Riccardo Davola Corte at Primalinea Studio / Rome

Riccardo Davola Corte, In My Darkness Hours

A cura di Eliseo Sonnino Di Laudadio e Domiziana Febbi

28 Gennaio / 18 Febbraio, 2023

PrimaLinea Studio 

Via Giovan Battista Gandino 31, Roma

IN MY DARKEST HOUR racconta di un viaggio che inizia nell'oscurità di un’immaginaria stanza delle meraviglie: un luogo d'ombra, carico di curiosità inquietanti e straordinarie, in cui scene di guerra e figure mitologiche si accalcano reclamando ordine. La ricerca dell'artista principia nell’oscurità caotica della mente - luogo capace di grande ostilità, prigione inespugnabile in cui la certezza è un'illusione e la stabilità non esiste - dove ciò che ora incanta, dopo potrebbe turbare (e viceversa). Il percorso introspettivo che intraprende è illuminato dal confronto con i suoi maestri, Tintoretto, Osvaldo Licini e Goya come stelle lo guidano attraverso questa dimensione precipiziale. Procede mosso dall’urgenza di comprendere e mettere in relazione gli opposti, di sciogliere il superfluo per far dialogare gli aspetti più distanti nello spazio tangibile dell'opera d'arte. Nelle opere, elementi antitetici si risolvono lasciando emergere la ricerca, fine ultimo del suo processo artistico. Il valore di quest’ultima è ribadito dall’adozione di un approccio speculativo finalizzato all'individuazione del sé autentico, mai individuale ma trasversale all'esistenza, che giunge in definitiva alla distillazione dell'Io dall'inconscio.

Nel corso del processo creativo, il sistema si riorganizza nell’opera mediante alterazioni cromatiche e scarti semantici: i materiali di cui i lavori sono composti, agave disidratate e schiuma poliuretanica, hanno comune genesi ma esiti opposti. Questo connubio tra natura aspra e sintesi artificiale esprime il contrasto di forze che guida il pensiero, il viaggio da un opposto all’altro che anima la vita. La putrefazione dell'agave, materia organica, è all'origine della composizione chimica della materia artificiale usata dall'artista. La schiuma di poliuretano, in netta antitesi col processo di crescita naturale, reagisce istantaneamente all’aria e acquisisce forme imprevedibili che restano statiche. Di contro le foglie di agave nel corso di un lento processo di disidratazione si modificano cambiando di conseguenza l’aspetto dell’opera.

Realizzati in meno di un anno, i lavori in esposizione, mostrano il risultato del percorso catartico che l’artista ha compiuto attraverso il costante dialogo con gli assunti che lo hanno interessato. La sua ricerca, diacronica e trasversale a vari ambiti della conoscenza, lo ha portato a rapportarsi con artisti del passato, sia in senso estetico che concettuale, ma anche a riflettere su temi contemporanei, su fatti di cronaca come il delitto Pasolini o su film ricchi di implicazioni filosofiche come Blade Runner (R. Scott, 1982). Le tensioni suscitate dai temi sono trasformate dall’artista in forme libere che raccontano di queste esperienze, in visioni di paesaggi interiori, scavati, erosi dallo sguardo che ritrovano la strada solo alla fine del percorso. Tutto il buio del mondo non può divorare questo momento/chissà dove, mostra la compiutezza dell’impresa, l'annunciazione, la scoperta del sé autentico, la riconquistata luce che dipana le tenebre. Le opere di Riccardo D’Avola-Corte appaiono qui come souvenir di luoghi e suggestioni straordinarie, disposte come in una Wunderkammer per racchiudere e organizzare la complessità del mondo, offrire suggestioni, per ispirare il pensiero.

