MOTELOMBROSO presents Dr. Barry & Ms. Hyde, a group exhibition marking the beginning of a new curatorial format, under the name Adàgio. Conceived and curated by Marialuisa Pastò, this project will unfold in a series of chapters throughout 2025, within the enchanting setting of the “pink house.” Adàgio proposes an unprecedented and intuitive exploratory experience, one that grows and enriches itself chapter by chapter. At each event, the public is invited to take a ‘pause to inhabit,’ engaging in a free and immersive experience of both the exhibition and the evocative spaces of Motelombroso.

Prologue
01/10/2025 2:26:28 AM

Dr. Barry & Ms. Hyde offers an unusual opportunity to approach the works in an intimate and personal way. The journey moves between veils and contrasts, light and shadow, what is shown and what is withheld, the evanescent and the manifest, the given and its interpretation. A play of opposites that echoes the complexity of the characters and the historical/cultural references that inspired the title, starting with the controversial biography of Margaret Ann Bulkley, also known as Dr. James Barry. Disguising her gender identity, she challenged the patriarchal system of her time and was able to achieve a prestigious position in surgical medicine and the British army.
The reference to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde alludes to the duality of her existence, the separation between the “public” persona and the “private” individual, between the “official” and “secret” identity. Lastly, the inclusion of Ms. instead of Miss or Mrs, evokes its use as the feminine equivalent of Mr., ignoring the marital status of an individual and embodying a form of gender equality detached from the institution of marriage.

[Chapter 1] – Dr. Barry & Mr. Hyde
2:31:28 AM
(In the quiet flow of time, as the minutes pass, the world seems to hold its breath, while whispers stir the air with quiet possibility.)

This first chapter of the exhibition explores the nuances of self-representation and the deeply subjective nature of identity, both at an individual and collective level. Through the use of various expressive registers, the exhibition showcases the works of Jan Domicz, Ruvan Wijesooriya, Leevi Toija, Luciano Sozio, Simon Foxall, and Matteo Pizzolante (+ #SecureOurSocials featured in the exhibition). Six international artists from different backgrounds, who find common ground in the multifaceted and non-univocal representation of reality and perception.

The exhibition reveals the delicate balance between a position of resistance and the rigid stereotypes such as gender, nationality, sexuality, and popularity, opening to the opportunity to redefine shared spaces as territories in perpetual transformation and explore the semiotics of their use.

Traces of objects, such as books and scattered notes, emerge as silent actors in a narrative taking shape within the space, almost as if they were a living set. These objects accompany the works on display populating the environment, hiding in a passageway or simply in plain sight. By interacting with them, the works reshape their nature and embrace a new role: no longer mere forgotten and nameless objects, but participants in a dialogue, a rewriting. Their ‘new function’ is not just an aesthetic device, but an ontological reinvention. Ordinary things, extracted from their ordinary context and immersed in ambiguous and parallel energies, suspended between fiction and reality, softened by light and crystalline in the darkness.

Episode 1
Whispers of the Past
12:15:33 PM
(As the light advances, the space transforms, revealing the whisper of history that each object seems to hold beneath the weight of its past.)

— The diptychs by Polish artist Jan Domicz (b.1990), are made of portions of furniture from his family home and mockups sourced from real estate agent stores. This series of works serves as a tool to investigate the commercialization of spaces, drawing a parallel between the domestic and exhibition environment. The artist highlights how both real estate staging and art exhibitions transform the space into a “product” for sale, revealing the influence of market dynamics in the cultural and artistic context.

The artist work occupies a transient gap, an interface between the original context and the infinite potential for alternative readings, where the observer actively contributes to its interpretive completion by engaging with the work. Seen head-on, Dishwasher has all the characteristics of a real dishwasher. However, when observed from the side it betrays its nature, revealing the deception: a perspective game that creates a visual tension, challenging the viewer’s perception and making the appearance of a physical object coexist with its ephemeral essence, a result of a two-dimensional representation that empties its depth. In Baudrillardian terms, it is akin to a “truth that hides the fact that it has none.”

Domicz’s artistic practice goes beyond a simple representation of an object, it transcends the banality of the real data and blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality. His ability to give physical form to ideas reflects an attempt to objectify them, allowing the intangible to shine through the material. By creating new realities that are both unfamiliar and familiar, the artist plays with dualities and oppositions, challenging our habitual perception. In this context, Dishwasher winks at the polarity of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, where the root “hyd” alludes not only to an inner split but also to an ambiguity of equivocal and illusory senses. This theme permeates every aspect of the artist’s work, transforming visual elements into an invitation to reflect on perception and the very nature of art as a narrative device.

A process of mimicry that becomes a metaphor for how we recognize ourselves and the world around us. In this constant adaptation, our reluctance to embrace the foreign becomes resistance to change and evolve. While one truth surfaces, another remains in the shadows, ready to reveal itself only when we push our gaze beyond the reflection of ourselves.

Episode 2
The Gaze Within
12:26:14 PM
(As the outside world fades into silence, the gaze withdraws into the secrecy of its own solitude, where fleeting moments of exposure linger like ghosts.)

— Fame As a Process of Isolation is a video installation by New York-based artist Ruvan Wijesooriya (b.1977) that explores the theme of the gaze. The artist examines the multifaceted nature of a gaze through symbolic spaces, auditory distortions, and slow-motion visual blurring. The use of the blinding flashes of paparazzi cameras as the sole source of light, paired with the decelerated sounds of their loud calls during the 2012 MET Gala opening, shifts the celebration of success into a spectral isolation, an echo of solitude that emerges from the membrane of appearance.

An “I” that loses itself beyond the scene, immersed in a system of symbolic communication that marks a process of detachment: the suspicion of a departure from expectations, embedded in fantasies of identity, while its deeper nature continues to survive. The fleeting moments captured, stretched into a time that pursues its own evanescence, betrays an embarrassment, a disorientation that settles like pollen on the lips, taking the form of an uncertain smile. An “I” that resists the dispersion of meaning, refusing oblivion to its existence.

The cavernous soundscape amplifies the effect of estrangement, serving as a bridge between the two adjacent monitors, functioning as a flow that perforates the physical barrier, traversing the images and dissolving their separation. The aesthetic dialectic develops through a formal approach that favors duplication, with the discontinuous and blurred reflection of faces multiplying infinitely across mirror walls and glass panes. While offering themselves to the gaze, the subjects seem to elude the machine, the ultimate device of visibility. Far from the false promises of vanity, that confuse freedom with fame, we are confronted with the vulnerability of an apparently inviolable world. A process of distortion where self-determination yields to conformity with social imperatives, in a seductive game that transforms duty into something perceived as desired, while constraint masquerades as choice.
The perception of oneself, anchored to an imaginary that seemed stable up until that moment, begins to falter, bringing with it a sense of disorientation. It is like standing before a cracked mirror: the reflection is no longer clear, but fragmented, with pieces of oneself overlapping and becoming confusing. Yet, in this disorientation, there is the possibility of looking beyond the mask one wears.

All of this intertwines the precious fabric of experience, which risks to get lost in the fog of obsolescence. False securities take refuge beneath the bark of reality, but the more honesty tries to convince itself of its own truth, the more it risks contaminating itself with lies. In those faces reflects the unreliable narrator of one’s own story, transforming lived experience into narrative, under the carousel of a self-destructive manipulation of meaning.

An identity stripped of its uniqueness requires the restoration of the imperfections of self-awareness, those subtle details that conceal the deep truth of oneself. It is about tracing and dispersing the boundaries of the scenic space, to transcend the static nature of pure vision and access another dimension.

Ruvan Wijesooriya enacts a strategy of bait, references, anticipations, and expectations, veiling his intent beneath the façade of representation. He seems to want to show us an elusive humanity, at times evasive, like a shadow that vanishes in the unspoken. In the projection of inquisitive gazes generated by the crowd, the only face the subjects appear to recognize is the one they hide, yet still manage to identify in its surviving features.

The relationship between the real image and the translation of its reflective echo becomes more complex in a perpetual exchange of unspoken questions and revelations, probing the intimate and the private, rejecting yet simultaneously embracing the myth of moderation.

The work therefore invites reflection not only on what the protagonist(s) seek in others but also on our role in the process of constructing reality. Borrowing from Calvino’s imaginary, the artist creates a replica of an inner world that confronts the outer world, where the gaze of the other is nothing but a variation of our own feelings. The mutual interaction with the viewer goes beyond conventional consumption, challenging rigid notions of identity and objectivity, transforming the exhibition into an open work that does not aspire to a definitive conclusion and escapes immediate understanding. In this regard, not only the visual interaction but also the placement of the work within the exhibition space, where the physical space itself becomes an integral part of its foundation, assumes central importance.

