Click or Clash? Strategies of Collaboration
Third Stage
Alexandre Arrechea, Maria Elvira Escallόn, Gian Maria Tosatti
Curated by Omayra Alvarado and Julia Draganović
15 March–12 May 2012
Opening:
15 March 2012, 6–9pm
Galleria Bianconi
Via Lecco 20, Milan
For the third episode of “Click or Clash? Strategies of Collaboration,” a long-term project developed by LaRete Art Projects in collaboration with Galleria Bianconi, the three artists invited are concentrating less on artistic collaboration practices than on contemporary urban and rural living conditions.
Memories and symbolic values of places in decay, whether they are private homes, public utilities or natural landscapes turned into cultivated and thus exploited rural areas are the common link between the work of Colombian artist Maria Elvira Escallόn, who is showing for the first time in Europe, and Italian-born Gian Maria Tosatti. Maria Elvira Escallόn’s photo prints document her interventions in an abandoned but still fully equipped hospital in her home town Bogotá as well as her ongoing land art project “Nuevas Floras,” so far realized in the Colombian rain forest, the Brazilian pampas and a park in the UK. Gian Maria Tosatti turns the basement gallery into an apartment left to itself after a fire that has not destroyed it but that has left its mark on it.
Alexandre Arrechea playful sculptures and watercolours reveal the joint effort needed to build appropriate urban systems and living conditions.
“Click or Clash?” is a series of exhibitions, talks and publications curated by Julia Draganović and LaRete Art Projects, and is promoted by Galleria Bianconi. The third episode, which for the first time is showcasing two artists from Central and South America is a joint curatorial enterprise by Omayra Alvarado and Julia Draganović. The aim is to tackle the issue of working together in order to assess to what degree agreement and disagreement, consent or “agonism”—to use the term adopted by Chantal Mouffe—can have a constructive impact on a creative process.
With this long-term project, Galleria Bianconi is embarking on a research programme that involves artists who have made a name for themselves on the contemporary art scene, and bringing about collaboration on the national and international level. With the aim of inspiring new visions and engendering positive energies, which are essential for advancing today’s society, the gallery is thus expanding its mission in the contemporary world, in addition to its decade-long specialisation in the search for and reassessment of important figures in the arts scene of the second half of the twentieth century, such as Carlo Zauli.
Alexandre Arrechea, born in Trinidad, Cuba 1970, graduated from the Superior Art Institute of Havana in 1994, lives and works in Madrid, Spain. He was a founding member of the collective Los Carpinteros (1991–2003). As a solo artist Arrechea has exhibited extensively in the US and abroad. In 2010 he presented a projection of the video piece “Black Sun,” previously featured in the 2009 Thessaloniki Biennial, shown on the façade of the NASDAQ building in Time Square in New York. Arrechea represented his homeland in the first ever Cuban Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In spring 2013 he will have monumental sculptures along the Park Avenue Malls, NYC.
Maria Elvira Escallòn, born in London, lives and works in Bogotá. Escallon’s work shows an emphasis on process and is developed around the relationship of culture-nature and construction-destruction. Each project follows its unique visual path where sculptural interventions and installations in places usually inaccessible then documented photographically, are her frequent formal approach to the matters. Alongside, since 2007, she has being working on a project that addresses the public health system, focusing on the progressive loss of space of the patient and the abandonment of large public hospitals. Her work was been included in many art events in Colombia, has had numerous solo exhibitions and received several awards. Since 2000 develops projects abroad and exhibits internationally.
Gian Maria Tosatti works in an area mid-way between art and architecture. Since 2007 he has received support from Fondazione Volume! in Rome, for which he has created his “Devozioni” cycle of works. This project consists of ten environmental installations for as many buildings in Rome. In 2011 he was a resident artist at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council of New York, where he created the “I’ve already been here” project, occupying two government buildings with large environmental works. His research is currently focusing on two projects: “Fondamenta,” based on the identification of archetypes in the contemporary age, and “Le considerazioni sugli intenti della mia prima comunione restano lettera morta” (“Considerations About the Intentions of My First Communion Have Remained a Dead Letter”), devoted to the enigmas of individual memory.
Info:
Galleria Bianconi
Via Lecco 20, 20124 Milano, Italy
Tel. + 39 02 91767926
info@galleriabianconi.com
www.galleriabianconi.com
Press Office:
maddalena bonicelli
mb.press@galleriabianconi.com
Tel. + 39 335 6857707
