The fourth and last appointment in Milan of the Draftsmen’s Fest completes the musical program that began on 28 March, with a new display and live set by the visual artists Linus Bill & Adrien Horni and the sound artist Lorenzo Senni. Together for the first time, the three artists will activate a device that expands the idea of specificity of the medium. Senni will mix his background – based on noise and digital music – with analysis of the stylemes and archetypes of trance/hard trance music, combined with an investigation of the Hardstyle genre, the dance movement in vogue during the 2000s on the European clubbing circuit. Starting with the same musical references, Linus Bill & Adrien Horni, the Swiss duo, both born in 1982, will develop a wall painting inspired and influenced by the musical subgenre, interpreting the visual display that will accompany the musical performance of Lorenzo in an abstract, personal way.
Draftsmen’s Fest is a display in progress that associates drawing – seen as direct gestural expression – with the production of sound. During each of the 4 events of the program in Milan, projects will be presented by Swiss and international artists and musicians, specially developed for the Swiss Institute in Milan.
Previous appointments: #1 Giorgio Di Salvo feat. Primitive Art (28 March); #2 Lorenzo Bernet feat. Jan Vorisek (19 April); #3 Dennis Tyfus vs Canedicoda (3 May).
Another part of the project, totally new, will take place of the Istituto Svizzero di Roma in June, as part of the program of the Secondo Congresso dei Disegnatori (10 May – 30 June, Istituto Svizzero di Roma and other venues).

Draftsmen’s Fest examines the syncretic relationship between drawn imagery and sound, with particular focus on the intimate, confidential rapport that happens when the spectator is engaged in a frontal way: in a literal sense, and as a metaphor of the immediate impact the sound/image pairing can bring about. The artists and musicians invited to participate return to a practice that puts sound and sign into direct relation, full of mutual exchanges and references. This practice comes from a shared source of inspiration, namely the so-called Providence school and the successive episodes in the late 1990s and early 2000s of what was to become the symbolic place of a transnational movement, from the East Coast to the West Coast, Canada and Europe, by way of Japan: Fort Thunder, an abandoned industrial complex in Providence (Rhode Island, USA), occupied until 2001 by avant-garde musicians and artists, including Brian Ralph, Jim Drain, Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendale of Lighting Bolt, and Hisham Akira Bharoocha of Black Dice.
Artists who straddle the settings, places, persons and project that, over time, have consolidated on the international cultural scene: starting with this scenario, Draftsmen’s Fest attempts to reveal a precise expressive hemisphere, occupying the spaces of the Swiss Institute in Milan with sound and signs.

Istituto Svizzero di Roma sede di Milano – via Vecchio Politecnico 3
22 may, 2013 – h 22 pm

Giorgio Ciam, Sulla pelle, A Palazzo Gallery

On 9th May 2013 A Palazzo Gallery, in collaboration with the Estate of Giorgio Ciam, will present the solo show GIORGIO CIAM – Sulla pelle, curated by Elena Re.
The idea behind the exhibition is to highlight some essential moments in the career of Giorgio Ciam, an artist who used photography to delve into his own existential dimension, starting with work on the skin, the face and his own body. The exhibition presents a wide selection of works from the Giorgio Ciam archives that focus on the expressive research of an author who was involved in international Body Art in the 1970s and continued in the ’80s and ’90s to experiment with photography, analysing his own identity, with highly topical and anticipatory results. To this end, on display are important photographic works forming the heart of this research, as well as hitherto unseen works in which the photographic medium gives way to drawing, collage and sculpture. It is an excellent opportunity to discover the wealth and novelty of an entire expressive journey, viewed in its many facets.
As the title of one of his early works of transformation, Sulla pelle is the starting point of Giorgio Ciam’s inner journey, and yet is also the place from which to set off again to retrace his own steps today. Ciam uses his own body as a screen, as a changing plane of projection. What he offers with his work is a faithful reflection of a complex, labyrinthine identity that is continually fathomed, reprocessed, yet never fully determined. Placing himself in front of the lens, though working within the framework of Behaviour, Ciam depicts a particular situation – a performance without an audience. Because he will only assume relations with his audience through photographic work. So, by using the technique of photomontage, he can thus transform himself and become another. Similarly, by blurring the image, he can annul himself to reappear in the figure of his son. Or, by stratifying numerous images within the same photograph or cropping, deleting and using collage or décollage, he can see and re-see himself, formulating the story of himself and his identity. Caught up in a similar vortex, at times drawing and sculpture too appear as opportunities for assessment and analysis, expressions of a multi-faceted and endless research. Giorgio Ciam’s work thus displays multiple content, since what the author delivers to his audience is a written report of his own self-analysis. On closer inspection, however, this operation is only apparently self-reflexive since what Ciam calls into play is the human condition, the awareness of time – his own life history as a vehicle for other possible stories. So much so that his experimenting with the body is revealed as a clear expression of post-modern thought, staging and debating still open philosophical issues.