When the thread is lost, when the center becomes elusive, the limbo of uncertainty becomes fertile ground. It is the suspended pause between two breaths, where what usually slips away is captured. In this space, identity is no longer a boundary but a moving map, an unexplored region that offers itself for discovery.

It is an invitation to decipher, to explore, and to seek new meanings in a world that reveals itself gradually, like an eclipse that always remains partially preserved in the shadow.

Episode 3
The Refuge of Shadows
12:44:28 PM
(And while the daylight still imposes itself shamelessly, a silent desire for passage prays for the shadows to begin gathering, offering refuge from the imperatives of visibility.)

— A shadowy zone that Finnish artist Leevi Toija (b.1998) explores by overturning the traditional dichotomous symbolism between darkness and light, reversing the usual paradigm that associates light with safety and darkness with threat. In his vision, darkness transforms into a refuge, a place of protection, and a collective act that defuses solitude, keeping evil at bay. In this context, darkness offers shelter, safeguarding the individual from social judgment and the pressure to conform to the norms imposed by visibility.

While limited to a static shot of a lighting device, the video image also functions as an actual source of light within the exhibition space. As the incandescent bulb pulses continuously within the frame, the shot remains still and unchanged. In the delicate soundscape created by Paavo Piekkari (APEAK), the soothing voice of an off-screen narrator speaks, with an authoritative and calm tone, theoretical inquiries on light and darkness. However, reinterpreting the finesse with which Isa Lumme outlines the distinctive character of On Illumination and Disposition, these statements should not be understood as absolute truths, but rather as an invitation to reflect on the semantic boundaries of the two extremes, raising the question: “Is it possible to free oneself from the structures and dispositions determined by illumination?”

The idea of “being in the dark” as invisibility connects to a concept of freedom: that of “not being exposed to the open,” of withdrawing from social control, and of living outside the constraints of society. Darkness, therefore, becomes a symbol of resistance to conventions, while light traps us within the surveillance system and its identification mechanisms as “identifies us, exposes us, and orients us”.

The paradox emerges in the statement that “being nowhere” does not imply nullification, but rather represents its opposite: as if not belonging to a place or a structure were the only way to escape social pressure and its constructions. The ‘emptiness of the present’, with its incessant need for belonging, appears as the condition in which the search for a sense of community or identity becomes the real abyss to evade.

The key words spoken by Alma Djelic – ‘invisibility’, ‘freedom’, ‘non-place’, and ‘nowhere’ – intertwine, suggesting a complex analysis of the individual’s condition in the contemporary era. An era in which exposure and control constantly threaten our authenticity and our right to privacy.

Episode 4
The Last light
5:30 PM
(In the stillness of twilight, while the window catches the last traces of daylight, weaving golden warmth into the room.)

— It is precisely on this delicate line, between reassurance and the unknown, that Dawn, the painting by Italian Molise-born artist Luciano Sozio (b.1979), is positioned. The window, as a topos, has always been understood as both a physical and metaphorical threshold that separates and connects two realities: the personal and protected interior one and the vast and indeterminate one. It becomes the place where the boundary between the visible and the invisible dissolves, creating a space of possibility, where the human eye can cross the limits of the everyday to explore the infinite, yet remains anchored to the safety of what is familiar. The window is not merely an architectural structure, but a passage that invites us to look, to desire, and to imagine the other side, constantly blurring the line between reality and representation.

The concept of ‘threshold’ evokes not only a point of observation but also a barrier, a limbo between what is perceived and what is imagined, where every gaze, whether directed from the inside to the outside or vice versa, involves a dimension of choice and perspective.

The things that elude us are always the most fascinating because they challenge our certainties. They are the things that evade our attention while within our sight, blending into seemingly insignificant details, concrete yet blatantly inaccessible, as if they enjoy being noticed only for sheer derision. At other times, they withdraw from the light of day, elusive, dissolving into the ambiguity of an existence we cannot fully decipher. And yet, they reveal themselves, as evident as a clue that traces the path to the mystery they hold, but at the same time, they deny us access, leaving us with only the promise of a truth we will never conquer.

They are like a window that frames the imagination teasing our curiosity, yet remains closed with the blind lowered just enough to let the light filter in from outside. We can only observe as witnesses its changing colors, that shift until dusk, always a step ahead of us.

Emphasized by the incidence of natural light in the environment that hosts it, Sozio’s work is inscribed within a dimension of camouflage, blending into its own manifest presence, immersed in the space that surrounds it and adorned by the projections of shadows that change as day turns to night. It echoes a concept that, in its extension, alludes to an image of ‘hidden change,’ ready to be recognized yet still waiting to be discovered. It implies the idea that curiosity does not arise from a visible change, but from what lies beneath the surface, where the distracted eye can only sense that something is about to happen. These places and processes beneath the surface are not yet defined, but their strength lies precisely in their invisibility, in their ability to suggest a reality that precedes its representation.

They tell us that this representation, just like the perceptual process, is never singular, but a continuous flow of nuances that changes according to the gaze that observes it. Every gaze is an act of self-representation, a filter that alters reality into a unique form, halfway between what is and what appears. Reality is not static, but fluctuating, and inevitably flows according to the observer, their desires, their fears, their being. It is in this uncertain space that the dichotomy between perception and perceived, between the real and the fictional, plays out.

Generalizations flatten this complexity, limiting us to a monocular view incapable of grasping the countless facets of reality. It is in the plurality of gazes and multiple points of view that the substance of what we observe settles, inviting us to a deeper and more complex interpretation of the world around us.

Episode 5
The Smile of the Invisible
5:47:11 PM
(In the dissonance of the balance between authenticity and fiction, irony is the anesthetic that intervenes.)

— The work of Simon Foxall (b.1983) contrasts with the symbolic determinations and mandates we assume in public life. In his work, queerness, an emblem of fluidity and plural identity, emerges as a paradigm of an aesthetic that transcends social rigidities, which, by trapping the individual in monolithic views of self, risk limiting or hindering one’s own most intimate exploration.

His characters move between vibrant imaginaries and dark scenarios, blending sacred and profane in a grotesque vision that reworks biblical and medieval themes, where the artist himself often becomes the protagonist, frequently inserting himself as a subject in his paintings. A distinctive element of his canvases is the clean chromatics, the lightness and freshness of the stroke, enriched by a strong ironic component that often gives the depicted figures a caricatured smile.
As an established criterion, the smile in portraits is conceived as a convention that standardizes expression, a code to follow in order to convey a certain idea of happiness or serenity, yet often masking subtler, contrasting moods. This rule becomes a symbol of conformity, a social expectation that dictates how we “should” appear, but also raises doubts about the authenticity of emotions. In his work, Foxall explores this ambiguity, proposing art as an act of fiction that reworks our perception of the real. Adhering to fixed formulas can trap art and culture in a self-referential loop, where the goal is no longer to stimulate or communicate, but to reiterate protocols.

The artist establishes an intimate dialogue with the viewer, where his work does not merely tell stories but challenges the very modes of narration, giving rise to a continuous exchange between order and chaos and questioning the perceptual framework of truth. Every character and gesture becomes an act of reading and decoding, expressing the tension between what is and what we perceive. In this way, art becomes a tool to explore and deconstruct the definitions imposed by public life, revealing a more complex and intricate reality.

Irony transforms into a critical reflection where the evidence is not directly expressed, but conveyed through a double layer that stimulates more sophisticated reflections. This approach creates a space where the obvious is not declared but questioned, inviting the observer to recognize it with a smile and renewed awareness.

It is as if irony has the power to unmask what is obvious, yet too often remains invisible beneath the veil of everyday banality. The interplay between truth and fiction thus becomes an invitation to reflect on the very nature of art: if it is an expression of authenticity, it is for its ability to evoke undeniable emotions and genuine reflections. However, if art is seen as a game, it invites us to reconsider the concept of “truth”: in a sense, it becomes a construction. Here, the real and the perceived intertwine in a dynamic exchange that urges us to explore how much of reality is shaped by our perceptions and how much fiction can have its own validity, inviting us to discover an art that exists in relation to its observer.

