Monday 6 July 2009

SMS Contemporary Art_by Stefano Monti

As every morning, I’m sitting down in my kitchen table, zipping cappuccino and reading my post, about thirty e-mail from which may be 6 or 7 of real interest (sad balance), and in between there is  the invitation to a exhibition of contemporary art. Beautiful graphic, all the right information, title, artist, curator, place, address, time and synthetic’s and very “attractive” and smart press release, all in 1.2 MB, not bad at all! Fixed the date in my IPhone (3 days from today).

Eight o’clock, I have come biking so no fuss for parking and there are already forty people inside and still some more are arriving. Goes in, text in Italian and English and map with the path, the artworks and captions; quite useful. I start to go around observing the artworks, first room, photos, installation, sound, they offered me to drink, - thanks – and something to eat. The exhibition looks like interesting, goes to the second room, I stop to look better a video, find two friends, speak about the show, they are enthusiastic, introduced me to a friend, we speak about my work and theirs, change e-mail address with a friend that hasn’t seen from some time. Goes ahead seeing the exhibition, have a look at the time, it’s nine o’clock, and I realized that I have never been so long in an art gallery without annoying me, I need to smoke, goes to the patio, and find  seats, ashtrays and people to talk to, another glass of wine and something to eat.

While I’m leaving my attention goes to a cyclostyled sheet of paper with the title SMS Contemporary ART, take it, fold it up and put it in my pocket, light a cigarette and talk to somebody else; nice show! Lots of people, maybe a hundred, artists, curators, university teachers, some collectors…21.45, though! Take my bike and go back home.  Have another look at the show’s text, the postcard, very interesting this artist and the “SMS Contemporary Art”.  An invitation to send a SMS with your own name, e-mail and the gallery’s name (sigla) and a number, 3 or 5, the euro I could donate. Giving 5 I would received a silicon bracelet, which I have noticed but without questioning. Why not! I have spent two hours, I have nearly dinned, met friends and have been introduced to two interesting persons, I have seen the show of a brave young artist, it look like to me that at least “a thankful postcard” could be send to the gallery.  I have in mind this white postcard my father used and still uses, with in front the family name and in the back the possibility of writing something to send together to a bunch of flowers, or a box of chocolates, to thank the day after a magnificent party, dinner, or… But we are in the 2009 and to send a SMS is a brilliant idea, they will not get rich, five euro per hundred persons (a hundred SMS donated, it looks to me too optimistic) it means five hundred euro, may be they can pay wine and food and the bracelet, I don’t know!  So, I think is more a way to say thanks, sure, very clever, and donate a small contribute. Why not!

 

 

Thursday 11 June 2009

Subverted Genres - Damiano Colacito at Sue Scott Gallery


PRESS RELEASE

Subverted Genres

Curated by Gabriela Galati and Rebecca Mirsky

 

Kristopher Benedict, Ian Cheng, Cecile Chong, Vanessa Chimera, Damiano Colacito, Martin Gimenez, Josephine Halvorson, Joseph Hart, Allison Katz, Liz Magic Laser, Margaret Lee, Sebastiano Mauri, Dafna Maimon, Tom McGrath, Brian Montuori, Butt Johnson, Marilla Palmer, Elena Sisto

 

May 5 – June 16, 2009 / Opening Reception: May 5, 2009 6 – 8pm

Traditional genres of painting were established at the French Academy, which was created under the rule of King Louis XIII in the 17th century. The genres were defined as historical, mythological, portraiture, landscape, and still life. In explaining discursive genres, the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin observed that people learn through imitation and manipulation. Genres come with social expectations — expectations that can then be reshaped, finessed, upstaged, and exploited. The eighteen artists included in this exhibition pay heed to the classic genres while reinterpreting them formally and conceptually.

Known for his landscapes, Tom McGrath turns his eye on 21st century landscape where his contemporary take on the pastoral sheds light on the blemishes and bruises of modern day America. Juxtaposing images from vintage children’s books with historic Chinese landscapes, Cecile Chong creates landscapes that address the process of cultural assimilation. Her cross-cultural narratives include such diverse materials as oil, Moroccan pigments, volcanic ash, rice paper, beads, copper leaves, and circuitry.

Marilla Palmer uses objects from the natural world and science to reinterpret nature in her mobiles and wall sculptures, which contain beads, bits of plastic, tree fungus, birch bark and small wire sculptures.