Giorgio Ciam was born in 1941 in Pont-Saint-Martin, near Aosta. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, he conducted anthropological research using photography that does not disdain a certain performative-theatrical aspect, which is evident in his early years, especially with his creation of Sculture Ambiente and Teatri Scultura. In the 1970s he was part of the international Body Art and maintained frequent exchanges and relations with other European artists, while pursuing his analysis of the use of photography. He developed his research into Behaviour, focusing on the human figure – in particular the face – and analysing his own identity as a means for relating to the other. In 1974 his expressive research was presented in the book by Lea Vergine Il corpo come linguaggio (La “Body-art” e storie simili), published by Prearo Editore. In 1975 Giancarlo Politi included him in a special issue (no. 52-53) of Flash Art dedicated to artists who used the medium of photography. His works have featured in numerous public displays in Italy and abroad. In 1995 he held a vast anthological exhibition at Bard Fort, Aosta. He published numerous artist’s books and exhibition catalogues. He died in Turin in 1996. In 2007 Gli Ori published Giorgio Ciam – Dentro il sogno 1969-1995, by Elena Re, as part of its Progettosettanta collection. In 2010, Ciam’s work was included in the group exhibition Geografia senza punti cardinali – La fotografia nell’arte degli anni ’70 in Italia, curated by Elena Re, at the Giorgio Persano Gallery in Turin. In 2012 P420 Contemporary Art dedicated a booth to him at MIA – Milan Image Art Fair – and included him in the group exhibition Un’opera × un libro d’artista at their gallery in Bologna. The same year Mummery+Schnelle, which had presented him in 2011 at Artissima 18 – Back to the Future, organised a solo show in London, curated by Elena Re. In 2013 A Palazzo Gallery presented him at Miart, Dallas Art Fair and Art Brussels, and announced the Giorgio Ciam – Sulla pelle exhibition in Brescia, thus starting an international project in collaboration with the Estate of Giorgio Ciam.

A Palazzo Gallery – Piazza Tebaldo Brusato 35, Brescia
May 9 – July 15 

Giorgio Ciam, Sulla pelle, A Palazzo Gallery

Giorgio Ciam, Sulla pelle, A Palazzo Gallery

Giorgio Ciam, Sulla pelle, A Palazzo Gallery

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Installation view, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims Photo Martin Argyrolglo