A play of references between the ironic and the sarcastic addresses the complexity of our times, in which the absurdity of global and social crises, such as pandemics and catastrophes, is reflected in humor that subverts tragedy. In this context, humor becomes a way to confront the absurd and, at the same time, a strategy to survive the anxiety that pervades the present. Foxall’s painting offers us the opportunity to reflect on these contradictions, blending the tragic with the comic, the serious with the frivolous, and creating a space where reality and fiction coexist in an uneasy balance. The artist manages to capture the emotional and spiritual state of our times through the monochrome of the unease that runs through them, returning the progression from a real world to an imaginary one. His work traces a path that transforms visible reality into a symbolic vision, bringing to the surface the deep intertwining between what we feel and what we fear to feel beyond the boundary of the apparent.

Episode 6
Memory’s Perceptive Landscape
6:05:42 PM
(Where the presence of physical space fades, memory takes its place, becoming experience.)

— Beyond the space of the apparent lies the investigation of Matteo Pizzolante (b.1989), who explores the relationship between perception and place, suggesting that the latter is a co-creator of the reality we experience. Places are not mere backdrops, they actively participate in the construction of the visual experience contributing to the formation of social consciousness. This perspective enriches the concept of place, uniting physical space with inner experience and connection to a collective, shared narrative and memory.

“Grey Matter” is an evolving series, currently consisting of four videos based on real-life events, all linked by the explosion as a central element. The incidents took place in 2012 in Brindisi, in 2016 in Dresden and New York, and in 2018 in Naples. Each video takes the name of the city where the event occurred.

With a background in Engineering and Architecture, Pizzolante has long been interested in the potential of digital images and the software that generates them as powerful tools to analyze, represent, and describe space and reality. In the video installation Grey Matter (Brindisi, Via Galanti 1) IPSS FL Morvillo Falcone, the artist, through a complex simulation process, reconstructs the explosion occurred in front of the Istituto Professionale Francesca Morvillo on the 9th of May 2012 that killed one student and injured ten others.

The explosion does not leave direct witnesses due to their violent nature, but the energy of the detonation imprints itself on the door handle, becoming the negative space of the hand and creating a bridge between the digital and the physical. Every day we perform actions through discrete objects often overlooked, like a door handle, which unites acts of separation and connection, standing as a synthesis of these. Although our perception of the handle is limited to its tactile qualities, it transcends its practical function: it is designed to fit the hand and symbolically it represents the bond between action and decision. Even when it comes to thoughts, ideas, or concepts, it becomes the allegorical hook that connects them.

In Pizzolante’s work, the news event fades away, as the artist does not limit himself to documenting but aims to reveal what usually remains invisible in such violent incidents. Without specific technology, it is impossible to observe an explosion up close, neither with human eye nor a mechanical lens, as both would fall prey to the blast.

We often believe that the quality of an observation depends entirely on the intrinsic characteristics of the observed object, overlooking the role of the observer. In reality, the tangible outcome of a visual experience emerges from the reciprocal relationship between the observer and what is being observed, an interaction that modulates and nurtures the perception itself. Pizzolante’s creative process, which starts with 3D modeling, allows for the fusion of memory and imagination, creating clear and detailed visions that then fade before the eyes of the observer. His works reintroduce states of mind and concepts such as slowness and temporal dilation, in stark contrast to the speed at which things manifest, ephemeral, in the everyday experience.

Episode 7
The Invisible Bonds
7:15:33 PM
(Beyond labels, only the essential remains.)

— The logic of universal belonging thus implies a collective awareness that goes beyond the division between us and them, inviting us to recognize that we are all part of a single web that is life on Earth.

Created in collaboration with Damj Association, Helen Lebanon, Human Rights Watch, INSM Foundation for Digital Rights, and Social Media Exchange-SMEX, #SecureOurSocials — ‘Now Boarding Air Anya Flight to LGBT Safety Online’ — is a recent social media campaign aimed at bringing to the attention of platforms like Facebook and Instagram the troubling reality that unfolds beyond the screen of our social devices. Specifically, LGBT users face daily digital attacks with frequent and severe offline consequences, including detention and torture. The campaign calls on these platforms to take concrete action to make social media spaces safer.

It is clear that social media can be a tool of empowerment for people worldwide, yet government officials and private citizens in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are using these platforms to target a specific group of users. Security forces have intercepted LGBT individuals using fake profiles and chats, subjecting them to online extortion, harassment, doxing, and public outing on Facebook and Instagram. In some cases, targeted individuals are arbitrarily detained, prosecuted, and tortured for homosexual conduct or “immorality” and “debauchery” based on photos, chats, and similar information obtained illegally.
Avoiding mere mechanisms of propagandistic politicization, the campaign makes use of an ironic and incredibly smart tone to inform and encourage users to download awareness tips on how to mitigate the risks of digital targeting. This video campaign is the result of a detailed report by Human Rights Watch, documenting the use of digital targeting by security forces and its offline consequences in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. It calls on MENA governments to protect LGBT individuals instead of criminalizing their expression and targeting them online.

The vocabulary supporting gender fluidity has led, especially among younger generations, to filling the gap in the linguistic and iconic narrative inherited from the urgent need for classification by previous generations and social structures. However, the proliferation of terms related to gender fluidity has then highlighted the risk of falling (paradoxically) into the same trap that it aims to overcome: the label. In this context, from a purely lexical perspective, the term “person” emerges as the most fluid and open, difficult to categorize, as each individual carries with them specificities that escape the logic of sectorization. A semantic device that reaffirms the universality of the inviolable right of every human being.

Abandoning the obvious is a healthy vision that invites us to recognize and value what we often overlook due to the complexity that surrounds us. It is an invitation to return to the essential, to a universal language that transcends appearances and differences. In a constantly changing world, re-signifying the obvious means reaffirming the deep bond that unites us inevitably as human beings and allowing this awareness to guide us toward a less opaque and shared vision of reality.

A basic reflection consequently follows: the obvious invites us to look beyond distinctions, immersing ourselves in a global vision where every violated right is not just the experience of an individual, but reflects our belonging to an interconnected world. Everyone is part of this collective narrative without borders and each individual experience merges into a global flow, into a shared memory that embraces the only gender that is justifiable to question: the human one. Thus, the obvious becomes a powerful metaphor for a universal grammar that transcends cultural, political, and geographical divisions. It invites us to reflect on our deep connection as human beings, part of a shared world, that celebrates diversity and affirms our common humanity.

Through what is obvious, we can rediscover a universal language of understanding and mutual respect, laying the foundations to build a world that, despite its differences, remains united in a single, great global narrative. When part of the population is persecuted, oppressed, or discriminated against, there can be no true freedom or equality for anyone. Freedom cannot really exist as long as any kind of oppression is in place. Solidarity among the movements that unite to dismantle the power structures that generate discrimination and violence is essential to building a world where it is not legitimate to attain a position in the world arbitrarily.

In the Space of Interpretation
8:00 PM

The spaces of the exhibition are configured as suspended territories between the known and the unknown, akin to a mental place where reality and imagination intertwine. Around the “empty spaces,” the exhibition raises the suspicion that the true content does not reside into tangible things, but in the way we perceive them and in the potential to embrace what lies outside of our given certainty. It is the beginning of a synesthetic journey that crosses the fine line between the visible and the invisible, where the spectator is not merely an interpreter but a co-creator of meaning itself, transcending the signifier and participating in a visual experience that invites deep reflection on worn-out concepts with blurred contours like perception, identity, truth, and reality.

In continuous dialogue with the viewer, the exhibition offers interpretative tools in small doses, allowing for multiple keys of understanding. It is an experience made of chameleon-like presences that hide in the shadow, floating on the surface of things like a black blanket that wraps the environment in an atmosphere both ordinary and mysterious. The sky itself becomes a metaphor for a hidden world, revealed only to those who have the courage to observe it from a new perspective.

The silent narrative of the exhibition, drawing on Nietzschean perspectivism, challenges the viewer’s perceptions, positing that there is no single truth: everything is interpretation, and every point of view enriches the overall understanding. The exhibition journey opens up to the implicit question: is it possible to conceive an authentic identity that does not depend on the influence of others’ perceptions?

Times of the exhibition seem to stretch, like nights that last for days, while curiosity becomes the light that illuminates the invisible. But a Band-Aid on a scar that struggles to fade only covers a pain that cannot be cured. It’s like an attempt to stop time that will anyway continue to leave its mark. The truth of Dr. Barry and Ms. Hyde, their ‘dual identity,’ cannot be grasped objectively but is the result of multiple interpretations, each leading to a different understanding.

