disegnare, disegnerei (If I could not draw, I’d draw), the artist conducts a complex, delicate operation of merging elements of folk culture and symbolic imagery belonging to our cultural histories, with the aim not only to stimulate a certain criticism on the image-centered culture we are immersed in, but also to function as a filter towards some aesthetic and, consequently, social change. The negative cast of the lace - an element borrowed from regional folklore and symbolic of a dimension of the everyday and the domestic, intimate sphere in which the perception of time expands - appropriates the precise, feminine language of lace stitching and modifies it into its male counterpart an unusual, rough stucco decoration applied to the architecture of the space. The video, circa 60 min. long, presents a sequence of hundreds elaborate naturalistic drawings from Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum Historia, now re-executed by the artist, who constructs an apparently random narration in which the category of time fades away. The choice to reference the Italian Renaissance naturalist - acknowledged as the father of geology and of many studies within the natural sciences – and his attempt at explaining and classifying all life forms on earth is symptomatic, for the artist, of a social condition that is very contemporary. A link between Medieval bestiaries and later naturalistic encyclopedias, Monstrorum Historia was for centuries studied as an authoritative text, despite being compiled adhering only partially to the scientific method. It contains in fact many descriptions and drawings not of observed organisms, but drawn from the scientist’s imagination, as well as from literary and popular tales: something that often led to a complete misunderstanding of the nature of some species. In contrast with many other books equally rooting Western culture, Aldrovandi’s atlas has not been instrumentalised by any ideology of power, and can thus be freely appropriated today, with its illustrations of humans, animals and plants, as a powerful metaphor. In contemporary terms, it stands for an authoritative attempt at creating and shaping an image of reality through the mythology of hearsay, and how information provided by what are considered by society to be reliable sources is believed to be true and is transmitted without further questioning, also thanks to its aesthetic and psychological seductive power. It is, at the same time, an account of the quest for a relationship with the impossible, the unattainable, the unreachable. Se non sapessi disegnare, disegnerei (If I could not draw, I’d draw) tries to question the boundaries between fiction and reality, by commenting on our way of classifying information and systems of relations into a wide taxonomy of the world. It is a revisionistic mid-utopia for adaptation into the ‘human’ environment - and how it describes itself following an illusionary, apparently irrational logic - through an ironic archaeology of the everyday.
In the following pages, images of 3d renderings of the installation, with stills from the projection of six drawings
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Giorgio Guidi: Artist’s statement
Like an archaeologist of contemporary human ecosystems, I scientifically excavate reality, deconstructing schemata of social relations and the only apparently irrational logic behind communication. In a process of poetic filtering and of metabolic acquisition, and through an interplay between real and fictional, I merge elements of folklore and symbolic imagery belonging to our cultural and emotional histories, to create utopian microcosms for human environmental re-adaptation. By lyrically rendering fragments of social reality and ironically highlighting its paradoxes, I aim to stimulate a certain criticism on the image-centered culture we are immersed in, but also to function as a filter towards some aesthetic and, consequently, social change. 28
Short Biography Giorgio Guidi (b. 1982, Italy) lives and works between Milan and New York. He holds a BA in Fine Art (2006, Accademia di Carrara, IT). In 2012, he is currently artist in residence as Draok (with Marta Pierobon) at LMCC (Swing Space Residency Program on Governors Island, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York). He was previously in residence at Fondazione Spinola Banna, (Turin, 2010 and 2011), VIR (Milan, 2011) and at AACA (Athens, 2008). His work is being exhibited in solo shows internationally such as Draok (2012, Soloway, Brooklyn, US) and Short-Visit (Milan): Giorgio Guidi (2010) curated by P. Gallio and D. Tomaioulo; and has been included in groups shows, currently in Lords of the dirt at Umetnostna Galerija Maribor (SI); besides being included in no-made, Passe-[ports] méditerranéen (2011, Villa le Roc Fleuri, Cap d’Ail (FR) and No Soul For Sale at Tate Modern (2010, UK). Between 2009 and 2011, his work has been shown widely in project spaces and institutions across Italy, amongst others in the exhibitions Nuova creatività italiana (2011), ALT, Alzano Lombardo; Officina Italia (2011), Bologna, curated by R. Barilli; Yearly exhibition (2011), Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte, Poirino; Morris By Summer (2011), Spazio Morris, Milano; Il ramo d'oro (2011), Teatro Nuovo Udine, curated by A. Bruciati and E. Comuzzi; Argonauti (2010), Verona, curated by A. Bruciati; Route Tournante en sous bois (2010), upload art project Trento, curated by S. Conta; Festa mobile Bologna (2010), curated by D. Ferri and A. Grulli; Il raccolto d’autunno è stato abbondante, Careof & Viafarini/Docva (2009), Milan, curated by C. Agnello and M. Farronato; Intorno al centro (2009), Brescia, curated by G. Molinari and Avvertenze Artistiche (2009), Museo dei Fori Imperiali, Rome. Reviews and essays on his work have been published on FlashArt Italia, exibart, Espoarte, artribune.com, on verge Alternative Art Criticism, and LaRepubblica.