MACRO – The Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome is pleased to present SOFT WORK, Sterling Ruby’s first solo show in Rome, from May 22 to September 15, 2013. Los Angeles based artist, Sterling Ruby has gained international recognition for his diverse creative practice; his research combines sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, and video.
SOFT WORK, which has already been shown at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (February – April 2012), the Frac Champagne-Ardenne in Reims (May – August 2012) and at Stockholm’s Bonniers Konsthalle (December 2012 – March 2013), will come to Rome for its final leg in Europe, including new and site specific pieces created for the installation at MACRO Testaccio.
The exhibition, curated by Maria Alicata, and organized by Damiana Leoni with the contribution of Depart Foundation, was conceived by the artist as a single, large-scale work. The show features an installation of large pillow-like “soft sculptures”. Each iteration of this exhibition presents an increasingly overwhelming and accumulated mass of hanging and protruding monstrous soft sculptural bodies.
Pillows, blankets, and quilts are transformed from objects of comfort into sculptural objects that hint at the possibility that safety and security are an illusion. In doing so, the artist compromises the notion of the safety of the home, deeply rooted in American culture. Ruby’s work exploits these fears to contest the “American” vision of home: a safe place, a protective nest, a refuge.
Furthermore, using a traditionally “feminine” techniques, quilting and sewing – which hides a subtle irony on the concept of “masculinity” regarding domestic life – the artist presents wantonly menacing and aggressive forms behind a seemingly playful, pop facade. The gigantic pillows, shaped like water drops hanging from above are clearly reminiscent of tears (incidentally common imagery in prison tattoos) and suffering, whereas the large and open Vampire mouths allude to a voracious American consumerism.
Special thanks are due to the Sterling Ruby studio and Sprüth Magers Gallery (Berlin and London), and Xavier Hufkens Gallery (Brussels).
Sterling Ruby will take part of two other appointments : on Wednesday May 22, at 6 p.m, he will deliver a lecture at MACRO (via Nizza) whereas the FONDAZIONE MEMMO – ARTE CONTEMPORANEA (Palazzo Ruspoli, Via del Corso 418, Roma) will, on Friday May 24, present a large body of work from the artist’s own collection. The exhibition will be open to the public through September 15, 2013 featuring two dimentional works and collages from the last ten years, which the artist has personally chosen for the show.

Macro Testaccio – Piazza O. Giustiniani 4, Roma
May 22 -September 15
Opening: Tuesday May 21, 7 PM

Installation view, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims Photo Martin Argyrolglo

Installation view, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims Photo Martin Argyrolglo

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Il Giardino Promesso, courtesy Marta Maldini, Eventi Arte Venezia

Eventi-Arte-Venezia presents The Promised Garden – Notes on Manzoni’s Botanics, a botanic installation by Claudio Rocchetti positioned in the heart of Forte Marghera’s park. From Friday, 3 May 2013, the Garden will host a cycle of sound performances which will continue throughout the month of May 2013.
The Promised Garden – Notes on Manzoni’s Botanics is a botanic installation inspired by a study and interpretation of the 33rd chapter of the novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), where the author describes an abandoned garden in great detail, listing every single plant in it. The fascination with the abandoned that emanates from Manzoni’s pages anticipates the idea of a “garden without a gardener”, a central point of the “Third Landscape” concept developed by Gilles Clement in the second half of the 20th century.

This suggestion has inspired the artist Claudio Rocchetti whose research focuses on the relationship between memory and abandonment. After a visit to Forte Marghera the artist had found a specific area in which to realise his idea: the Promised Garden is a botanic installation featuring all twenty plants quoted in Manzoni’s description of the garden, an environmental sculpture which changes constantly, located in a field in Forte Marghera’s park, between a fallen tree and a defensive barrier.
In the Promised Garden several fruit, vegetable, and herbal plants are left to grow and develop freely: A garden left to itself, left to the spontaneous vitality of vegetal life, a place where species, which are usually eliminated, can prosper and multiply this variety and diversity, also through seeds brought by birds and the wind which produce incredible plants by surprise.
The botanic installation is introduced and accompanied by a series of educational materials, which have been developed specifically. With these, the public will be able not only to read the text of the novel, but also to recognise the arboreal species which were used and understand their symbolism in relation to the original text.

Sound Performance Cycle
The Promised Garden hosts a series of sound performances by Italian and European musicians throughout the month of May 2013. These dates dedicated to sound aim at placing contemporary musical research in a specific place, and in the context of two issues: abandonment and memory.
Claudio Rocchetti describes music as a “system of goodbyes” in which every note that dies is followed immediately by another which keeps its memory alive. Within these physics of sound the relationship with vegetal life emerges because, as the seeds disappear with the plant growing, so the fruit succeeds the flower, keeping its memory as well as the possibility of reproduction alive.
The whole performance cycle will be open to the public for free. All dates of these sound performances will take place at The Promised Garden, Palmanova Pavilion, and begin at dusk of every Friday (about 8.30 pm).