This duplicity challenges linearity and objectivity, reflecting in the interplay between reality and fiction, between what is seen and what is perceived. Each artwork becomes a narrative in itself that unfolds in a movement that is in no rush to reach a definitive conclusion, where every perception transforms into a story disguised by an increasingly opaque and distorted manipulative narrative.

An exhibition that doesn’t seek to be heard by everyone, but only by those willing to immerse themselves in its depths, grasping its fleeting nature, like a fragile sigh in the relentless flow of time.

We travel on a thin line, between the tangible world and the imagined one, where reality becomes history and history becomes fiction. Every gesture of perception turns into a creative act, a reflection not only of the world but of ourselves, our fragilities, and our desire to understand what escapes and is ever-changing in our sight.

Text by Marialuisa Pastò

 

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Currently on view at the gallery until the 13th March, C’era una mosca (There once was a fly), Filippo Mazza’s (Milan, 1994) first solo exhibition, accompanied with texts by Ilaria Baia Curioni and sound design by Jacopo Gino.

C’era una mosca is a reflection on visibility, perception, and on invisibility. This sensation of an “absence of art,” contrasted with the buzzing of a fly, creates tension. You look around, searching for the source of the noise, but there is nothing which justifies that sound. And yet, there is something inevitable: the fly is there, invisible, but absolutely present through its sound. The buzzing becomes the focal point of everything, a kind of “sound artwork” that, despite its lightness, challenges traditional expectations of what an art exhibition should propose. The sound, the golden material, and the absence of context push the viewer to interact with the work, making the act of searching an integral part of the aesthetic experience.

The fly, whilst remaining a common insect, transforms itself into an object loaded with meaning: the gold, the buzzing, and its constant “disappearance” raise questions about how we conceive beauty and consequently perceive it. Its existence seems to depend on our listening, our ability to perceive it, and thus art becomes a matter of waiting, searching, and paying attention to the smallest signs. The very duration of the exhibition—a month—respects this exercise in attention, following the natural life cycle of a fly. In this interplay between visible and invisible, presence and absence, the exhibition is not just a visual experience but also a sonic, interactive, and perhaps even emotional one, where the value of the work lies not only in its aesthetic aspect but also in the personal interpretation of the visitor—in their attempt to decipher that elusive sound that hints at something grand, yet is, at the same time, infinitely small.

 

“I enter distracted, the space is empty.
There is a fly. I hear it everywhere.
Wait, maybe in this corner.
No, it is not there.
I hear it again, it comes from the other side.
Nothing. I don’t hear it anymore.
Ah, maybe up here? No.
It’s playing with my mind, so small, so useless.
So annoying.
Bzzzzzzzz.
It’s me and the flycatcher, I know it’s the only thing that
can get me out of this loop.
I feel like I’m going round in circles.
There’s a fly hidden somewhere.
To hell with all these white walls.
Bzzzzzz.
Wait a minute.Let me turn the corner. AH!

There you are. There’s a fly.”           

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Lucia Leuci’s solo exhibition Il vero riconosce il vero (‘Real Recognise Real’) takes its cue from a little-known episode in Fermo’s history: a specific and sometimes remembered event, especially in local circles, concerning the defeat of Fermo’s troops in a battle between Fermo and San Ginesio in 1377. Legend has it that when the Fermo citizens attempted to attack the village of San Ginesio during the night, it was a young woman, a baker awake and at work, who raised the alarm with her cries.

The idea of starting from a dimension of defeat rather than always extolling victories, achievements, honours and acknowledgements may provide a valuable opportunity to reflect on the complexity of history and remember that it is not only made up of triumphs but also of difficult moments and downfalls which help shape the identity of the places we live. But not only that: according to Lucia Leuci, interest was certainly stimulated by the peripherality of this episode, the marginal position of the protagonist and the presence of bread – a food with an ancestral significance and recurrent in many of her works and projects.

The figure chosen by the artist as the starting point for the installations in the exhibition is a historical albeit little-known woman. A sort of ‘baker’s daughter’ – less disturbing than Raphael’s, but just as fascinating in terms of her authenticity. She was a local baker whose cries of alarm saved her town. From an almost forgotten episode in the town’s history emerges the determination of the female figure, whom Lucia Leuci considers to be endowed with character and a strength of spirit that is not commonly found in the male. This imagery lies at the heart of the intervention designed by the artist, intertwined with aspects related to the historical and architectural context of the city, such as its streets: ancient, worn, much-travelled and dirty, yet rich in formalism that the artist has managed to translate into images.

The observation of marginality, understood in its historical, social and architectural-urban aspects, has often been used by the artist to develop intensely visionary projects. Elements of everyday life, seemingly simple and easily overlooked, are transformed into figures and landscapes charged with strong emotional tension.

Il vero riconosce il vero is a quote from the world of hip hop, recalling an ethos rooted in the language of the street and urban culture, placing it as the key to the entire exhibition. This title thus embodies the principle that only those who are authentic can truly understand and appreciate the authenticity of others – a message that also finds resonance in contemporary cultural and artistic dynamics.

The exhibition will be set up in those spaces that are still accessible of the ancient church of San Martino, a twelfth-century building that once gave its name to what is now Piazza del Popolo. Its remains are preserved inside Palazzo dei Priori, built on top of the church in the late thirteenth century.

The Karussell_arte contemporanea project enjoys the patronage and sponsorship of the Municipality of Fermo as well as support from the Fondazione Marche Cultura and Fondazione Italia Patria della Bellezza.

Institutional partners: the Academy of Fine Arts of Macerata and the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino.

Cultural partners: the MACTE museum in Termoli, P.I.A. training school for contemporary art (Lecce) and Salgemma project hub for art and online magazine.

Media partner: Radio Fermo1

Sponsors: Savelli Ascensori S.r.l. and Banco Marchigiano

 

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Lucia Leuci is a visual artist who lives and works in Milan. Her practice is articulated through drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, seen as primary and instinctive expressions, archetypal reflections that transcend individual choice. In her work, the performative act oscillates between intimate manual technique and collective sociality, the latter viewed as the sharing and transmission of both knowledge and actions. Through the juxtaposition of contrasting elements, often chosen for their emotional resonances with minute details coupled with research on both artificial and organic materials, Leuci explores the themes of motherhood, contemporary ‘Creole’ identity and our relationship with the environment. Her work reflects on how the landscape, both natural and urban, influences human relationships and creative processes. With a sensitivity towards sustainable materials and the recovery of waste, Leuci investigates the fragility of the relationship between humans and the environment, inviting reflection on the ecological impact of artistic activities. The materials thus become symbols of a tension between the artificial and the natural, evoking both the vulnerability of the ecosystem and the desire to reconnect with the Earth.
Leuci’s work also analyses a society in which social classes and nationalities dissolve into a homogeneous aesthetic, devoid of precise identity, a vision of life marked by standardisation and economic contraction. Objects thus become pretexts for evoking political, social and sentimental categories, opening up spaces for reflection on a more environmentally friendly coexistence. The proximity and dialogue between the elements are chosen with creative care, while proportions and rhythm are charged with expressive potential, becoming tools for communicating the profound meaning of her artistic research.
Among her recent solo shows: Anonymous Encounters in dialogue with Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, eastcontemporary, Milan (2022); La ragazza di città in dialogue with Carol Rama, Tempesta Gallery, Milan (2020); Prendersi cura curated by Christina Gigliotti, Polansky Gallery, Prague; Family Drawings in collaboration with Zoë De Luca, Unit110, Chinatown / New York (2018); Materia prima, Fondazione Adolfo Pini, Milan (2017); Mamme cattive, bambini creoli, TILE Project Space, Milan. Among her recent group shows: SUPERNATURAL – In the Same World, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2023); Wind Chime Exhibition curated by Ellie Hunter and Laurel Schwulst, NYC, BAITBALL (02) presente by Ginny on Frederick, Polignano a Mare (2022); Galatine curated by Like A Little Disaster, Berlinskej Model, Prague, Body Snatchers (The House) curated by Like A Little Disaster and PANE project, Polignano a Mare; SUPERNATURAL – In the Same World, Museum and Science Centre Luuppi, Oulu; Endless Nostalghia offsite project curated by Treti Galaxie, www.endlessnostalghia.com (2021); The Monstrous Bouquet curated by Mireille Tap, Omstand space, Holland; Northern Lights curated by Something Must Break, SUPERHOST curated by Like a Little Disaster and PANE project, Like a Little Disaster, Polignano a Mare; Swamp Horses, Spirit Vessel, Espinavessa; Surrogate Dreams curated by Underground Flower, Perth, Melbourne, Warsaw and Hong Kong; Vauva.fi, Titanik Gallery, Turku; Imbroglio (or the ability to incorporate possibilities), Like a Little Disaster, Polignano a Mare (2019); #coalescence, re.act contemporary residence programme co-curated by Ultrastudio and Scandale Project, Museu de Angra do Heroísmo, Azores Islands; StickerSUV curated by PANE project in partnership with BSMNT, Spinnerei, Lipsia; Some People Are Worth Melting For curated by Ginny Projects, Alltwinau Farmhouse, Llanwrtyd Wells; #videotutorials curated by PANE project and Media Naranja, Plage des Goudes, Marseilles + AQNB platform; Assiette ou Virage et Dérapage curated by Something Must Break, Milan; Biennale of Future Contemporary Arts, FSC, Copenhagen (2018); You would like that we were not here. But we are too emotionally absorbed by the home sickness of places that we’ll see only from the windows of our Bentleys curated by Something Must Break, OFluxo platform; Trigger Parties curated by Siliqoon, Marsèlleria, Milan (2017); BubbleTea curated by PANE project, Milan; Cupid’s Clearasil Country Bumpkin, Portland; A night out of town Clima Gallery, Milan.