Brian Montuori's deftly painted works offer a reinterpretation of history painting through the lens of disorder and chaos. These meta-narratives often depict animals placed in perilous situations --a circus train wrecking, a modern day Noah's ark descending over Niagara Falls, robotic animals exploding --that are both tragic and humorous.

As Josephine Halvorson observed, "painting is a stilling of life. " By focusing her small-scale renditions on objects often overlooked --a smoldering log, a boarded window, a discarded valentine --she elevates the things of everyday life. Damiano Colacito's 21st Century still lifes recreate objects from digital video games. Through his sculptures, Colacito materializes virtual reality into actual reality. The work presented in this exhibition, C:-Cook, 2009 is taken from the video game with the same name.

Martin Giménez’s meticulously rendered monochromatic portraits and still lifes are informed by representational images --a man, a tree, a four-poster bed. Giménez is interested in creating scenes that consist of recognizable objects and gestures, yet are devoid of specific narrative.

Much of contemporary art is informed by the need to break with tradition, as it is to continue it. This exhibition looks at the way artists use materials and concepts to both challenge and acknowledge this tradition.

For additional information please contact:

Rebecca Mirsky at Sue Scott Gallery by calling 212-358-8767, faxing 212-358-8785 or emailing info@suescottgallery.com.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm or by appointment. 

Wednesday 27 May 2009

Vladimir Nikolic / VOICE-OVER

Interview to Vladimir Nikolic
By Emanuele Guidi


I’d like to pick up the first dialogue of Land Art where the person who seems to be a TV/Radio show host speaks about you (the artist in question) as an artist who produced his last piece in 2004. This was Death Anniversary, in which you employed a Montenegrinian dirge singer to compose and sing a mourning song for Marcel Duchamp. With her, you then travelled to Rouen, to Duchamp’s grave to honour him. After four years you produced a series of works where the legacy of a certain conceptual scene it’s still very strong. Nevertheless I have the impression that those references are not a way to pay a tribute to those figures and art movements…
During the 90's and little bit after, being an artist from the Balkans meant mostly producing artworks about geopolitical reality, dealing with communistic past, transitions, growing nationalisms, war, victims, questions of guilt, etc. It also meant bringing exotic documents of anti-modernism, local heritages and weird customs, which were still possible to find in Balkan countries. All of that was about local reality, in a too realistic way. Art was secondary here. I guess it was a result of common western stereotypes about the outside world, and following the response of artists from the Balkans who used the opportunity to create international carriers by feeding these stereotypes. So Death Anniversary is, in a way, a reconstruction of a situation in which at the same museum where you can usually find Mondrian paintings, Duchamp ready mades or a Minimal Art piece, you could find a work which tells you how they slaughter lambs and chickens during religious holidays in some Balkan or Middle East country. This is putting together wrong things at the wrong place, if you ask me, and I tried to reconstruct that in Death Anniversary. How wrong can it be paying a woman to cry on a grave of a person who left the epitaph: “Anyway, it’s always other people who die”? How wrong it can be to apply a pre-modern ritual on a person who represents the most universal value and heritage of a modern art world? Dirge singer on Duchamp's grave is an ultimate contrast. As I see it, the same type of contrast was happening when you enter a western museum or a gallery with contemporary Balkan kunst.
But this is in the past, some other parts of the world are 'Balkan' now and finally we can talk about more general art problems, without this burden of geographical origin. In the new works, the legacy of the conceptual scene appeared mostly by accident in the beginning. At that moment I had a lousy camcorder and video clips I made looked awful. So I set up my camcorder to record in black and white and the result was much better. I am shortly uncovering this situation in the dialogue when Mark say: “...perhaps he couldn't afford a decent camera”. The image was still ugly, but this ugliness was historically accepted aesthetic - you don't question the production quality of the art works from the 70's. So, I was adjusting the art concept to a bad equipment conditions. I think it turned out well, because all the dialogues are leading to the point where characters start fighting about contemporary art problems and I think its interesting to watch this arguing from the perspective of the past. Imagine two persons from the 70's looking in the future, at today's art. I believe they would be disappointed, just as I am, and sometimes I feel like I belong more to the past. So maybe, after all, there could be some sort of paying a tribute to those figures and art movements in my works.
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Tuesday 3 March 2009

TRANSMISSION #1: FILIPPO PIRINI


The second edition of Transmission #1 took place at nt art gallery on Febrary 25th, and had Filippo Pirini as its protagonist with the installation "Volante".


Transmission #1 was a unique experience, with 3 "flying" presences that flew around the gallery during just one evening.














