COMPRESENZE
note per una fenomenologia dell'apparizione
A cura di Valentina Gioia Levy e Pier Paolo Scelsi
GAD Giudecca Art District – Space 02 - Legno e Legno 5 settembre \ ottobre 2020
A group show with Andrea Aquilanti, Peter Bracke, Koen Fillet and Massimo Uberti.
Despite the obvious diversity, the works and researches of these four artists seem mysteriously to coincide in the interest in what we could define "apparitions", that is, what manifests itself suddenly to the eye, which surprises by creating a short circuit in reality, almost evoking the supernatural . The works in the exhibition each offer, in his own way, a starting point for reflection, original and unexpected, on the concept of appearance as the "coexistence" of heterogeneous factors that manifest themselves, sometimes overlapping and sharing the same space in reality. Shadows, luminescent essences, transparencies, reflections and superimpositions have always been elements that characterize the work of Andrea Aquilanti. The Roman artist will create a site-specific intervention for the exhibition consisting of a double video projection in which the images shot by the artist on the island of Giudecca will overlap the shot in real time inside the
gallery. The spectator himself becomes the apparition, the ghostly presence that creeps into the work, as in a voyeuristic game of mirrors that alternates the pleasure of looking with that of being looked at.
The paintings of the series I Used to See the Beauty Now I see the True by Koen Fillet also play on the disturbance of vision. The Belgian artist reproduces a series of images of sculptures covered by a plastic sheet, actually referring not to the well-known artistic interventions of Christo and Jeanne-Claude but to a personal experience in which he found himself during a journey in front of a series of monuments not usable for work in progress. Fillet works exclusively in the pictorial field and this series of paintings focuses on figuration and its negation. The roof reveals the true nature of the works of art, their essence as bodies extraneous to reality, existing on the plane of the immaterial before that of the real.
Fillet's covered sculptures take on a ghostly connotation, as if they were objects from another era and from another dimension, referring to Sandcastles by Peter Bracke. The other Belgian artist on display presents a series of photographic works made in the southern area of Egypt, almost on the border with Sudan, which focus on some architectural skeletons abandoned in the desert. Bracke focuses on the unfinished architecture, a symbol in this case of the exploitation of African lands by energy multinationals. The images of architectural skeletons spread from paper to expand towards building materials and objects, investing heterogeneous materials with their ghostly presence in an attempt that seems to mimic the disturbing effect of abandoned structures in the landscape.
Finally, the exhibition presents two light installations by Massimo Uberti who has always worked with light, often using it as an architectural element. Literary Circle and Ideal City are, in fact, two luminous circles that deconstruct the exhibition space, characterizing the visitor's path. Always associated with mystical-esoteric symbolism in numerous archaic and premodern cultures, the circle alludes to infinity, perfection, the absence of distinction and division, architectural harmony. Both installations seem to nourish this magical-religious value by associating it with urban-architectural knowledge and science.
The exhibition, which avails itself of the support of the Flemish Ministry of Culture).
Unfolding over the course of two years, the path proposed by GAD will reach its peak next May during the 17th Architecture Biennale.
Through exhibitions, conferences, screenings, performances, Living in the Beyond - Landscape of Coexistance will present a series of reflections related to space in its various forms and meanings: physical or virtual, geographical place and mental place, real, virtual or imagined landscape, intersecting with issues such as those of living and co-inhabiting, territorial uprooting and nomadism, confinement and trespassing.
The exhibition is also part of ARKAD, a project by KAD (Kalsa Art District) for Manifesta 13 - Les Parallèles du Sud, conceived and curated by Dimora OZ and Analogique, in partnership with ESADMM.
ARKAD includes numerous projects and a program of events spread in different cities of Southern Europe. In November ARKAD opens its artistic residency in Marseille, promoted by the Italian Council.