January 31 – 30 March 2019
CAR DRDE
Manifattura delle Arti
Via Azzo Gardino 14/a
IT - 40122, Bologna
On his second solo exhibition at the gallery, David Casini presents a series of unpublished sculptures on the
theme of landscape.
His native Tuscany is the centre of his world but instead of its panoramic views known all over the world he
focuses on places where the gaze does not usually stop, the ones which are likely to be forgotten.
Following precise perspective geometries, photographs of these rather common territories, taken with a mobile
phone, are placed on perforated aluminium surfaces and tempered crystal screens used to protect
smartphones and tablets. Once locked and suspended, digital images acquire a quality far from the transience
to which we are used to, a relevance that they probably do not deserve.
A national route at the sunset, an old water bottling plant, a gas pipeline, scrapped posters, a sign board with
the inscription "Nirvana”, which has nothing to do with the Buddhist doctrine, but simply indicates a club in the
Valdarno.
The two-dimensional landscapes, reproduced on supports strongly temporally connoted like the models of the
digital devices to which they adapt, dialogue in an alienating, almost surreal way, with some enigmatic objects
that gravitate inside the sculpture space. These shells, modelled on organic and mineral elements, are like still
life representation, suspended above carved wooden boards that remind us of the flooring of the exhibition halls
of some important contemporary art museums.
Landscape, still life, architecture, and at last, museum: it is no coincidence that this light and little universe that
contains everything is guarded and protected by a glass case that is freestanding, and becomes at the same
time a container and sculptural structure. Like celestial bodies, each sculpture dialogues with the other, but it is
at the same time independent and autonomous, in a perfect state of balance between frozen passions
and senses, beyond any rational thought. Nirvana.
David Casini b. 1973, Montevarchi, Tuscany, Italy. Actually he lives and works in Bologna.
The artist works with sculpture and site-specific installations. He has exhibited in personal exhibitions at CAR
DRDE Bologna, Plutschow Gallery, Zurich; MAR Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Ravenna; Analix
Forever Gallery, Geneve; T293 Naples. He has participated in important collective exhibitions, including
Panorama. Approdi e derive del paesaggio in Italia Fondazione del Monte, Bologna; Premio Lissone at MAC
Contemporary Art Museum, Lissone; Exodus Station at the Museum Carlos Machado Ponta Delgada, Azores;
The 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art; Oceanomania Villa Paloma, Nouveau Musée National de
Monaco, Principality of Monaco; The Mediterranean Approach (Zenobio’s Palace, Venice; MAC Museum of
Contemporary Art, Marseilles; SESC Pinheiros, Sao Paulo); Celebration Museum Alex Mylona - Macedonian
Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Oltre lo specchio Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Belgrade; Nouvelle vague
Villa Noailles Hyeres, France; Focus on Contemporary Italian Art MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art Bologna;
Nothing but sculpture XII Biennale Internazionale Carrara.