Friday, 3 May: Claudio Rocchetti

Friday, 17 May: Ottaven

Friday, 24 May: Enrico Malatesta, Attila Faravelli, and Matija Schellander

Friday, 31 May: Kham Hassah

“Because well-cut fields are a sort of desert which teaches nothing, a symbol of the modern desert within which resembles wall-to-wall carpeting.”
Ermanno Cavazzoni

The project is conceived by Claudio Rocchetti and curated by Eventi-Arte-Venezia for the Parco del Contemporaneo 2013, in partnership with the Veneto Region, and with the support and patronage of the Comune di Venezia – Department for Environment, Young Politics, and the Sustainable City; the Presidency of the Communal Council; the project is financed by Ca’Foscari University – Funds for Student Activities, with support of the Controvento cooperative. We thank Federico Tanozzi, Luca Mamprin, and Marco Bernardi for their invaluable collaboration.

The NERO blog will be hosting Rhizome, a project of critique focused on hidden inner visions. Curated by NERO, with the involvement of a group of artists, observers and photographers, this online project will be a continous and dynamic gaze that will focus on events taking place in the garden.

Eventi – Arte Venezia
Forte Marghera – May 3 -31, 2013

Alessandra Spranzi, Vendesi #104, fotografia a colori

Opening on 4 May at 18.00 at Galleria P420 (Piazza dei Martiri 5/2, Bologna) Lumpenfotografie. Towards a photography without vainglory is a group show on the artists Hans-Peter Feldmann (Düsseldorf, 1941), Peter Piller (Fritzlar, 1968), Alessandra Spranzi (Milan, 1962), Joachim Schmid (Balingen, 1955) and Franco Vaccari (Modena, 1936). Curated by Simone Menegoi, the exhibition brings together authors from different generations who investigate the linguistic codes of photography and its social dimension, making use of the appropriation of images of others and forms of presentation such as the series, the catalogue, the archive.
The term comes from Franco Vaccari, Lumpenfotografie (literally “ragged photography”), based on Marx’s famous definition of the Lumpenproletariat. Marx defined “lumpenproletariat”as a social group formed by the “outcasts of all classes”: an underworld that lives by its wits, utterly lacking in class consciousness. Transforming Marx’s socio-political category into an aesthetic distinction, Vaccari has spoken of“lumpenfotografie” with respect to the work of the German artist Joachim Schmid, who for three decades has gathered, selected and exhibited work that is not, and does not claim to be, “art” photography: pictures from newspapers, amateur snapshots, ID photos, pornography, the illustrations in manuals… A motley and anarchical mass, lacking in the aesthetic awareness (and linguistic self-awareness) typical of “art” photography, and therefore constitutes the photographic counterpart of Marx’s “lumpen”. Vaccari’s formulation suggested the idea of putting together several artists who have made “lumpenfotografie”the object (and often the very material) of their work: Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Piller, Alessandra Spranzi, Joachim Schmid and Vaccari himself. Among the exhibited works: the small self-produced publications in which Feldmann, already towards the end of the 1960s, presented selections of banal images, organized by subject; some items from the archives of Piller, an impressive collection of the widest range of types of images found in newspapers; a selection from Bilder von der Straße of Schmid, a collection spanning three decades of photographs found by the artist in the street; the prints of the Vendesi series by Spranzi, whose subjects are the technically shoddy images, though at times of unintentional charm, of the objects put up for sale in want-ad magazines; and, finally, some panels from the Fotomatic d’Italia series (1972) by Vaccari, on which the Italian artist has gathered and catalogued the ID photos sent to him by people who wanted to participate in a fictitious casting call. The approach of these artists to their object of study is far from uniform: it wavers between analytical detachment and irony, between the cold, cataloguing methods of Conceptual Art and a perceptible aesthetic attraction. In any case, in these artists we do not seem to see any haughty intellectual disdain for the images they use or for the anonymous photographers who made the pictures. Along different paths, they all seem to have reached the same conclusions of a countryman of Vaccari, the writer Ermanno Cavazzoni: the back cover of one of his books (which the style would lead us to believe was prepared by the author himself) points to “a serene way of writing, without vainglory”, in the awareness that “even intelligence and its pretensions are part of that universal idiocy that accompanies the human race from birth to death and, perhaps, beyond” (Vite brevi di idioti, 1994).

