6 June–7 November 2015
Opening: Saturday 6 June, 7pm
Galleria Enrico Astuni
Via Jacopo Barozzi 3
40126, Bologna
Italy
Hours: Monday–Friday 10am–1pm / 3–7pm
Saturday and Sunday by appointment
T + 39 051 4211132
F + 39051 4211242
M + 39 338 8439281
info [at] galleriaastuni.net
Curated by Lorenzo Bruni
Mario Airò, Mel Bochner, Cuoghi Corsello, Christian Jankowski, Suzanne Lacy, Maurizio Nannucci, Antonis Pittas, Nedko Solakov
Galleria Enrico Astuni of Bologna presents, on Saturday 6 June, from 7pm, a group show curated by Lorenzo Bruni, titled Raccontare un luogo – (Tales of a Place). The exhibition involves eight international artists, from different generations and cultural backgrounds, who have conceived and realised works specifically for the occasion.
The resulting interventions are of varying types, from neon texts to drawings, sound installations and sculptural objects, from photographic images to video, and are above all characterized as being devices which tell tales about a place, taking into account at the same time the context in which they are placed and, in some cases, overturning and exploring to the utmost limit the notion of the site specific. This approach is practiced by each artist using different materials and modes of expression which are, however, all characterized in the same way by the idea of translation, namely: what to translate, for whom and how? For this reason, their characterizations of the notion of the site specific present themselves as conditions of daily life, barely altered, which externalize the process of conflict/dialogue that society has always associated with the relationship between word and image, between a caption and the representation to which it refers, between the thing and its function.
The unique aspect of the project Raccontare un luogo – (Tales of a Place) is that it is not conceived as a theme show but, rather, as the creation of a platform upon which to discuss at a collective level the idea which animates the research of the various artists involved, rediscovering social and anthropological reasons behind their informal dialogical approach. As Lorenzo Bruni writes in his forthcoming book, which will be published and presented in September/October: “Taking into consideration the artists who have worked on mechanisms for measuring mental and physical space (trying to make them co-exist) and who are at the same time confronted with the presence of the written word, means opening on the one hand a reflection on how the role and use of new media has changed over the last thirty years and, on the other, on how the perception of the word (on the part of the public) has changed due to the introduction of the ‘text message,’ which leads us not to talk on the phone, but to observe it. From this point of view it is possible to reflect on the role of conceptual art and on the naming of things, but also on the role/capacity that images today have of containing information, enabled by the frame in which information is distributed in real time, overturning the role of the simple documentation of reality that was seen in the “illustrated magazines” of the past century. The question which emerges is: What are the nuances and implications of this way of interacting with the dematerialized world for the perception of art, for social interactions and for the preservation of the experience of some places rather than others?”
The artists involved in the project Raccontare un luogo – (Tales of a Place) are aware that the world has become in these last ten years smaller and more intimate precisely for the ability to be in contact with everyone and everything in the era of the global village. This new possibility, however, is neither cause nor effect for them, but the symptom of finding oneself in a post-colonialist, post-ideological period of hyper-communication.
Press release