Domiziana Febbi

Riccardo D’Avola-Corte (Gaeta, 1993), vive e lavora a Roma dal 2021. Ha esposto in vari spazi e gallerie, tra cui, nel 2017, con il caffè internazionale di Palermo ha esposto al MaXXI per “the independent”. Nel 2019 ha realizzato la sua prima mostra personale “You will never understand what your caresses leaving on me” curata da Ben Sang per Final Hot Desert (Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, Stati Uniti). Per Hyperspace Lexicon volume 4 a cura di Nicholas Campbell (Los Angeles, California) nel 2021. Infinite-Scroll al TraumabarundKino di Berlino con I8I durante la Berlin Art Week 2021. Ha preso parte al progetto Falconer con il collettivo I8I. Nel 2021 con Essenza club e Dharma collective ha partecipato alla mostra “Un soffio pestifero nel cielo nero della notte una candela brucia” a cura di Essenza club e Giulia Carpentieri e sempre con Essenza club ha preso parte a BaitBall 01 nel 2020 a Polignano a Mare organizzata e curata da Like a little disaster e Pane project. Alcune sue opere sono parte della collezione del Museo d’arte contemporanea di Alcamo dove ha partecipato con Natlalia Trejbalova alla mostra bi-personale “Il continente buio”.

An account of at Tørreloft / Copenhagen

An account of 

Dagmar Moldovanu, Søren K. Rye

January 21 - February 17, 2023 

Tørreloft 

Vermlandsgade 61, Copenhagen

Who opened the door to the exhibition space? Did Dagmar Moldovanu recognise you? Did Søren K. Rye still have cold hands? Didn‘t you say there was a snowman? Could you disregard the cold as you watched the video installation Anecdote? At how many bars did it take place? Wasn‘t it 3 last time? The waiter on duty while the film was being shot; do you think from now on they‘ll count down the remaining hours of their shift not on their fingers, but by the gaps between them? Does that make time go by faster? Do the interlocutor‘s hands inadvertently reveal that the anecdote has already been recounted 4 times? Inadvertently, like when you realise that you, during a conversation about emotions, have torn the label of your beer into a winding labyrinth, if that makes sense? How many dollars did she bring to New York? Each time? Does it take 6 seconds to travel from New York 5 years ago to an Eastern European country 80 years ago? Do we think faster than we believe we do? Do you think after 80 years of technological advancement we believe there are things that travel faster than human thought? Are we wrong? Why do you say you think instead of you believe? Sorry to interrupt again, but you know how someone will start telling a story, and along the way they‘re about to stumble into one of memory‘s holes and can‘t remember, for example, what it was they were searching for in attic of their building when they realised that their neighbour‘s mother had been living in the neighbour‘s attic room for 5 years, or which country he came from, the very convincing man at a bar with peanut shells on the floor, who claimed to be a descendent of King Solomon, and in their haste to finish the story, they insert another object or another country, as if these bits of information were inconsequential? And at a subsequent dinner they tell a similar story, but with different objects? What details count? The anecdote is, by nature, a monologue which does not permit external questions, but when it‘s repeated, at times with variations, it seems reasonable to believe there‘s something about the story that continues to puzzle the speaker; something that can only be reexamined through the spoken, isn‘t that right? Is the social aspect of recounting an anecdote as well as the anecdote‘s narrative structure a matter of filling in the gaps? ‘ The story doesn‘t say‘, is the sharp reply when you‘ve been too curious during the recounting of an impersonal anecdote, but what about the personally experienced anecdote? Why do we continue to tell anecdotes? Could you imagine the anecdote as long fingers weaving themselves into associations to the here and now, pulling the present back in time and asserting its own significance? And that telling an anecdote could also be a negotiation of the conversation‘s journey in time? Based on your account, I get the impression that Søren K. Rye is seeking to explore what other objects might exist in the space of the anecdote; what do you say to that? Could it be that next time you describe An account of, you remember the drawing of the snowman as a drawing of a butterfly net instead? Couldn‘t you say that whereas Søren K. Rye adds objects to the anecdote‘s vocabulary, Dagmar Moldovanu removes them from their histories, creating closed circuits of meaning that are rooted in their material specificity and in which no element can be replaced? And whereas Søren K. Rye‘s works can function as an open anecdote with countless variables the speaker can adjust according to context, Dagmar Moldovanu‘s installations are like a correctly recounted anecdote with a directional narrative progression that does not permit questions irrelevant to the essence of the story? The words count and recount are clearly linguistic relatives, although the prior seems to objectively quantify while the latter contains space for fiction, and I think they are linked as interdependent actions, where recounting a story becomes a way of distinguishing moments in time and thereby a way of measuring it; what do you think of that? 