P420 – Piazza dei Martiri 5/2, Bologna
May 4 – July 13, 2013 

From 10 May to 30 June, in Rome, for the second consecutive year, the Draftsmen’s Congress becomes a place in which artists and audience establish a dialogue, using the language of images rather than that of words. Everyone is encouraged to take part in the discussion, by drawing, painting or using other traditional materials and techniques, in a free response to the urgent issues of our time.
The Second Draftsmen’s Congress begins on Friday 10 May at 18.30 at the headquarters of the Swiss Institute in Rome – via Liguria 20.
Initiated by Pawe? Althamer at the church of St. Elisabeth in Berlin Mitte and at the ISR in Rome, in the context of the 7th Berlin Biennial, the Draftsmen’s Congress is the space in which everyone is urged to enter into a free dialogue of imagery: participants can be polite or politically incorrect, frustrated or indignant, and can intervene on the drawings of others in a true encounter and clash of images. Images that love or hate each other, opinions that can be shared, demands that can be made.
The complexity of the forms and actions triggered by the 2012 edition of the Draftsmen’s Congress has led to a multiple, indefinite narrative. This second edition sets out to test the approach again, expanding it into other experiences, techniques and areas of knowledge. You are all invited to draw.
For this second Congress in Rome, the headquarters of the Swiss Institute is the central site of the event, which will also spread into other places in the city: an artists’ studio in the Magliana neighborhood; the RSI factory occupied by workers in February 2012, in the Portonaccio zone; and other places as well. Physical sites, but also allegories of a path of retracing of the cultural map of the city of Rome, where the past and present coexist, where new energies meet on the solid foundation of difference.

The Congress will be enlivened by workshops that will involve many of the protagonists of the activities ISR has developed over the course of the last year – encounters generated starting with the experiences of the Draftsmen’s Congress of 2012 – coming together for this second edition on a territory that is to some extent inaccessible or in any case unusual for many of them: jurists, neuroscientists, philosophers of language, architects, students, children, teachers, artists, workers, artisans, political activists and philosophers, physicists and musicians. For the Congress in Rome, the Draftsmen’s Fest that took place at the Milan facility of ISR in the spring will also be reprised.

Istituto Svizzero di Roma – via Liguria 20
May 10 – June 30, 2013
opening: May 10, h 18.30 

CODALUNGA is pleased to announce dates and line up for the sixth edition of its annual festival:
THREE DAYS OF STRUGGLE
The curators this year are Dominick Fernow and Nico Vascellari.

Friday May 10
FAILING LIGHTS
LUSSURIA

Saturday May 11
CLAY RENDERING (debut of Mike Connelly from Hair Police and Tara Connelly from The Pool At Metz)
CUT HANDS

Sunday May 12
KEVIN DRUMM
DEMDIKE STARE

DJ DOMINICK FERNOW (each night)
MAT BRINKMAN (exhibition)

Three Days Of Struggle is a annual music festival initiated and organized by Codalunga.

