Sound poetry is essentially an artistic expression in which the voice, both spoken and written, plays a fundamental role. It has a long history behind it, dating back to the italian and russian futurists, but also to Dada and Apollinaire. Henri Chopin (1922–2008) was one of its most important exponents. In his work, visual, experimental, methodological and aesthetic considerations come together to give life to an art form that cannot be neatly categorized. Throughout the course of his long career he created dactylo-poèmes, composed music out of echoes, reverberations and tempo moderators, founded magazines, published vinyls, directed films and collaborated with artists such as William Bur ... more
January 28, 2012 - 10.00 pm - 3.00 am Fanfulla 101 - Via Fanfulla Da Lodi 101 - Rome
“Dreamachine / Beyond Digital Mix” is a C60 tape released by Palm Wine after a trip to Morocco attending at theMaster Musicians of Joujouka Brian Jones Festival 2009. The side A contains Dreamachine - a 30 min mix by Palm Wine made out of field recordings collected during the three days festival and in Tangier souk. The side B is an exclusive mix done by Dj /rupture and Maga Bo, part of their project Beyond Digital - Morocco, which combines different musical styles: from autotuned moroccan chaabi and traditional Andes song to mexican tribal guarachero, and so on; the mix include also an unreleased track by Maga Bo featuring K-Libre. The tape is a limited edition of 350 hand numbered copies. In occasion of the release party Palm Wine Dj set and Dj Iron Bunda will perform.
Here is a text by Simone Bertuzzi / Palm Wine about the story beyond the tape.
opening: friday 27 January 2012 from 11am till 8pm January 28, 2012 - January 27, 2013 Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico - Piazza di Spagna 31, 00187 Rome
Friday January 27th at House-museum Giorgio e Isa de Chirico opens the exhibition-project D’après Giorgio, conceived and curated by Luca Lo Pinto. Several Italian and international artists of different generations are invited to dialogue with the works, the objects and the architecture of Giorgio de Chirico’s House-museum.
The show will evolve within the space of a year and involves artists intentionally heterogeneous in their generation, poetics and stylistic research: Alek O., Darren Bader, Nina Beier, Carola Bonfili, Benny Chirco, Giulio Frigo, Martino Gamper, Paul Armand Gette, Mino Maccari, Tobias Madison & Kaspar Müller, Marcello Maloberti, Carlo Mollino, Momus, Olaf Nicolai, Henrik Olesen, Luigi Ontani, Nicola Pecoraro, Emilio Prini, Dan Rees, Izet Sheshivari, Alexandre Singh, John Stezaker, Luca Trevisani, Luca Vitone, Raphäel Zarka and upcoming guests.
The exhibited works - installations, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs - are realized specifically for the suggestive spaces of the house where de Chirico had lived in the last thirty years of his life, situated on the top three floors of the 17th century Palazzetto dei Borgognoni, in the centre of what was considered the cultural and artistic centre of the city since XVII century. Like other famous house museums like the Mario Praz Museum, the Soane Museum and the Freud Museum, also de Chirico’s house stimulates and brings into play concepts such as portrait, memory, collection, public/private. Whereas on one hand the pictorial, graphic and sculptural works witness de Chirico’s lively artistic activity, on the other hand the decoration and the objects in the house reveal his more intimate and personal side.
In such a context the artists have been invited to contribute with non-invasive works, which are able to dialogue with the space by merging with it, with the intention to create various and multiple levels, narrative and interpretative. “D’après Giorgio intends to create a second level of interpretation of the house for people who come here and offer a new perspective on de Chirico’s figure, thanks to a dialogue with contemporary artists” - explains Luca Lo Pinto - “The title of the show refers to the famous ‘d’après’ of de Chirico himself and is a way of paying homage to a key figure of the twentieth century avant-garde whose influence on the younger generations still keeps up today. At the same time the exhibition is an opportunity to introduce the house/museum to a wider public. The idea is to create a long story where the art works function as chapters in order to produce a narration at the same time expanded and frenetic, didactic and evasive, intimate and conceptual”.
Opening January 20th, 2012 6-8pm
Bortolami - 520 West 20th Street - New York
The first work, “The Improbability of Intentionally Creating Shock”, is comprised of four individually presented elements constituting an elaborate machine. The artist confronts issues of success and failure, and initiates a conversation about the nature of “shock” by literally attempting to “shock” the audience. The primal intent of the work involves one person, the artist, touching another, the viewer: an electrical and biological exchange of energy. The first element is an exaggerated rubber band acting as power supply and storage of energy. Then there is the anchoring system that fixes the machine to a stable point within the space. The center piece of the apparatus is a 200-pound solid-steel chrome-plated square wheel. The final element is the point at which static electricity interacts with the observer, creating a tickling mild zap, or simply the sense of anticipation. The shock is merely implied and not made explicit, derived from physical form and phenomenon, or lack thereof.
January 21 – February 18, 2012 Wunderkammern - Via Gabrio Serbelloni 124 - Rome
On show in Rome from 21st January at Wunderkammern, where he is making his first appearance in Italy, the young French artist Ludo is one of the most innovative and promising on the urban art scene. He has left his mark in major cities throughout the world (Paris, London, Zurich, Oslo, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago), with surreal and bewildering works that are perfectly integrated with the context in which he places them.
Ludo’s creatures emerge from reassuring greyscale images blended with acid green that is poured onto paper, sending out a message of humility for contemporary society. Elegant and vindictive, the artist’s creations belong in fact to the series Nature’s Revenge and Bugs: plants and insects drawn with botanic precision, which have evolved into mechanical, chemical and technological hybrids as a way of defending themselves against people’s aggression.
opening January 17 - 7 pm
until February 25 Frutta - Via della Vetrina, 9 - Rome
Frutta, a new contemporary art gallery in Rome, opens this evening with its inaugural exhibition, The Museum Problem curated by Chris Fitzpatrick.
The Museum Problem is titled after a peculiar “visibility exercise,” wherein computational geometry is used to determine the least amount of security guards needed to keep watch over the largest area of a gallery (and the works it contains). Frutta is not a museum, nor is it the size of one. With works by more than twenty international artists densely installed within the two levels of the gallery, solving “the museum problem” is not the point. It is the line.
January 12 – March 3, 2012 Ex Elettrofonica, Vicolo Sant’ Onofrio 10 - Rome
The enquiry of Stefano Minzi (born in Milan in 1976 and living and working in Berlin) concentrates principally on two seams: one, personal and family memory; the other, blatantly political. The starting point is always thephotograph, whether it be taken from a family album or ‘stolen’ from media like televison or the Internet. The photographic image is then transferred onto canvas or paper through a planographic printing whose matrix, made of paper and so perishable, contradicts in its making the basic principle of engraving; that is, its seriality.
To the media icons and family images, Minzi has recently added a third element, which pervades each of his works: astrology and the different symbolic meanings connected with colours and forms.
