Giulia Cenci, Michael Dean and Jorge Peris
Dec 17 – 2021 — Feb 19 – 2022
Flip Project
via Foria 118 - 80137 Napoli
Flip Project is pleased to announce the opening of its new space in the heart of Naples,
coinciding with ‘Art Days Napoli – Campania': an appointment with contemporary art,
four days of opening events in independent spaces, private galleries, and institutions,
taking place from 16 to 19 December.
Flip’s new location is located the courtyard of a building in Via Giovanni Paladino near
Piazzetta Nilo, in a 1950s noble chapel recovered after a long period of neglect.
In Naples, Flip Project will start a program of events with national and international
artists and creatives invited to interact with the space of the chapel, involving the
surrounding social context and the adjacent greengrocer “Ortofrutta da Gaetano” wich will
be partner of the Flip Project events.
As in many previous projects, Flip Project aims to engage a varied audience made up of
those who are usually interested in the artistic-cultural scene, but also passers-by,
students, regulars of the historic center and its inhabitants.
For the opening event OUR SLICE OF TIME TOGETHER, Flip Project presents works
by Giulia Cenci, Michael Dean and Jorge Peris. The dialogue between the works of
these three international artists will be accompanied by Allison Grimaldi Donahue’s
performative reading which creates a subtle narrative thread by relating the works on
display, the space, the audience, and by a Vicky K’s sound performance.
OUR SLICE OF TIME TOGETHER describes Flip Project as a physical and mental
place for unexpected meetings, relationships and dialogues with artists. The chosen
works confront each other in space and time, in a conversation that turns between the
secular and the sacred, between the search of stability and the shaky discomfort. They
have the porosity of matter, body, and memory and they are significant in the
relationships they tell and in the forms of affection they express.
GIULIA
F: I remember the period of our residency in Finland; the long chats in the fantastic
Kaapelitehdas - Cable Factory, the walks in the cold Helsinki but especially when some
evenings we looked out and observed how the ice and the humidity transformed on the
dock and on the glass surfaces. You were fascinated and I find this imaginary in your
recent works. Some years ago, I told you: Giulia, it’s amazing how your recent work has
transformed.
G: Yes, Stellina (that’s how he’s been calling me for years), I’ve let myself go, I’m
doing what I really feel, I’ve followed a flow.
MICHAEL
Naples, 2007, during the residency organized by Expòsito. The stone came from the
Spanish neighborhoods. On a black glass hexagon Michael had applied a photocopy of
an intervention photo taken at Porta Capuana.
F: “One night I drove Michael around town, we stopped sometimes and he sprayed
something somewhere. He created a language in Naples, made up of characters inspired
by geometric shapes, triangles, hexagons and prisms... Years later M. said: there ́s
moment when somehow the writing becomes a doodle, the doodlebecomes a diagram, the
diagram is informed by the words and the words somehow need to be diagrammatically
expressed as they need to exist in space somehow...
F: I remember Michael when years ago – still lost in exploring directions in my work and
driven by the desire to pursue a MFA in the UK – we had a great time in London. You
suggested not to think about making art, but to follow the flow of life and the motivations
that really push you to creativity; things that I then found very often at the Staedelschule
in Frankfurt.
JORGE
J: Yes, these pieces of marble were found during long walks with Ethra (the artist’s dog)
along the lake of Palmar, then for a while they participated in the vibrations and balance
of the studio and then passed into your custody.
F: I remember that you rub objects in your hands as if to activate or release their
energy... Did you pass oil on these, right?
J: Sure, sometimes in the studio I do rituals, small parties, I play the stones...
Artists’ BIO
Giulia Cenci graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, IT (2012), received a
Master of Fine Arts at St.Joost Academy, Den Bosch-Breda, NL (2015) and she took part in
deAteliers residency, Amsterdam, NL (2017). She lives and work between Amsterdam and
Tuscany.
Selected solo shows: Tallone di Ferro, curated by Eva Francioli and Sergio Risaliti,
Museo Novecento, Florence; Giulia Cenci, curated by Marie-Noëlle Farcy, MUDAM,
Luxembourg; Da lontano era un’isola, curated by C. Rekade, Kunst Merano Arte,
Merano, IT; ground ground, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT; Offspring 2017 - DEEP STATE, curated
by L. Almarcegui and M. Hendriks, De Ateliers,Amsterdam, NL; Mai, Tile Project Space,
Milano, IT.