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3-d rendering, L H C, installation view LHC (tense: Present Continuous) Proposal for a solo exhibition
L H C is a new installation by Italian artist Carlo Zanni (b. 1975, La Spezia; lives and works in Milan). L H C borrowing its name from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator - transforms the gallery space into a small and peculiar d’essai cinema, inside which a puzzling scenario unfolds: some chairs are folded, others tipped over, snacks and drinks leftovers quietly inhabit the space, a chain of closing credits runs on screen, accompanied by a soundtrack. One may think of having entered the room right at the end of a film, but will soon realise that there is no such thing as a beginning, nor an end. The project can in fact run forever, forever updating itself. In L H C, time appears suspended in an endless chain of end credits, rolling in a two-column format from the bottom to the top of the screen, with music changing every minute. On the left, a casting role index is compiled in real time extracting “role names” from past, current and upcoming film releases, whereas the right column shows names of dead and injured people, as well as people somehow related - even indirectly to current mortal events, collected in real time from local and world news online sources. The soundtrack is originated in real time through a long chain of data mining (or data performance) by keywords filtering, 1 through the same live news used to get people’s names . L H C’s two columns of endless closing credits function as a metaphor of the two particle beams travelling at light-speed and colliding inside the ring, ideally representing the eternal and continuous dialogue between science and religion. On one side, names of fictional characters flow as a list of modern gods, created by human imagination and experience. They remain frozen in time within their own orbital “perfect imperfections”, in a contemporary transposition of religion. On the other, names of real people are an eerie reminder of the fragility of our mortal bodies, “imperfect perfections”, as death goes beyond any possible social architecture: this forced negotiation with the real signifies science. Whilst the object of science lays in an analysis of the past and the present, to help shaping the future, religion addresses the present through a timeless future: time concerns us but it doesn’t affect gods, nor their fictional counterparts. L H C’s non hierarchical end credits highlight death’s property of social equaliser, and talks about these moments of collision, when the fragility of our humanity is set against a list of immortal heroes who embrace our dreams, hopes and weaknesses.
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The data-mining process is the following: 1. Get news headlines and articles involving dead and injured people >> 2. Get real people names from these articles through language recognition techniques >> 3. Extract a series of keywords from these articles/headlines >> 4. Use these keywords to query Songlyrics (or other services) to get song names >> 5. Use the song names to retrieve their videos from online services like Youtube >> 6. Extract the audio from these videos >> 7. Use the found audio to score the project. 30
When visitors enter L H C, they are possibly to read the credits and start drawing links between the role names and the people credited, until they understand it is impossible to “reverse engineer� the project: they wait for the end of the movie credits, thinking of what will come next. Immersed in this apocalyptic and hallucinatory allegory of our time, the public is forced to change approach from analytical to mystical, in a sort of deathbed religious conversion. 3-d rendering, view of L H C, from front
3-d rendering, view of L H C, from above 31
3-d rendering, view of L H C (external area, corridor, projection space)
3-d renderings, views of L H C (internal area: cinema projection space)
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Carlo Zanni: Artist’s statement My works are digital Internet based environments and more traditional drawings and paintings that attempt to reflect my sense of the times we are living in, and the game we call life. They confront themes such as real time/real life; fiction/information; social economy/special effects; isolation/public identity. Ideally my work finds its roots in Sol LeWitt’s “The Idea Becomes A Machine That Makes The Art”. I create my own real time digital worlds (portraits, landscapes) and let the “sacred fire” (Internet feedback) lead through them so that they become “birth machines”. Then, often using traditional techniques, I paint the above environments and even store archived digital versions of them (week, month, year of