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ANN TRACY
TRANSMISSIONS
17 October – 21 December 2024
IMPULSE GALLERY
Haldenstrasse 19, 6006 Lucerne
www.impulsegallery.com

Harmony, form, balance, plasticity, beauty. These concepts, though seemingly distant, are united by a common glossary that spans both the world of visual arts and that of holistic practices. Art thus becomes a mirror, a tool through which to observe ourselves more closely, an opportunity to explore the human soul and open ourselves to change, to the evolution of our ‘Self.’

In her works, the American artist Ann Tracy adopts these axioms through a system of symbolic communication that also employs the tools of investigative dynamics — allegorical codes and research mechanisms — to go beyond the surface of the given reality. An approach that places the artist within the coordinates of an authentic and personal vision, one that not only does not elude but, in fact, encourages confrontation with renewed analytical perspectives, directly resulting from a process of observational learning. In this context, the suspension of judgment becomes the distinctive trait, capable of opening up to a deeper and more impartial understanding of the restless identity of our times.

The large-scale painting Adrianne and the Twins, a multi-panel work currently exhibited in the spacious and majestic halls of IMPULSE Gallery in Lucerne, dominates the scene with its imposing presence, evoking the imagery of Piero della Francesca, one of the primary sources of inspiration for the artist. His painting, characterized by harmony, geometric precision, and a carefully calibrated perspective, is here reinterpreted through a personal version of the famous Polittico della Misericordia (1445-1462), housed in the Museo Civico of Sansepolcro — a work of extraordinary mathematical precision in which every detail is measured with rigor.

In this painting, one of the most recurring elements in Ann Tracy’s artistic practice also emerges: a keen sensitivity to color that makes extensive use of gold and silver, present throughout her artistic production as elements imbued with meaning. These chromatics not only evoke memory and the suspension of different times but also serve as an alchemical device that transforms the work, imbuing it with an aura of change and transcendence.

In a historical context where society tends to devalue complex ideas, at the expense of a growing intellectual and spiritual impairment, the artist presents a reflection that invites awareness of the individual’s intrinsic ability to ‘enter within themselves,’ revealing an inner truth that dissolves layers and masks in favor of a shared feeling.

From this perspective, artistic practice and self-exploration intertwine with the search for self-awareness through meditation, yoga, and pranayama, creating a fusion of elements that is reflected in the artist’s works themselves. The mysticism that permeates Tracy’s entire creative process highlights her deep connection to her formative path, which was not limited to academic studies, crowned by prestigious degrees and professional roles, including that of university professor of Fine Arts for about 16 years. It was, in fact, strongly shaped by both a practical and theoretical path that led her towards new modes of perception, so much so that she became a renowned Yogi and teacher of Kundalini Yoga, Meditation, and Yoga Therapy.
In her professional practice, Ann Tracy has often addressed complex themes, embracing the egalitarian principle that all people are equal and entitled to the same rights and opportunities. A firm belief that, when applied to art, encourages a spiritual awakening aimed at discovering and nurturing what is essential for our inner balance, fostering the development of critical thinking in a world with a volatile temperament, yet sustained by the unwavering force of a vital energy that underlies all things, ultimately permeating the entire universe.

An art, therefore, in perpetual becoming, that does not yield to the vacuity of thought and is not afraid to explore the immaterial plane of human existence. In the very act of its becoming, it transforms the gaze of both its creator and the audience, who, through its presentation as a work of art, is invited to partake in it.

Tracy intertwines art and her private life in a narrative that unfolds along the circumference of a single continuous circle, emblematic of infinity in the eternal alternation of death and rebirth, as evoked in the work Fire Fly, created by the artist in 2023, where at the upper and lower extremes, a dual symbol of infinity (∞), also known as the lemniscate in algebraic geometry, flutters, representing the idea of “without limits” or “without end.”

Through the combined use of various expressive mediums, ranging from painting to sculpture and mixed media installations, the artist transforms her intimate and personal vision into a restitution that makes the whole observable and comprehensible. Her spiritual identity permeates the construction of her role as an artist, where every life event, every flicker of energy, becomes an aesthetic fact. The ‘aesthetic dialectic’ seems to be the key concept that best summarizes the artist’s formal approach to the sublime mysteries of the human condition and that skirts the periphery of our deep feelings, revealing their profiles in all their bare essence.

The pieces that make up the extensive body of artwork on display emphasize the duality and contrast between various compositional elements. This narrative approach is constructed through symbols, signs, and references drawn from both the feminine imagination and the natural world in all its forms. It delves into the artist’s hidden nature, exploring her intimate relationship with the world and the myriad relational contexts she engages with.

The exhibition path gathers the various visual stimuli of the representation, organizing them along a poetic trajectory that manifests as a vision of gentle and steadfast denunciation, unfolding through an “aesthetic activism,” whose intent is to stimulate a broader reflection aimed at imagining a different relationship with the planet and with the complex issues of the contemporary world.

Through a free style, made of quick strokes and contextualizing brushstrokes, the artist invites us to embark on a spiritual journey. Her painting, swirling and dynamic, unfolds a narrative that develops across multiple semantic levels, rich in references that intertwine autobiographical dimensions (it is worth mentioning the inclusion in the exhibition of a painting made by the artist’s mother), echoes drawn from art history (from Neolithic cave painting and African sculpture, to Philip Guston and the aforementioned Piero della Francesca, through the Fauves and German Expressionists), as well as from the geography of her personal life (which has literally taken her to the most diverse places around the globe).
Vivid colors seem to hover, almost suspended, in the pictorial space, coming to life on large-scale canvases, often made up of multiple panels. Here, the artistic gesture becomes a need for boundlessness, an expansion that crosses the entire expressive breadth of the composition, enclosed by wooden frames crafted by the artist herself. With this choice, Ann Tracy reintroduces her sculptural skills, expertly developed during her academic journey at Boston University, where she earned both a BFA and an MFA in Sculpture.

Five on the Floor is a clear and complete demonstration of this concept. It is a site-specific installation with a predominant sculptural component, whose arrangement radiates, as suggested by the title, across the entire surface of the room that hosts it, as if it were destined for that specific place. Bathed in light that cuts through, in the daylight hours, the glass panels the gallery’s ceiling, it seems to invite its poetry to a restorative rest, in the shadow of the caress of a velvet as enveloping as a placenta. Here, the art releases itself into sleep, at the end of the toil of its work, and, in its slight fading into a gentle breath, that faint glow opens the path to the passage of darkness, leaving it to a setting with an almost dreamlike quality, thus entrusting it to a renewed call of consciousness.

How is it possible to transfer knowledge between different systems and cultures? How is technology modifying communication processes, and how does the individual relate to the world?

Tracy does not merely linger on the threshold of the image; her purpose is to convey a message, exploring the aspects of lived experience to uncover the principles that govern them and give them meaning. It is based on this circular vision that the title of the exhibition, TRANSMISSIONS, takes shape. It restores meaning to words like “connection,” which have been nearly emptied of their original significance due to the growing and pervasive semantic reduction imposed by the communicative infrastructures of the network.