Group shows include: Metabolic Rift, Kraftwerk Berlin, presented by Berlin Atonal, Berlin;
Prima che il gallo canti. Works from Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection curated by Tom
Eccles, Liam Gillick and Mark Rappolt, Palazzo Re Rabaudengo, Guarene, Turin;
METAMORPHOSIS; curated by Giovanni Berera, Paolo Bolpagni, Sonia D’Alto,Villa Olmo,
Como; Maxxi Bulgari Prize 2020, MAXXI, Roma, IT; Shapeshifters, Malmö Konstmuseum,
Malmö, SE; 15th Lyon Biennale / Jeune créationinternationale, curated by the curatorial
team by Palais de Tokyo, Institute of Contemporary Art,Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, FR;
Comrades of time, curated by Whatspace, Hardspace, Basel, CH; FutuRuins, curated by
D. Ferretti, D. Ozerkov, with D. Dalla Lana, Palazzo Fortuny, Venezia, IT; Hybrids, curated
by C. Driessen & D. Jablonowski, Lustwarande, Platform for Contemporary Sculpture, park
De Oude Warande, Tilburg NL; Sessile, curated by J. Minkus, CliffordGallery, Colgate
Univesity, Hamilton New York, USA; The Lasting. L’Intervallo e la Durata, curated by S.
Cincinelli, GNAM, Roma, IT.
The artist has been awarded the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel 2019 and was among the
three finalists of MAXXI BVLGARI PRIZE 2020.
Michael Dean (b. 1977, Newcastle Upon Tyne, U.K.) lives and works in London. Dean’s
work begins with his own writing, abstracting text into sculptures andimmersive
installations that explore language, the body, and intimacy.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Under the stairs and by the fire, Mendes Wood,
Brussels, 2021; Garden of Delete, Barakat Contemporary, Seoul, South-Korea, 2021;
The End, Fondazione Converso, Milan 2020; Your Text Here, Museo Tamayo, Mexico
City 2019; Having you on, BALTIC Centrefor Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United
Kingdom; Teaxths and Angeruage, Portikus,Frankfurt, 2017; Sic Glyphs, South London
Gallery, London, 2016; Lost True Leaves,Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, 2016. In 2017,
Dean participated in Skulptur ProjektMünster, and in 2016, was nominated for the Turner
Prize.
Allison Grimaldi Donahue (Middletown, Conn. USA 1984) is a poet, writer and translator.
She’s author of Body to Mineral (Publication Studio Vancouver 2016) and On
Endings (Delere Press 2019) and translator of Blown Away by vito m. bonito (Fomite 2021)
and Self-portrait by Carla Lonzi (Divided 2021). She has appeared in Another Gaze,
Prairie Schooner, Los Angeles Review of Books, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, FlashArt, Nero and
other magazines. She has given performances at Gavin Brown in Rome and Short
Theatre. She has been writer in residence at the New York Center for Book Arts and at the
Bread Loaf Conference, as well as an artist in residence at Mass MoCA and MAMbo,
Bologna. She is currently a fellow at Sommerakademie Paul Klee, Bern. She lives in
Bologna.
Jorge Peris, (Alzira, Valencia in 1969) and lives and works in El Palmar, Valencia, Spain.
Peris has made a name for himself by creating site-specific installations that challenge
the viewer’s senses as well as the conventional physicality of the gallery space.
Peris’ work combines different media and often takes the form of installations. The artist
operates with the given space and transforms it by adding or subtracting architectural
elements. He creates a new situation, felt as real, yet unsettling, in whichthe sensation of
familiarity falls apart. His work tends to widen the gap between emotion and intellect.
Whilst this space challenges the relationship with the viewers, the viewers question their
conventional perception of it.
Peris’ solo exhibitions include: Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (2020); Antinori Art
Project, San Casciano, Italy (2016); Magazzino d'Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy (2015);
Musée du château des ducs de Wurtemberg, France (2012); the Centro de Arte
Contamporaneo, Spain (2011); and Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Rome
(2010). The artist has also participated in group exhibitions at Galleria d’arte Modernae
Contemporanea di Bergamo, Italy (2021); Luis Adelantado, Valencia, Spain (2017);
Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome, Italy (2015); CA2M, Madrid (2011); the Fondazione
Giuliani per l’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2010); the Fondazione Sandretto Re
Rebaudengo, Turin (2008) and the Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo, Spain
(2007).
Vicky K comes from Cyprus and has been experimenting as a DJ for fifteen years, first on
the radio and then in various clubs. She’s studying electronic music at Bologna
Conservatory and she is also a music producer.
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Flip project is an artist-run space in Napoli. It is an independent curatorial project, a
platform for discussions devoted to developing models of collaboration that expand on
interests in contemporary culture and artistic practice.
Flip is motivated by continuous changes in location and spontaneous occurrences that
extend from the local to address the current milieu. Flip presents across a multiplicityof
spatial situations where discussions take shape as exhibitions, publications or digital
fragments.