Three Days Of Struggle takes place in Vittorio Veneto, north east of Italy.
Three Days Of Struggle has no sponsor or external financial support.
Three Days Of Struggle is made possible thanks to volunteers.
Three Days Of Struggle started in 2008.
Three Days Of Struggle takes inspiration from Two Days Of Struggle, an hardcore festival organized by Green Records during 90′s

Codalunga – Vittorio Veneto(TV)
May 10 – 12, 2013 

The Camera’s Blind Spot is an exhibition focusing on the relationship between sculpture and photography as seen from the standpoint of a dozen of international artists, mostly born after 1970. As such, the show is (ambitiously) meant to be a possible supplement to the remarkable, yet largely incomplete, exhibition of the MoMA The Original Copy. Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today (2010). The approach to the topic matter, though, is notably different from the American exhibition’s. The latter, as the title stated, restrained itself mainly to a “classic” idea of the sculpture-photography nexus, according to which photography documents and revisits already existing three-dimensional works; a formula that was born with photography itself, and underwent an extraordinary creative turn when sculptors like Medardo Rosso and Costantin Brancusi began photographing their own works in changing light and spatial conditions between the end of XIX and the beginning of XX century. The Camera’s Blind Spot aims not only at documenting the latest developments in this trend but also at giving an account of other possibilities, no less important today: for instance, pushing the materiality of the photographic image so far as to turn it into a sculpture in its own right, be it still made of photographic paper or “weighted down” by materials such as wood, metal, concrete. A challenge to what constitutes since the beginning the “blind spot” of photographic technique, its limit: the impossibility to render a three-dimensional object on a plane surface.
Not only an exhibition of framed prints, therefore, but a wholly different project, that will include wallpapers, installations, videos, objects ambiguously poised between two and three dimensions and, last but not least, sculptures.

MAN, Museo d’arte contemporanea di Nuoro – Via Satta 27
March 23 – May 26, 2013

Toolkit Festival, international kermesse dedicated to New Media Art and curated by Martin Romeo, in collaboration with A plus A Slovenian Exhibition Centre of Venice, with the patronage of Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, the generous support of Officina delle Zattere, Ca’ Foscari Digital Week and the Municipality of Venice, presents its program including artists from all over the world for a festival without boundaries.
On May 9-10-11 2013 for the third year Venice will host a collection of interactive exhibitions, workshops and lectures dedicated to the most experimental sector of contemporary art with the partecipation of international artists chosen among the 200 applications received from 34 different countries. The 12 artists were chosen by a jury of experts: Karina Smigla Bobinski, Polish interactive artist, Valerio Mannucci, curator and editor of Nero Magazine, Daniele Spanò, curator and member of the Romaeuropa Foundation, Fausto Tomei, author of the volume “Interactive Art. Theory and Artists”.
Toolkit Festival artists: Anna Diaz/Jordi Planas (Spain), Dimension+ (Hong Kong), Espaysantacruz Studio (Spain), Anni Garza Lau (Mexico), Nikolas Schmid-Pfaehler & Carolin Liebl (Germany), Lars Lundehave Hansen (Denmark), Robert Mathy (Austria), Morast (Austria), Nohista (France), Ricardo O’Nascimento & Ebru Kurbak  (Brasil/Italy), Lorenz Potthast (Germany), Daniel Schwarz (Germany) e Signal to Noise (Great Britain).
Curator Martin Romeo affirms: “The third edition of the Toolkit Festival is now dedicated to the international community: artists coming from Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong and many more countries will propose an intense interactive action made by electronic sculptures such as the origami of the collective Dimension+ or as in the artworks of Ricardo O’Nascimento & Ebru Kurbak where an ensemble of feathers will create the illusion of a cloud that interacts with the public. There will be also more mechanical works, such as the helmet of Lorenx Potthast that will permit to change one’s own perception of time or like Robert Mathy and Signal To Noise that will virtually connect the exhibiting spaces in a real and concrete contemplative pathway.”
Toolkit Festival will be hosted by various sites in the city; A plus A Slovenian Exhibition Center, Palazzo Malipiero and for the first time the spaces of the Officina delle Zattere thanks to a new and important artistic collaboration. Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation of Venice will host in the spaces of Palazzo Tito an open table on New Media Art with Mauro Arrighi, Sonia Cillari, Stefano Coletto and Quayola, while Ca’Foscari Digital Week will collaborate with the Festival for the workshops with the artists Otolab and Dotodotdot.
Toolkit Festival is a project by Martin Romeo dedicated to New Media Art and its ability of exploration, research and experimentation through the use of technology in relation with the audience. Since its first edition (Venice, 2011), the festival proposes a detailed mapping of the most contemporary researches in the interactive arts field. Over a short period of time, it gained attention and success in the national and international artistic community, involving numerous Venetian institutions, as well as professionals in the field of New Media Art.