their online life) in portable personal devices like the IPod. Short Biography Carlo Zanni (b. 1975, Italy) lives and works in Milan. His work has been widely shown in institutions worldwide, and has been written extensively about in catalogue essays and art magazines such as Artforum, Tema Celeste and FlashArt. Solo exhibitions include Carlo Zanni: A Retrospective, ICA London (2005, UK); Carlo Zanni: Flying False Colors, Chelsea Art Museum, NY and Marselleria, Milan (2009, US & IT); When The Class Is Boring I Go To The Bathroom, Fondazione March, Padua (2008, IT); No Shape Stays Innocent: Two Films by Carlo Zanni, ACAF, Alexandria (2007, ET); Epic Tales, CCA Glasgow (2003, UK) and Nodes, Kunstmuseum Ahlen (2007, DE), as well as a number of solo shows in commercial galleries in Italy, Spain, France and the United States. His work was included in many group exhibitions in museums, such as Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, US); Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, US); P.S.1, MoMA, The New Museum and Deitch Projects (New York, US); The Science Museum (London, UK); iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology (Brussels, BE); TENT (Rotterdam, NL); Baluard Museum and Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation (Palma de Mallorca, ES); La Rada (Locarno, CH); MACRO, MAXXI and Villa Borghese (Rome, IT); Galleria Civica (Trento, IT); MARCA (Catanzaro, IT); Borusan Center for Culture and Arts (Istanbul, TR); MACAY (Merida, MX); National Museum and Art Gallery (Trinidad, TT); MACCSI (Caracas, VE; ACMI Australian Centre for the Moving st Image (Melbourne, AU). Zanni took part in Performa 09 (US, 2009), InteractivA’03 (2003, MX), the 1 Tirana rd Biennial (AL, 2001) and the 3 Biennale de Montréal (2002, CA). For a full cv and bibliography, please visit the website http://www.zanni.org/index.html
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Crossing Proposal for a group exhibition on a cruise ship Project co-curated with Liberty Paterson (DK)
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Relocating Absence (co-curated with S. R. White and C. M. Veiderveld) April – May 2008, Elevator Gallery, London
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RELOCATING ABSENCE Brada Barassi | Craig Cooper | Amelia Crouch | Hondartza Fraga Zbigniew Tomasz Kotkiewicz | Anastasia Loginova | Michelle Lord | Erin Newell Ellakajsa Nordström | Anahita Razmi | Erica Scourti | Mikio Saito & Youngho Lee Curated by Elisa Tosoni, Cherie-Marie Veiderveld and Simon Reuben White Exhibition Essay by Matthew MacKisack Relocating Absence is a group exhibition showcasing the work of thirteen internationally emerging artists. Through a variety of media, including sculpture, installation, video, photography and drawing, the exhibition offers a series of artistic interpretations of the theme, often playing with the constants of space and time. Absence, in fact, is essentially temporal – it is located where something was: it lies between the realms of Being (object) and Knowledge (perception, creation of a mental image). Absence can be intended as a state of being, as a period of time, as a lack, or even desire, or as the inattention to present surroundings or occurrences. All these connotations are encountered in the exhibition, which, in fact, proposes an openended investigation of the concepts of belonging, displacement, repetition, visual and literary narrative, emotional and physical distance, as well as archive, memory and diary keeping. The artists have created presence from absence, erased the pre-existent iconography of presence, drawn the viewers’ gaze to details that would otherwise have remained long unnoticed. These acts of relocating, of replacing, collecting or remembering what was there continue absence into the future: new tangible objects now substitute or relocate a previous absence, soon to leave room to new absences, in the viewer’s mind. Brada Barassi presents Sei sempre appena andata via (You Have Always Just Gone Away), a video installation exploring the relationship between being, memory and distance through a series of photographs, combined with sound. The images were taken across two countries (UK and Italy) in the space of three years, and the narration is bilingual. The piece questions one’s connection to the idea of belonging through a feeling of displacement, and the interplay of the constants of time and space. Craig Cooper exhibits a series of roadwork signs, where the informative panels have been removed and substituted with sheets of glass. Devoid of their visual lexicon, they become abstract objects characterized by their own aesthetics, on the boundary between sculptural and painterly. A similar abstraction is shown in Cooper’s maps, where the erasure of text leaves room