The title of the artist’s solo exhibition, rich in nuances, evokes cultural models of knowledge transmission, paradigms of communicative exchange between different cultures, and forms of understanding. It also suggests a vision of transmission as the equitable redistribution of vital energies among individuals. In a context where the imbalance of these energies hinders the desire for unity, Transmissions invites the possibility of reconciliation with a rediscovered meaning, offering the opportunity to finally experience — in her own words — “the unity we are in seeing ourselves as one.”

The entire exhibition path unfolds as a flow of migratory energies, leading to the synthesis of a whole, a space in which rediscover and reconnect with a lost unity. At times, this experience is transferred into seemingly confined spaces, where the inviting geometry of a vestibule becomes the ideal location for a multi-sensory, site-specific installation like They Never Died, Seven Roses. Here, the viewer is invited to pause, to surrender to a moment of rest and “slowing down” within a warm and enveloping atemporal capsule, whose almost uterine texture results from a refined collaborative effort. This project also takes the form of a publication titled They Never Died, involving multiple collaborators in the creative process, such as poet Amy Hosig and composer Marcello Toledo. His soundtrack for Two Piano accompanies the spoken word recording by Amy Hosig, a suite of seven poems that explore delicate yet powerful reflections on life, death, and rebirth.

In this scenario, artistic practice is defined by a synchronous relationship between the idea and its material representation, rejecting a predetermined chronological sequence and instead constructing itself as an open dialogue where idea and form are never separated but continuously influence one another. Art thus manifests itself as a permanent tension between what the artist wishes to express and the medium through which this expression takes shape, in search of a point of fusion: a balance between the concept and its vehicle, between the artist’s intention and the material that adapts to his vision without force, following its own intrinsic laws, until it reaches a point of convergence between what is intended to be communicated and what the material is capable of expressing.

Thus, while the artist explores their vision, striving to reduce the gap between thought and manifestation, they inevitably confront the uncertainties and ambiguities arising from the very process of translating abstraction into something tangible. This process concerns not only the resolution of a formal problem but also touches on an ontological dimension of art itself, where the artwork becomes a continuous reflection on existence and the way our perception of the world and our “being” intertwine and are revealed.

The artist, therefore, far from a reductionist view that depicts them as a solitary creator, asserts their identity as a conscious individual, living and acting in the world in deep connection with themselves, others, and the surrounding reality. Their practice thus becomes a privileged means to explore and understand this interconnection, where any notion of separation fades into a fluid continuum, and where every gesture, choice, or thought conveyed through their expressive mode also becomes a process of knowledge.

Marialuisa Pastò

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Playing with space and time in a liminal dimension steeped in estrangement, uncertainty, and transformation that perpetually oscillates between Eros and Thanatos, metamorphosis and suspension, Marco Vignati, by exploring the vastness of the tangible – sensitive and imperfect – world, creates a unique atmosphere, profoundly painful yet ethereal, skillfully suspended and detached from reality.

As in Jean Cocteau’s 1930 film The Blood of a Poet (Le sang d’un poète), the exhibition Sheer Pulses, while following a somewhat linear narrative, unfolds through a series of viscerally dreamlike, delicate, and enigmatic scenes that compel us to confront fundamental concepts such as the fleeting nature of time and stillness, existence in the world, lingering, and metamorphosis.

These are glimpses of existence symbolized by essential lines that, highlighting the elegance and strength of forms, carefully preserve suspended, voracious, and surreal pulses that deliberately defy gravitational logic. Through this kind of imagery, Vignati seems intent on underscoring the painful process that leads to creation – a deep wound far from healing, from which a slow and sweet blood flows, vivid and metallic.

In his desire to represent the deeper dimensions of human experience, Marco Vignati has developed a distinctive visual language that manifests through exquisitely elegiac stylizations and a vehemently corporeal sense of mystery and magic. The result is a harmonious constellation of emulsions detached from the paper surface, thin and fragile layers upon which he deposits the pigment of the print, torn like flesh. Insubstantial vehicles of a visual prelude whose very transparency reveals their defining precariousness. These skins are a memory, a recollection, suspended pulses hanging from imperceptible threads.

Allegorically speaking, they are not merely the skins of a human being; they are the wrapping of life, the world’s placenta. They are an intimate visual reflection, the polysemic mirror of reality – a mirror that, as Cocteau would say, is nothing but an allegorical passage to another dimension, standing as a portal, an alternative path of reflection, and a symbol of exploration not of the unconscious but of the rawest reality, rendered like a sculptural ritual, between reflection and distortion, illusion and artifice. Diaphanous organic materials, a cast of an imprint, a draped veil, a trace of something that has already come to pass. They are the sensation of what will never return, they are faint light, the warmth of an extinguished fire.

Sheer Pulses is the transition between being, having been, and what will be – a sensitive journey depicted through a strongly symbolic aesthetic that allows Vignati to combine movement and paralysis with the precariousness and intensity of forms. Here, the delicate reflection on time becomes arduous and tangible, a pendulum of flesh, an eternal becoming that leaves luminous traces of alteration, stories of indelible states, Callimachean whispers.

Text by Domenico de Chirico 

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Continuing with her reflections on regenerative cycles, the artist imagined and created DANZANTE DORMIENTE in June 2024, a wrought iron serpent sculpture over thirteen meters long, which coils around the central fountain of the garden of the National Academy of San Luca (Roma), following the invitation of Stefano Chiodi.

For Tube, her third solo exhibition at GALERIE CHLOE SALGADO, Lulù Nuti continues her exploration of these questions and investigates the properties of iron, a material she sculpts and transforms into a moving body, whose initial rigidity gives way to more organic forms. Her approach remains rooted in an intellectual and sensitive engagement with matter, which becomes a vehicle for a poetic language where the intimate merges with generational inquiries. The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Noémie Pacaud.

More broadly, Lulù Nuti questions the relationships between humans and their environment, and her work becomes a space for projection, where viewers can nestle and let their gaze read a landscape that is both gentle yet harsh, familiar yet chaotic. Her works materially transpose the rupture she identifies in the relationships between humans, their ecosystem and their time.

Lulù Nuti (1988, Levallois-Perret) lives and works in Rome. After spending her childhood in Rome, Nuti moved to Paris in 2006 to attend the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, graduating in 2012. Since then, she has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, both in galleries (GALERIE CHLOE SALGADO, Renata Fabbri, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Galleria Mazzoli, Postmasters, etc.) and institutions (Villa Medici, Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, Museo Camusac, Collezione La Gaia, Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna e contemporanea, etc.).

 

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Even if ambiguity can leave us cold and wide of the margin, these days you cannot fault someone for being bereft of a stable sense of self. He did his best to impress upon his interviewer the validity of his views, but there had been ample warning from multiple sources against it. He was the sort of character that could not be trusted to give a straight statement. They filmed him anyway because they needed the footage and shortly thereafter he became a viral sensation.

Unpopular method though it may be, sometimes something can be deduced if we start with the simple statement-driven facts. The trouble with this is that the details need to hail from a reliable source; preferably someone in direct contact with the event yet not overly invested; a third-party account for example; fact must be distinguished from interpretation. Here, we must pause to consider the role of partial truths and lying by omission. The problem is that the gaps between the statements invite interpretation, inclined as a mind can be to connect the most disparate pieces of information into a narrative of its own. I say “own,” but this narrative is typically based on a prefigured blueprint drawing from a past experience or influence whether they know it or not. People find comfort in the familiar even if it is apparently negative, and are never in full possession of their own thoughts. Truth-seeking and meaning-making always involves an element of unconscious bias.

A statement posed for deductive reasoning has a basic sentence structure and can disguise itself for fact. It is often too late when misapprehension comes into collective awareness; to go back to the beginning to unpick a “bad fact” at the foundation would unmoor everything built after or upon it. The real implication of doing this we do not know and for obvious reasons we do not want to find out. The result, then, is that there is a portion of people that accept what is given as truth, while the others that cannot accept it live alongside them. Of course, there are lots of variants and other stances.

It is technically hard, if not impossible, to say how people are apportioned, but the friction is palpable in the most ordinary of moments. When a squabble breaks loose over breakfast cornflakes, for example, or on a hot evening when national disaster strikes so the live news is switched on and there the clip of the to-be viral sensation is playing and a family member takes it upon himself to provide passionate, unwanted meta-commentary. I guess this is what they mean when they say we live in a post-truth world.

See below for related exercise.