Friday 20 February 2009

Drill Down_01 damiano colacito 3 Thoughts

Drill Down word for word, actually means the drilling of earth, the soil, from the verb to drill: bore, pierce, and perforate. This is what happens at a metaphorical level, even in language; hence the title of this exhibition borrows from the term. Drill Down Technology is a technique that allows viewing or searching for hierarchical information. It follows the same principle that the Drill Down exhibition aims to present, artistic projects that deserve to be taken with a higher degree of specificity than usual exhibitions permit. This is always restricted exposure of works that need to be isolated from the context the exhibition to evidence the best characteristics, with a greater level of detail while further reflection following the evolution of the cascade Drill Down.
Drill Down 01 opening on Wednesday the 18th of February at 19.30 with Damiano Colacito 3 Thoughts, a project involving the showing of two videos and the representation of an acting performance of varying duration.The artistic pursuit of Damiano Colacito has many different facets, which can refer to many other reflections. There are numerous questions that instinctively the work asks of us, or rather we submit, but all constitutionally us to focus point, the core of the formal and, at the very concept of perception of reality.The video titled West Wolf Carousel, whose subject is the representation of Hitler as presented in the first version of the 1992 video game Wolfenstein 3D, based on its efficacy of a scene which is on a continuous loop. The viewer of the video, as an active user is given responsibilities at the choice of the artist not to formally make the player the murderer Hitler in first person, since they do not play, nor do they handle commands directly or physically wield a weapon with which in the original game the player was able to commit murder. The weapon itself is not included in the video, its not to be found in the gaming environment, its invisible. But this was a conscious decision, which seems conceptually striking, but it is not further proof of the power of perception, in which reflection is extrinsic, emotional and not intellectual, in which the loop emerges us. The enemy par excellence, Der Führer, shoots with abnormal wickedness, his eyes injected with blood, the ferocity is palpable, but he did not harm us, by contrast, he kills himself and is reborn. From this representation shows the duality between active action and quick action, which highlights the distinction between our involvement in first person as builders of the scene and the fact that the repetition inherently in the nature of the reality of video games, makes it possible to act and undergo the action almost simultaneously. Hitler dies and is reborn, the sequence finishes then starts again, the carousel is charging and everything starts again. Satisfaction and frustration but there are not offset. How many times can he be killed? Hitler always returns to life. In the world of video games, the victory is tantamount to the end of the game. But as you can win / finish, the reality of the game is still there, ready for a new game, ready to rise again, to be recalled and relived physically and perceptually at any time, with lots of variables. Although Wolfenstein 3D, was not the first first person shooter in the history of the games for the PC, but it was the first to obtain huge commercial success and a widespread use. The loop, the ringing bells and music of this is repeated as if it were the voice of Hitler himself - all the audio files come exclusively from the network - allow us to live inside the video, to live a perceptually an experience totally simulated, however, it has very little simulation. In fact, the reality of the game is not virtual or synthetic, or even fake, in the exact moment when it becomes possible to interact so profoundly. The boundary between tangible and intangible is not situated in the realism of the experience? We know that this image of low definition is just a representation, but the degree of "physical" involvement that it causes is perhaps not completely real? The act of contemplation, despite assuming both attentive and perceptive characteristics, in itself is static and therefore passive, in which case the work itself presents a dynamic opportunity to play, therefore, contains values such as interaction. But the very fact that they are the result of the possibility of interaction and not the means to award the portion of the game to the rank of ‘a work of art’, but make the video a reflection on the linguistic dimension of perception of reality.
Quite different, but definitely similar in genre to Paradisi is in a universe of well-defined experiments, on the border between the historical narrative and linguistic research. Even for the younger people it’s impossible not to immediately recognize the famous music that accompanies the viewing of images. The "Toccata" by Pietro Domenico Paradisi has been for many years an advertisement theme tune for Rai, thus providing the main narrative support and making an endearing moment from an empty television screen which thanks to popular not folklore, had much to give. Alien from all nostalgic sentimentality, this video follows in some respects the educational intent, which had pictures of the most beautiful places in Italy shown during intervals. In fact at that time, whenever there was break for technical problems or there was an interruption of any kind in the broadcast, viewers tended not to change channels - even given the small choice of channels - but continued to watch, usually with interest broadcasting breaks. The knowledge through interval filled the gap of lack of direct travel and represented for many people, especially women, the only way to explore the boundaries, allowing an awareness of the imaging area, the geographical area a well-defined locus of culture. The artist’s work is not so dissimilar. Colacito shows photographs of places that