PR dérèglement des passions Museo lab

L'Atalante associazione culturale

Claire Fontaine, Situations, 2011. Single channel HD video for projection, Mac mini, colour and sound, 32 min. 38 sec.

Ed. di 6 + 2 APs. Courtesy the artist and T293, Naples/Rome

PRESS RELEASE dérèglement des passions Museo laboratorio - ex manifattura tabacchi Italy, Città Sant’Angelo March 22 – April 25, 2014 Opening Saturday, March 22, 2014, 7:00 p.m.

Curator Enzo De Leonibus and Pietro Montone Artists Michel Auder, Trisha Baga, Claire Fontaine, John Wood & Paul Harrison, Christian Jankowski, Anneè Olofsson Opening Hours From Wednesday to Sunday, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. Or by appointment.

Museo laboratorio - ex manifattura tabacchi, vico Lupinato 1, 65013 Città SantʼAngelo (PE), IT Tel. +39 (0)85 960555 - info@museolaboratorio.org - www.museolaboratorio.org

Città Sant’Angelo, Pescara, 3 March, 2014 – The Museo laboratorio - ex manifattura tabacchi is proud to present dérèglement des passions, a video – installation journey dedicated to the relationship between art and madness. Curated by Enzo De Leonibus and Pietro Montone, the exhibition is scheduled to remain open to the public from 22 March until 25 April, 2014. The inauguration will be held 22 March at 7:00 p.m.

The exhibit features the videos of six internationally renowned artists, many of whom have recently held video screenings at the cantina montone / contemporary artistic expressions.

With the addition of these new artists and works, exhibited in their entirety, the exhibit has become larger occupying all of the space available at the museum.

As indicated in the title, the exhibit delves into the theme of delirium and specifically the emotional-passionate aspects as based upon the psychiatric interpretations of Pinel and Esquirol between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

According to Remo Bodei, the logic of passion is characterized by a cognitive aspect just as the logic of knowledge has an emotional component. Accordingly, the mind should be viewed as the integration of these two extremes. Thus, the relationship between delirium and passion, essentially neglected by modern psychiatry, returns to the forefront. Therefore, madness is the result of extreme emotions and is determined by the combined effects of logic and emotions.

What comes into consideration is that entire area of human experience relegated to the confines of the irrational. Passion, fantasy, superstition, delirious beliefs and visions converge into artistic expression.

Only in art can the irrational be utilized to attain knowledge because there is no fear of crossing the abyss of chaos and the illogical. It is only this world which can give rise to new expressions and languages. Artists are alone in viewing the condition of life as an absence of protection, which man generally uses to defend himself, remaining well within the boundaries of rationality built to shelter him from the fear of death. In artistic personalities, talent finds its means of expression before culminating in madness. Madness is not creative in itself, but rather unveils the depths where there are new roads to knowledge. The works of art presented in this exhibit can therefore be considered as “delirious masterpieces”.

«But to speak of arts, what set men’s wits on work to invent and transmit to posterity so many famous, as they conceive, pieces of learning but the thirst of glory? With so much loss of sleep, such pains and travail, have the most foolish of men thought to purchase themselves a kind of I know not what fame, than which nothing can be more vain. And yet notwithstanding, you owe this advantage to Folly, and which is the most delectable of all other, that you reap the benefit of other men’s madness». (Erasmus of Rotterdam, In Praise of Folly) The videos shown in the exhibit were created by artists, such as Michel Auder and Trisha Baga, who have revitalized the language of films in their use of archival and amateur materials. Others instead, such as Claire Fontaine, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Christian Jankowski and Anneè Olofsson, express hallucinated visions revealing the unconscious mechanisms behind human relations.

The exhibit has been organized in cooperation with cantina montone / contemporary artistic expressions.

Museo laboratorio - ex manifattura tabacchi, vico Lupinato 1, 65013 Città SantʼAngelo (PE), IT Tel. +39 (0)85 960555 - info@museolaboratorio.org - www.museolaboratorio.org

For further information, please contact Museo laboratorio – ex manifattura tabacchi T. +39 (0)85 960555 or visit http://museolaboratorio.org/ For info about Città Sant’Angelo (PE): http://www.visitacsa.it/; http://bit.ly/1gAXsz4 | https://maps.google.it/ With special thanks to all the artists, Fabio Agovino, Armadillo Grafica & Shop, Comune di Città Sant’Angelo (PE), Alessia Evangelista, Fonti (Naples), Antonello Matarazzo, Fondazione Morra Greco (Naples), Mimmo Scognamiglio (Milan), T293 (Naples/Rome), Giovanni Trapani, Studio Trisorio (Naples).

Museo laboratorio - ex manifattura tabacchi Press Office Rossana Zonno mob. +39 333 1049439; +39 338 2719840 External Press Office Antonella Palladino mob. +39 347 391 49 56 antonella.palladino@gmail.com cantina montone press@cantinamontone.com

dérèglement des passions is a project by:

Museo laboratorio - ex manifattura tabacchi, vico Lupinato 1, 65013 Città SantʼAngelo (PE), IT Tel. +39 (0)85 960555 - info@museolaboratorio.org - www.museolaboratorio.org