From the below paragraphs, identify which sentences relay fact and which offer interpretation:

1. Elsa Werth’s Magic Stick series involves rough-hewn, painted wood batons, two of which are exhibited here. Poorly rendered on the batons are the ubiquitous banner graphics “breaking news” and “world news,” which we frequently see overlaid on live news stories, and have been associated with the phenomenon of live-update anxiety. The rather brutal and jagged materiality of the Magic Stick juxtaposes the seamlessness of the banner graphics that slide in and out of view, which also points to the union of enchantment and disenfranchisement. That they are displayed leaning against the wall imparts a sense of threat; the potential for the baton to be activated or weaponised. When viewed from another angle, the Magic Stick can also be appreciated purely for its colour, shape, and more abstract qualities; like a Jessica Diamond, Barbara Kruger or Ree Morton, for instance.

2. Peter Hoffmeister’s Phantom Nation (2017/2024) comprises a series of selected “document-objects” that take the shape of paper stacks. These were painted black then sanded back, revealing surfaces etched with details from declassified government files in The National Archives and the FBI and CIA’s Reading Rooms—publicly accessible resources that exist, in part, to satisfy the Freedom of Information Act. The artwork engages with ideas of transparency, opacity and the shadow machinations of centralised power. Existing redactions in the files fortify these ideas, but also possess a formal quality that we appreciate in an arts context. Its contents can be surprising; the file on Pablo Picasso, for example, perceived as a threat to national security for his association with the French Communist party, perhaps. The unknown reach and authority of the surveillance state is manifested spatially by a column-like plinth towering over visitors’ heads, atop which sits a single, unreadable document-object.

3. Elsa Werth’s artworks El Mundo (9 March 2020) and Le Monde (16 July 2024) issue from an ongoing series, wherein daily newspapers are transformed into atlases through a process of obliteration. The artist is specific about using newspapers headed with “the world;” the newspapers’ body text she then methodically covers over such that only the names of countries and oceans mentioned remain. The graphic framework of the newspaper is also kept intact, single lines that suggest the drawing of meridians and parallels. The result is an atlas or infographic that is shaped by the logic of supposedly global news coverage, an exposition of the locations repeatedly mentioned and the absence of those that appear to have been systemically ignored.

4. Peter Hoffmeister’s Withdraw Your Support (2017–ongoing) extends from his 2017 (Bill)board commission, a large-scale public artwork featuring a distorted scan of the White House on the reverse of the American twenty-dollar bill. The work consists of a 1960s-style briefcase filled with “sizzle cards” that will be taken out intermittently and offered to visitors for scattering. “Sizzle cards” are a guerilla street advertising technique that draws attention to itself by looking like a folded twenty-dollar bill that has been dropped. Unfolded, the fake bill might have read WE BUY GOLD to promote a mom-n-pop pawn shop, for example. In its place, the artist has printed the call to action WITHDRAW YOUR SUPPORT. Contrasting with campaigns around voting and participation, this messaging advocates its alternative: the use of purchasing power to boycott or withdraw.  

5. Elsa Werth’s artwork edition More or Less was conceived against the backdrop of the 2023 French pension reform strikes, though they speak of political shifts more broadly. Inspired by the reductive language surrounding the heavily mediatised event, a pair of dice engage their thrower in a serious but playful game with words. One die is sided by the words “more” or “less,” while the sides of its counterpart read “work,” “consume,” “produce,” “tax,” “pay,” “earn.” Converting the relative conditions of livelihood into binary terms and action-ables, the edition addresses semiotic power, productivity and the maintenance of life.

–Elaine M.L. Tam

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Born in 1994, Veljko Vučković, this year’s recipient of the prestigious Award for drawing from the Vladimir Veličković Foundation, will showcase the selection of twenty oil paintings of various sizes created over the past four years. The appropriation and transformation of film clips are central to Vučković’s work. Revitalizing information absorbed from films, the artist is primarily interested in creating paintings capable of evoking subtle associations with social and political events.The potential for unlimited reproduction of media images in Vučković’s artistic process serves as an endless source for further manipulation and technical processing. The creation process involves selecting, appropriating, and deconstructing film frames, thorough digital editing of fragments, montage, collage, and then transferring them onto canvas. The original footage is cut, transposed into black and white, certain elements are eliminated, parts are shifted, others rotated, frames adjusted, often altering contrast or lighting in specific areas, adding words, or making similar interventions. This so-called post-digital artistic gesture applies an archaeological approach in selecting templates that are meticulously reviewed, digitally reorganized, and materialized using traditional oil painting techniques. 

According to exhibition curator Nataša Radojević, Vučković’s works do not provide a wealth of data—their communicative language is multivalent. As a result, viewers are never entirely certain in interpreting the object of the painting. The fact that it does not stop at a one-dimensional message leads us through the deconstruction of existing to the construction of new dimensions. His work resides in a floating interstice between the original context and the potential for alternative interpretations, facilitating mutual approximation of potential conclusions. Thus, the artist becomes an investigator in the process of creating the painting, while the viewer, absorbing its content, completes interpretations. 

In his essay on Vučković’s work, curator of Nigerian origin Azu Nwagbogu emphasized: “The lens stands out as one of the most pivotal human inventions of the previous century, a tool that possesses the remarkable ability to capture, create, document, and archive artefacts of our time through cameras, films, and various new media technologies. However, what about the lens of the human eye, embodied by an artist? Veljko Vučković’s keen lens blinks and captures nuances from films, serving as the foundation for his artistic exploration. Vučković’s work is not fueled by nostalgia, but by a profound curiosity that meticulously traces the subtle remnants that persist today, archived within the movies from the sixties or seventies. He transforms this research into another art form—paintings. The solo exhibition “Wheels that Never Spin” showcases Vučković’s recent inquiries, offering a journey that slows down your absorption of his deep reflections on the passage of time. Who truly shapes history? Is it the unfolding of events or the individuals who partake in them? Rarely do we encounter paintings executed with such unwavering conviction and skill. “Wheels that Never Spin” represents Vučković’s exploration of an intricate dialogue that delves into the timeless progression of time. His paintings serve as artifacts of our era, seemingly spinning at a pace unparalleled in human history, yet embodying the enduring themes that persist.”

Text by Nataša Radojević and Azu Nwagbogu

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Matteo Cantarella is pleased to present “The next morning in the Industrion”, an installation of new works and the gallery’s first presentation with Danish artist Vibe Overgaard. Through an artistic practice that encompasses sculpture, installation, video, and writing, Overgaard’s work brings forth political and theoretical questions regarding the bodily, material and aesthetic conditions that anchor capitalism to the legacy of our social infrastructures. While oftentimes focusing on specific contexts – Overgaard draws important parallels to her own upbringing in a Danish industrial town, founded as a manufacturing centre for textiles – her work sheds reflections about the frailty of ecosystems, social responsibility and sustainable forms of organisation.

“The next morning in the Industrion” comprises an installation of sculptural works, some protruding from the walls while other modularly rising to the ceiling. The exhibition title seemingly suggests a sense of promise for a future, the idea of a dormant horizon of possibility: another sun rising, the inevitability of the new day, the eternal planetary rhythms cyclicly re-illuminating the world. The exhibition, however, is set in a windowless capsule which contradicts the same promise of a new day rising, thus evoking a sense of premonition and impending doom. The sculptures appear solemn and melancholic, staging the underground space as a capsule holding remnants of an undefined civilisation. Wading through uncertain times – be it in the past, future, or at one’s fingertip – the works collide somewhere between the humanity’s historical past and the advent of a technological future while rendering both equally distant and impossible to reach.

In her work, Overgaard deals with mundane and industrial materials, ranging from scaffoldings, concrete, bolts to timber, clay and natural fibres that speak to issues of industrialisation and socioeconomic disparity, hallmarks of the neoliberal aftermath. The ambivalent choice of materials, the simultaneity of internal and external structures, the
contrast between the organic and the mechanical, and the tactility of the employed means, are all deeply inherent to the artist’s practice. The circuit is also a recurring motif: the fibre that winds through the sculptures evokes the spinning of industrial looms, while also bringing to the fore the politics and poetics of manual labour against the standardised and depersonalised production that is the global industrial norm. For Overgaard, the thread stands a complex system of knowledge with existential and social dimensions that connect communities across time and space. In its endless spinning, the thread also epitomises the impossibility to conceive something radically ‘other’ – outside the circuit – when our resources – material, cognitive and unconscious – are exhausted. Addressing this larger paradigm, the exhibition proposes small-scale gestures of agency and responsibility – it reaches towards a more thoughtful understanding of global citizenship, social forms organised around the mutual needs of human bodies, communities, and ecologies. Though as the title suggests, the exhibition strives to imagine a way out in some faraway, brighter future, for Overgaard the space for an alternative is to be found right here and now, underground.