Toolkit Festival – Venice
9 -11 May, 2013

Gabriel Kuri, Punto y linea en el altiplano, courtesy Franco Noero gallery

Galleria Franco Noero is pleased to announce the opening of its new exhibition space in Via Mottalciata 10/B, Turin, with punto y línea en el altiplano, an exhibition of new works by Gabriel Kuri. This is the third solo show of the Mexican artist for the gallery in Turin.
Shown in the former factory building converted to a design by Flavio Albanese, this series of works illustrates the ongoing development of Kuri’s most characteristic themes: an analysis of the nature of sculpture and of its potential in terms of form, together with the possibilities opened up by combining different elements, whether found or made, in a way that augments their intrinsic material and tactile qualities.
Beneath the large skylight in the central space of the Gallery, the notions of monumentalism, balance, weight and gravity are simultaneously expressed in a sculpture consisting of elements that interact with each other as mirror images: a skip for rubble is surprisingly tipped up at 45°, counteracting a thick sheet of steel gently curved into an L-shape and painted in a neutral colour. As the result of an industrial process, the metal contrasts with nature, which appears in the form of two large stones that anchor them to the ground, establishing a balance of composition and tension between horizontal and vertical.
Nearby, the twists and turns of a segmented line of solid colour wind through space, unfurling a continuous series of painted metal tubes joined together by curved linkages. In these “broken lines”, as Kuri calls them, the smooth, coaxing quality of the curves contrasts with the sharp, pointed starkness of the anti-pigeon spikes that cover them like a thorny mantle. Like drops of rain or an imaginary celestial constellation, copper-coloured coins are scattered on the floor beneath them.
Opposite the large strip windows on Via Mottalciata, a long unbroken wall defines a space that reveals other characteristic aspects of Kuri’s work. These aspects are the parallels between the abstraction of economic systems and abstraction in art, the link between the immanence of everyday life and the horizon formed by universality, through to the habits of social life and to human presence, and the desire for the work of art to come alive through them.
The entire wall is covered with hand-drawn coordinates from a calculation book, a system that is interrupted by two quarry-rough stones that mysteriously appear to lose their weight – a double phrasing like notes on a musical score. Down at the side, a bulky pile of clothes mimetically repeats the relationship between background and foreground, just as we see in the stones, but varying the tactile quality and making reference to physical presence through absence in the form of the discarded clothes.
Further on, a progression of metal trestles painted grey, designed by Kuri, become the sloping horizon on which a soft, undulating “tongue” of linoleum unfolds: blown-up microchips emerge on the surface, where natural stones are also resting. The irregular wavy shapes of the linoleum recall a section of landscape, the crest of a downward slope, but our attention is also shifted towards the deviation in size of the microchips, which are at variance with what they are, thus becoming a succinct graphic sign.
Perpendicular to this is what Kuri calls an “alignment”. This is a neatly arranged series of different objects that are placed in an empathetic relationship, as though run through by a flow of energy and ideas. This plays on the concept of line, of breakage and juxtaposition, of heights, planes and volumes, making every object capable of presenting all its characteristics individually but also within a global “system”, endowing each one with the same level of aesthetic dignity.

Galleria Franco Noero -via Mottalciata 10b, Torino
May 4-30, 2013

Gabriel Kuri, Punto y linea en el altiplano, courtesy Franco Noero gallery

Gabriel Kuri, Punto y linea en el altiplano, courtesy Franco Noero gallery

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