Text by Eau Pernice

Alizée Gazeau at Gr_und / Berlin

Alizée Gazeau, Häutung

January 20 to February 5 2023

Gr_und Seestraße 49, 13347 Berlin

photos credits: Alizée Gazeau

An End to a Sentence, a conversation between Alizée Gazeau and Lisa Deml

Lisa Deml: The impression that settled on my mind when I first came to see this series of painting in your studio was that of maturity. To me, these paintings are a very clear and condensed expression of different lines of thought and experimentation that you have been following for several years. They seem to have grown through practice and now coincide with your first solo exhibition. How is this exhibition situated in your artistic development, what does it mean to mark this point in time?

Alizée Gazeau: I consider this exhibition as an opportunity to end a first sentence. I invoke the notion of a sentence, but you could also say it marks the end of a first journey. My work is concerned with process itself and I have the feeling that I could develop the same idea further indefinitely. In this sense, the exhibition at gr_und is also a challenge for me to put an end to this process. Even though I would never say that this process is finished, I have reached a point when I can let it settle down and let go. When the work enters into an exhibition space, it does not belong to me anymore, it is not about me anymore—the work has to speak for itself, as Louise Bourgeois would insist. She says that an artwork has nothing to do with the artist; it has to stand for itself. I find this credo helpful to navigate the tension between the intimacy inherent in artworks and the extrovert nature of exhibitions.

Lisa Deml: This is not only your first solo exhibition but also the first time that you work in painting and to this scale. How did you arrive at this discipline and format of 200x300cm? Would you say that it is the result of a measure of trust and confidence you have gained in the process?

Alizée Gazeau: I felt the need to not only engage the hand and the eye in the work process but to involve the whole body. It is a very physical process as I work on the floor and pull and place the hammock and the net on the canvas. And it is not only a physical experience for me in the production process but also for the viewer in front of the paintings. I wanted the paintings to be bigger than us, so that they create an immersive sensation that exceeds the human body.

Lisa Deml: Given the expansive format of these paintings, how do you approach the canvas to begin with?

Alizée Gazeau: The paintings make me as much as I make them. It is a conversation between me and the various materials involved in the process, the canvas, the net, the hammock, colour and water. With these components, I create an environment, a framework within which the painting can emerge. Of course, the work process is different with every painting, there are different layers and rhythms at play each time. But what characterises my process is that I organise a situation on canvas and then leave the studio while the painting takes form. I return to it when everything has dried and I can remove the hammock and net to discover how they have impressed themselves on the surface. I very much enjoy this moment of revelation because it is often surprising. It is almost like a laboratory where I arrange the experimental setup and observe how it develops on its own. It is a delicate balance between controlling and letting go. While the first part of the work process is determined by my decisions and choices, the second part is beyond my command. So, even though this series of works are undeniably paintings, I would not call myself a painter.

Lisa Deml: As you mentioned the idea of the skin, this takes us to the title of the exhibition—Häutung. This notion of skinning seems to resonate on so many levels with your artistic practice, with the paintings themselves and their aesthetic impression, as well as with your work process and development as an artist. How do you relate the idea of Häutung to your practice?

As my work is concerned with the process itself, it is strongly connected to the concept of metamorphosis. For me, the process of printing relates to a continuous struggle to come to terms with the perpetual evolution and movement in which we are all implicated. Printing or imprinting are ancestral practices, ways to experience or own existence, for instance through handprints in stone or fossils. I had already produced prints with different found objects from the environment when I found the fishing net. It reminded me of fish skin itself—an interesting paradox, that the net mimics that which it is supposed to catch. The hammock is also a curious object that is allowing us to lie down and rest in nature, precisely by protecting us from the natural ground. Eventually, I moved away from natural elements towards tools that humans produced in order to enter into a conversation with what is called “nature”. In many ways, this is very similar to artistic practice, and to my artistic practice in particular. Both the hammock and the net are permeable and ambivalent between controlling or letting go. And once I have printed them on canvas, they become something else altogether and take on a second life.

(…)