Vibe Overgaard (b.1987, Denmark) is a Danish artist working with installation, sculpture, performance, text, and video. Overgaard graduated with an MFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2017) in Copenhagen, Denmark and holds a BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2013) in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her work has been exhibited at ISCP (New York, US), Adagio for Things at Overgaden (Copenhagen, DK), Floating Projects (Hong Kong, CN), Den Frie Udstillingsbygning (Copenhagen, DK), Hotel Maria Kapel (Hoorn, NL) and with f.eks at Kunsthal NORD (Aalborg, DK) among others.

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Sarah Derat: Two-Hearted 

13 July — 17 August

“Deep inside our bodies, under 4 kilograms of skin, under 4000 miles of condensed ground and molten iron, another force is spinning backwards, from macro to micro and back, touching the core of the earth, touching the foundations of our constructed selves…

We are slowly getting out of sync”

For her second solo show at the gallery, Sarah Derat presents an immersive version of her seminal sound installation, RƎTRO/GRADƎ (premiered last year in Brussels), alongside a complex body of works spanning from wall-based silicone rubber sculptures to sound and video works. Under the banner of Two-Hearted, the transdisciplinary exhibition proposes an in-depth exploration of bodies, embracing celestial, geological, human, and technological entities as one. It explores what it means to inhabit a breathing and living body while spinning through space on a volatile rock.

The exhibition is anchored by the twin pieces RƎTRO/GRADƎ and the dual-channel video Turn Heart, Turn My Heart. Inviting the audience to immerse themselves in a large seven-channel 360° surround sound installation, Derat’s RƎTRO/GRADƎ delves into the complex dynamics between the Earth and its rotating core, which remains only partially understood due to its unreachable location. It is known to be a spinning solid iron mass that can move both in synchronicity and asynchronicity, faster or slower than the planet’s outer layers. Scientific data refers to the Earth’s core periodicity as a 70-year cycle before each dynamic rotational reversal.

In a strange and ominous parallel to our human lifespan, Derat uses the metaphor of the Earth and its core to delve into human experiences in an age of technological accelerationism and global instability. From macro to micro, body versus mind, personal to global, celestial to human, technological and back, RƎTRO/GRADƎ highlights tensions, convergences, friction points, and dis/harmonics between all these pulling, pushing, and rotating forces.

The work defines both a space and time where the synergy of this cross-pollination and hybridisation can take place, revealing through fault lines, cracks, and glitches the resilience and irrepressible vital energy of organic matter. While Derat’s written poetic narration is both spoken by herself and an indiscernible AI-trained custom model of her voice, the rotating sound composition is made in collaboration with her long-time collaborator, musician and composer The Radicant (aka Vincent Cavanagh). Blending sound design and field recordings (each rhythmical element made from recordings of volcanic activity), this sound piece led Derat to introduce performance as a natural extension of this production.

Seen in its fullest form, RƎTRO/GRADƎ becomes the focal point of an intense and riveting dance performance choreographed by Georgia Tegou and danced by Synne Maria Lundesgaard. Following Derat’s vision of rotational instability, the performance captures synchronised and asynchronised motions, the loss of balance, the rupture of a body—which split at the core—constantly moving on and off axis. 

Some striking movements of the choreography are captured in Derat’s video work Turn Heart, Turn My Heart, the uncanniness of the limb positions and contortions of the performer leave you with a sense of otherworldliness. Filmed synchronously in London and Hawaii, the two-channel projection also displays footage from the United States Geological Survey monitoring of the shield volcano Kilauea. Derat mentions watching the live stream of Kilauea’s 2023 eruption daily as a long-time companion accompanying her through the process of making her new body of work. In a reference to the exhibition’s title, Two-Hearted, the artist records identical moments in which both Lundesgaard’s body and Kilauea breathe and summon one another, leaving the audience to contemplate the physical parallels between both actors in this work. The fluidity of two-hearted bodies and states of being conveys a powerful expression of intimacy, in which sound, video, installation, and silicone sculptures are to be lived and felt as a haptic and corporeal experience. 

In a flickering dance between presence and absence, the artist continues to explore the physical envelope of human bodies throughout the works and spaces.

In the South Gallery, Derat hints at human presence using her signature sculptural material, silicone rubber. The tactile and skin-like synthetic nature of the material imitates the body, becoming a wearable garment for Synne Maria Lundesgaard in Heartfelt, while the monolithic Idle Nerve anchors the room. Depicting the volcanic crater of Nisyros Island (Greece) and overlaid with the first line of RƎTRO/GRADƎ, the work is a poetic warning, evoking a moment of stillness before action.

Derat describes this piece as both reminiscent of AI/automation as a watcher, ingesting all data we voluntarily or involuntarily put out to simulate (mirror) our organic processes, and an evocation of the predatorial nature of some organisms and animals, which go through states of idleness to capture their prey.

The only realistic—if yet to be defined—experience of the body finds its place in I Swallowed The Sun. The small video shows the zoomed-in medical footage of an eye sparkled with constellation-like crystals, turning the entire eyeball into a shimmering planet.

In the orange room, Derat proposes an intense yet intimate experience of sound and image as touch. We experience Izbrannaya, the sound installation of two lung-like speakers playing a recording of Synne Maria Lundesgaard’s performance of RƎTRO/GRADƎ in dead silence. Recorded with multiple mics on the dancer’s body, floor, around, and above her, Izbrannaya offers both a sensual and intense experience of a body that, in its absence, still manages to convey physical endurance, effort, and resistance. The title of this piece references the lead character in Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography for Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913), in which the “Izbrannaya” (Russian for “Chosen One“) is selected to dance to death as a sacrificial offering to ensure the arrival of spring.

In contrast with the eloquent yet non-verbal Izbrannaya, Derat presents You Until You’re Not, a short silent video on a surtitle monitor. Commonly used in live theatre performances to provide the audience with a transcript of the audio and additional cues, the artist uses its unusual 16:3 aspect ratio to display the transcript of an audio recording we do not hear. The artist’s poem intermittently appears: short lines inking the surface of constantly moving skin like tattoos. Filmed by the artist in a steady macro shot, the pores, cracks, and scars of the skin mirror the fissures and fault lines of the Earth. As Legacy Russell writes in Glitch Feminism, “A break, a tear, rupture, or cut in skin opens a portal and passageway. Here, too, is both a world and a wound.”

As a final act, returning to the theme of presence/absence, the centre circle where RƎTRO/GRADƎ was performed on the opening day of the exhibition now bears the indelible marks of Lundesgaard’s motions.

As the artist suggests at the end of her sound installation, “We are volcanoes, broken pieces of fire cascading down, catching up to the speed of sound. Listen, what is broken can be fused again.” we are traces, ourselves left and dispersed around the space of the gallery. This glitching, this sliding and slipping of our states, emphasises once again the fluidity of our nature, stretched across physical and digital embodiments.

Sarah Derat was born in Paris in 1984 and now lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include A Wounded Matrix, EinaIdea/CulturaUPV, Valencia (2024); MIART, Milan (2024); RETRO/GRADE, Super Dakota, Brussels (2023); Sónar+D, Barcelona (2021); Liste Showtime, Liste Art Fair, Basel (2020); I’m verses, Super Dakota, Brussels (2020); She Who Loves Silence, Castor, London (2019).

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Antonio’s paintings exist within psychological landscapes as possible myths. Unafraid to show the leakages between cultural and personal narratives, they favor an intuitive erotica and mythological conspiracy. His body of work develops around considerations of religion, reality and myth, relying on the use of archetypal iconography, transparency and color.

The paintings meditate on the sacredness of wilderness, engaging with play, blasphemy and imagination as moments related to the honesty of attempts; and to the potential honesty of paint. Sometimes upside down, other times lengthened into their unavoidable sensuality, the figures he offers are mirrored and multifaceted, they ripple and refract like water in a boat.

The way paint is applied sometimes mimics the dense thicket of a jungle, where one eventually arrives to encounter a grotesque ape feeding on its genetic ancestry or the phallic posture of a palm tree. Through layers of hyper-liquid mediums and the patient unraveling of saturated primary colors, the paintings conjure a muddy marsh that powerfully interlaces probing and revealing.

Antonio’s deliberate exposures disclose the similarities between our seemingly unlike nature and trick us into understanding – (or at least relating). I remember him explaining to me in his studio the anthropomorphism of his characters, standing in front of one of his paintings for “size reference”, arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross.

– Giorgia Alliata

 

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