to a sequence of new grids and thick black lines, denying the initial function of the map as a navigation tool. Amelia Crouch’s Looking- Capture- Reproduction, a fragmentary narrative in scenes, consists of a series of eight short texts printed on paper and pasted to the wall. Each text is highly evocative of an absent visual image, that the viewer is invited to relocate in his own mind, drawing on his personal visual archive. Hondartza Fraga exhibits a site specific installation, Incandescent, where the contrast between a series of light bulbs and their skillfully drawn shadows recalls the dichotomy of absence and presence. The perfect miniature scenarios depicted in the shadows become promises that can never be fulfilled, pointing out the isolation and imperfection of the reality they evoke. Zbigniew Tomasz Kotkiewicz’s The Swimmer is suggestive of an invisible narrative, through the image’s compositional elements as well as the irony of the title. The absence of a figure contrasts starkly with the traces of a human presence, triggering the viewer’s curiosity and visual memory. Anastasia Loginova’s black and white photographs depict an enchanted girl wrapped in a clear plastic bag, her facial expression frozen. A delicate, almost ethereal narrative frames the suspended gestures of the subject, making them timeless, almost lost. Michelle Lord exhibits Future Ruins, a series of photographs inspired by J. G. Ballard’s apocalyptic literary fiction, which Lord relocates in Birmingham, using hand made models and rear screen projections. The inhabitants of the city 45
are absent, and familiar, concrete urban structures become occupied by strange assemblages, built from the technological detritus of abandoned television sets, computers and domestic appliances. The images aim to highlight the temporality of landscape, reflecting on lost or ephemeral urban architectures. Erin Newell’s A Map of the Ocean between my Sister & Me is an unusual record for emotional and physical distance through a personal journey. A collection of water samples from the ocean, this highly intimate archive is presented in a display case - each sample labeled - establishing a connection between a traditional museum display and the exposure of personal memories. Ellakajsa Nordström exhibits Window View, a multimedia installation documenting one year of performative recordings of the view from her studio’s window, facing the backyard of a row of houses. A collection of detailed diary writings, photographs, video and sound recordings - as well as documentation of performances as a means to explore the view and the artist’s relationship to it - the piece explores the dualism between absence and presence, and questions the realms of narrative, time, space and diary keeping. Anahita Razmi’s Fall is a participatory installation entailing the viewer to become a sculptural form, crawling into a sleeping bag where a video of a “downfall” in a tube slide is shown. This upside down continuous fall generates in the viewer a strong feeling of displacement, as if he was falling upwards. Erica Scourti’s Spectrum is a projection of digitally manipulated photographs of world-wide protests and marches, from which the artist has erased all text on banners. Instead of carrying meaning and proclaiming the bearers’ beliefs, the banners turn into colourful, sculptural and painterly objects. Furthermore, being archived according to colour, they become totally abstracted from any political credo. Mikio Saito and Youngho Lee collaborate as an artists’ duo. Alternating their drawing act, while brainstorming and discussing inspired by the exhibition’s title, they have created a large drawing installation especially for Relocating Absence. They introduce the viewer to a new visionary landscape, populated by a magical cast of characters: a skillfully directed doodling, devoid of narrative, yet suggestive of a million microcosms. Elisa Tosoni, 2008
Relocating Absence runs from 18 April – 4 May 2008 PRIVATE VIEW Thursday, 17 April, 6.30 - 10 pm Exhibition Talk with the artists, curators and writer on Tuesday, 22 April, 6.30 pm. Free. Opening hours: Thursday - Sunday 12 am - 5 pm
Elevator Gallery Mother Studios, Queens Yard, White Post Lane, Hackney Wick, London E9 5EN www.elevatorgallery.co.uk www.myspace.com/elevatorgallery
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Some Installation Views Erin Newell, Mikio Saito & Youngho Lee, Hondartza Fraga
Erin Newell, Anastasia Loginova, Craig Cooper, Anahita Razmi, Erica Scourti
Ellakajsa Nรถrdstrรถm, Brada Barassi, Craig Cooper
Michelle Lord, Craig Cooper, Zbigniew Tomasz Kotkiewicz
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Amelia Crouch, Erin Newell, Michelle Lord
(all images ŠElisa Tosoni)
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