Times of Malta’s Sunday magazine Escape has published my review on Fotografia, the international photography festival of Rome. It was good fun to write it – and if you are wondering how the selfie mentioned in the article actually looks like, look no further.
Tag "vernissage"
Do you remember MSN? That fairly basic chat you used to spend hours on, chatting with your faraway summer friends during winter? Ten years ago MSN was one the first ways to keep all your “contacts” together.
Back then, my friend Enrico was very big on “contacts”. He was – and still is – a very friendly person who is comfortable with pretty much everyone. When he was thirteen the idea of having all his friends in one single place was to him the most exciting thing ever – right after Harry Potter I suppose. As for me, I used to considered other people being an annoyance most of the times – fictional people like Harry Potter included – so the fact that he was bragging about the number of his MSN’s contacts sounded funny to me. Fast forward to the Facebook era, my friend’s account is bursting at the seams, and so he periodically purges it – only to repent short time after and re-add his unfriended ones.
Today as a grown up girl I finally understand the importance of other people. I gave up my antisocial punk attitude and I started to appreciate talking and exchanging ideas with people big time. If I have to spot a precise time I decided cut on my misanthropy, I would say when I first encountered the Roman art world. At nineteen I was going to plenty of vernissages, often with my two best mates – “compagni d’arte” – and we were wondering about why all those caryatids, err, older people, didn’t want to talk with us. If you are not familiar with art openings in Italy, you should know that you seldom see younger people there. This was far from bothering me. I figured I just had to be more stylish, so I started wearing a little black dress, red lipstick and the right amount of boldness.
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I feel like the curator’s job is a little like Charles Xavier’s at times. After all both the curator and Prof. Xavier go around the world gathering mutants with superpowers – or artists in my case. My team for the “Nothing’s has happened since Yesterday” exhibition is sure smaller than a Marvel one but by no means less powerful.
One day, surfing on the internet, I stumbled upon a blog which reviewed exhibitions in Australia. It was when I was researching about the art scene in Melbourne, so I send a mail to the website asking for an interview with one of the two authors. At table of a cafe, waiting to be interviewed, sat a petite girl with resolute manners, nervous nostrils and round glasses. She was called Georgina Lee and chatting with her I found out that she was not only an arts writer, but also an artist.
Few weeks later I visited the TCB art space with a friend, and we were greeted by a gallery sitter with curly dusty hair and a worn out jumper. “I’ll give you guys a tour”, he mumbled and he started to list the names of the artists exhibiting, gesticulating with the hands in his jumper’s front pocket. One sculpture hanged on the wall looked like something that I had seen in exhibition at the Perth Centre for Contemporary Art a short time before. “Oh… that’s my work”, he said quickly and shyly. That’s how I met Kenny Pittock.
“Nothing’s happened since Yesterday – Due artisti da Melbourne” is going to open tomorrow at Galleria 291est in Rome and we are super-excited. These days have been pretty busy for exhibiting artists Georgina Lee and Kenny Pittock; I dragged them to gallery and vernissage all over Rome, yesterday we had a talk at the Art Academy (pics soon on this blog) and most importantly they have installed their work in the gallery. On the second day both artists showed up at Galleria 291est sporting “I love Rome” t-shirts. Kenny was so in love with his t-shirt to the point that he refused to change it even for the ultra-posh opening in Villa Medici, the French Academy. That’s the best part of being an artist after all, you can wear whatever the hell you want and no one can tell you anything!
The whole setting-up process has been filmed by Mauro Piccinini of Hour Interview, a great video series that catches snippets of artists’ working day. I’m super curious to see the result! If you are in Rome in these days, come visit us for the opening tomorrow!
Obviously openings are not for art appreciation. Openings are for networking, for the glamour of being there, for “bella figura” and so on.
Sometimes though, if you talk with a friend about the opening of the night before, she may happen to mention the art.
Sometimes she would even have an opinion about it. Maybe she went there, she wouldn’t meet anyone she knows already, everyone was grumpy and unfriendly, no buffet even! (so rude).
What was left was to pay attention to the art.
Well, that’s not certainly the case of the recent opening at Volume! Foundation in Rome.
Forget about people being there reporting you about the art. In the opening aftermath the only comment you could collect was: “There were so many people.”
I mean, it was Kounellis opening we are talking about, not a light weight.
You certainly know who Kounellis is, but maybe I can repeat it for the guys who failed in the contemporary art test.
You may argue Kounellis’ worship is mainly in Italy, but then I remind you that his work is exhibited all over the world from Minnesota to Paris.
So, to keep it short, Kounellis is a talented Greek guy who decided to subscribe the art academy in Rome when it was still reputable. (There are still tons of people lured to the art academy in Rome from far countries, and I really feel bad for them).
1960 is the date of Kounellis’ first exhibition at Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome, and in the following years he contributed to the emergence of Arte Povera.
Kounellis, according to the principles of Arte Povera, started using materials from everyday life, animals, fire, bed, stones, iron in his artwork.
He also did some fun stuff artists use to do in Rome in the sixties, like unleash twelve horses in the gallery L’Attico. Just like that, for the sake of art.
It’s been two years since my collaboration with Art a Part of cult(ure) began. My first article was about the japanese artist Masachi Echigo, you can read it here.
I’ve met Art a Part director Barbara Martusciello in a gallery in Piazza di Spagna, she was doing an interesting series of lectures about contemporary art.
At that time I already wrote for the magazine Arskey and the webmagazine Teknemedia, but I wasn’t very happy with them because they give me sort of limitations of style and criticize the artists was totally forbidden.
La scimmia, animale ancestrale, sommo enigma più volte rappresentato dallo stesso Sergio Ragalzi (un grosso dipinto rappresentante il primate misterioso occupava lo stand della Galleria Delloro alla recente Roma Road to Contemporary Art), deforma anche il volto di queste venti sfingi in via del Paradiso.
Non più umani con il corpo felino, ma maestose sagome con il volto di scimmia, stagliate contro i colori di un deserto puramente mentale, creato apposta per un Indiana Jones o un Corto Maltese, o per qualsiasi altro Edipo viaggiatore dei nostri tempi o di quelli futuri, pronto a sedersi di fronte a lei, silohuette contro silohuette, lasciandosi porre questi indovinello.
Eppure, come il boa del piccolo principe, le sfingi di Ragalzi hanno inghiottito qualcosa che non gli appartiene, fino a diventare un tutt’uno con essa, in un rapporto di precisa identità.
E’ una bomba, il missile intelligente e distruttivo, quell’orrore prodigioso dall’intelligenza matematica. Ma cosa potrebbe chiedere il tremendo siluro alle sue vittime?
C’è sempre un quoziente di enigma in queste guerre senza senso, per noialtri a cui non interessa più di tanto il petrolio, se non al momento di fare il pieno. Petrolio del quale pure queste sfingi dal profilo scimmiesco paiono infradiciate come gabbiani nella marea nera.
Sfingi che sono macchie colpevoli, così come è oscura la colpa di Edipo. Scenari da Arabia Saudita, poi Egitto, ma anche Libia; questi dipinti sono un grido che emettono in coro. Gridano: “Inevitabile!”