exist in a well-defined digital environment. Video games are the most diverse derivatives of these, but each of those photographs depicting an environment that the artist has visited in a specific historical moment. Within the reality of the game not only is space altered but also time. All dimensions, both physical and intellectual meet the need to make the person able to make a living entirely consistent with the dynamics they decide to choose. This exploration is the result of a social intervention, which represents a wide scope, whose boundaries exceed those of a simple nation. This proposal is not a reflection on the semantic non-place; quite the contrary the main characteristic of a non-place is the depersonalization of the individual who becomes an anonymous member of a category such as a mass consumer, customer, and user. While the places that Colacito shows reinforce the identity and personality of one individual who visits these places. A specific place becomes packed with subjectivity. Anyone could discover a new part of the world without physically moving there. There seems to be a split reality without losing credibility. Ironic, but flawless at the same time, the comparison that looks at both formal and content, between television and digital interaction, which allows the artist to bring themselves and their actions within the images.
In 1960 Colacito smokes a cigarette on board a plane, visit hell in 2145, the Reichstag in 1945 and 1964. Interaction unifies the concept of vision and the journey, allowing us to take action within a three-dimensional space-time definable.
The performance entitled the 90th Minute gathers the intent of the educational video while deepening both the conceptual and experimental aspects. The typical bar in a town is rebuilt and we are invited to sit down at a table, put on headphones and watch TV. We are facing a match. A typical match. From time to time, randomly, the famous symbol of the "90 minutes" takes us back to memories of football, on Sunday afternoon, championship evenings, the feeling of team spirit. The artist, present but hidden, visible but not too much, challenges himself in all respects. Colacito shows us a glimmer of reality doubled and duplicated, in which his individual sitting on their chair, their elbows resting on the desk, wearing headphones and dressed in their own clothes - all faithfully recreated and transported into the gallery -- you will play a game in multiplayer mode in Battlefield 2142. This mode allows multiple people to simultaneously play the same video at the same time using different terminals connected to each other on the Internet.In this case the player is not alone in front of the TV, but interacts through this, and related technology, with other players, physically distant from each other and located in different geographic locations. As in a game of mirrors that reflect each other endlessly, this performative act is able to multiply the perceptual reality countless times. Players are physically located in a place, in front of their PC, while at the same time in another reality of the game. Split realities for everyone, two simultaneously lives, two realities interacting among themselves and with the outside world both physical and virtual. The number of variables that can change the reality has the opportunity to increase exponentially. Colacito provides his subjective view to us, the estranging which allows the observer to see what the player sees, to do what the player wants, but without the knowledge of the action or control. Our perceptions are completely replaced with new ones from another person, making the participation passive and active at the same time, unbalance our cognitive ability to immerse ourselves in the realities of others.It deals with a match, live, between two teams - two clans, each consisting of ten people -- that challenge each other. The metaphor of football is distorted, but respected, and the war is only a pretext for dialogue between the players, the reason why aggregation and empathic communion exists between people. On account that the performative act is not distorted, none of the participants in three sessions of the game realizes that they are being recorded and listened to by third parties, so that the spontaneity of the language and the sincerity of the act is almost complete. The role of the artist does not take the upper hand compared to the event, his presence is visible, intuitive, but the person is both physically and conceptually moved a different level to the representation. They are situated low down, in a symbolically different place, they are there, but at home, metaphorically, and their presence allows us to spy on a fragment of reality game otherwise hidden from our eyes, that we can only imagine. Colacito’s decontextualisation of the signals origins makes this event educational by allowing us an insight into behind the scenes, creating the futuristic dream of teleportation, which is no longer a real moving subject, but an emotional translation of a cognitive ability of experienced individuals. The grammar of war games is set to bare all its parts, whether online or offline. The physical anxiety, empathy, collaborative spirit, the sense of community become apparent in the sportingly direct participation, interactive, intertextual, subjective and objective of the game.
Damiano Colacito was born in 1973 in Atri (Teramo); He lives and works between Bologna and Pescara






























Friday 13 February 2009

TRASMISSION #0: OLYVETTY

curated by Fabiola Naldi
From February to December 2009
All transmissions begin at 10 PM

2009 begins with the opening of nt art gallery new space at Via Michelino 33, and with a new collaboration





















Thursday 22 January 2009

Drill Down presents mauro ceolin art2.0

Curated by Stefano Monti and Anais Prebel Nuicci
nt art gallery
New space: via Michelino, 33 IT 40127 Bologna
T+39 3316435085    Skype: ntartgallery
info@ntartgallery.com      www.ntartgallery.com