MIBACT: PASSEGGIATE FOTOGRAFICHE ROMANE – LA FOTOGRAFIA SPERIMENTALE DI LUIGI DI SARRO a cura di Carlotta Sylos Calò. 

On show, under the umbrella of “Passeggiate Fotografiche Romane” powered by MIBACT, the exhibition will runs untill the 30th of January 2018, LA FOTOGRAFIA SPERIMENTALE DI LUIGI DI SARRO. The show will officially open the international and national celebrations of 40 years from Luigi Di Sarro death. Guided tours with the curator can be booked in advance. (info@centroluigidisarro.it)

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In the forty years of the death of Luigi Di Sarro, the Center for Contemporary Art Research named after him celebrates his memory with a series of exhibitions dedicated to his work, starting with LA FOTOGRAFIA SPERIMENTALE DI LUIGI DI SARRO, curated by Carlotta Sylos Calò and focused on the photographic production from 1968 to 1976 and enriched by an in-depth study of drawing and sculpture.

Since the Sixties Luigi Di Sarro has worked with different techniques and languages: drawing, painting, graphics, sculpture and photography. The latter becomes, starting from the end of the decade, one of the elective means to develop themes already strongly linked to his work. According to an open approach, already applied to other techniques, photography becomes a way to observe reality, create new forms and points of view, even ‘playing’ with the photographic medium, both in the shooting phase and in the development and printing phase. In his research, in fact, the artist does not involve only the image but its constitutive process: sets up sets in his studio to make particular shots, and often, after printing in the darkroom, intervenes again, cutting out the prints, creating maquette and collage that then re-photographs. The leading actor of many of the images of the ample photographic corpus produced by Di Sarro between 1968 and 1976 is the same artist who often puts himself on stage to measure analytically the functioning of some phenomena such as movement, sign, color and light.

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IMAGINING REALITIES – SKUBALISTO and JORDAN SWEKE – 2017 November 30th/December 14th

 

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Jordan Sweke (1991) and Skumbuzo (Skubalisto) Vabaza (1987), from Cape Town to Rome thanks to ARP-Art Residency Project, will show their outlook on the City and its suburbs. People and landscapes, imagining realities: a journey that explores the present and the history of the Caput Mundi through various expressive media (painting, graphics and videos). The two South African artists produced artworks for this exhibition during the six-weeks residency period in Italy.

The ARP, a Bilateral Residency Programme for Young Artists between Italy and South Africa, is promoted by the CENTRO DI DOCUMENTAZIONE DELLA RICERCA ARTISTICA CONTEMPORANEA LUIGI DI SARRO and realized with the contribution of MAECI, Italian ministry of Foreign Affaires and International Cooperation, and with the collaboration of the Everard Read/CIRCA Gallery. In Cape Town, next February and March 2018, ARP will host italian artists Elena Giustozzi and Caterina Silva, selected to the residency programme, which will also see the collaboration of Ruth Prowse School of Art and Rainbow Media NPO.

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Skumbuzo’s narrative is multifaceted (including visual art, design, music and fashion), he often incorporates contemporary figuration, imbued traditional iconography and several urban ‘graffiti’ based languages. Skumbuzo’s work aims to break down the human experience to its very core in order to expose the man made social constructs that serve to separate. His work is a bridge illustrating commonalities of consumerism, industrialization, corruption, hope, family, heart break, race , nationality and religion. His graffiti background and street art influence become obvious with his abstract use of colours and stylistic figure painting technique.
Jordan works within notions of the landscape and the natural environment. He abstractly explores ‘nature’ – a sublime and all-encompassing force. More specifically, he explores the relationship which currently exists between humanity and nature and ways in which this relationship might be reconstituted. His main focus of production lies in large oil paintings, but a rounded conceptual framework is achieved through his creation of photographs, sculptures, video works, print media and installation.
Both these young Cape-Town-based creatives have come together in ARP Rome 2017/2018 for IMAGINING REALITIES. This presentation comprises separate artworks, as well as collaborative work resulting from merging conversations between the two artists. At the Centro Luigi Di Sarro, Skumbuzo’s portrait paintings (in various mixed media) and Jordan’s landscapes (monochrome drawings, canvas based paintings and video work) are installed alongside collaborative linocuts and paintings executed together while in Rome on the ARP Residency.
The relationship between people and their environments is one of the major themes of the exhibition. IMAGINING REALITIES aims to address the notions of each person’s ‘reality’- how they see the world, and in contrast what goes on unnoticed around us all. Skumbuzo’s and Jordan’s active conversations illustrate and imagine what is taking place for many, addressing ideas of ‘marginalized poverty and the many unseen inhabitants of Rome’. This speaks about relationships between foreigners and the Roman landscapes, and serves to address “the social impact of immigrants, and the realities that lie behind the idealised ways people frame what they see and live.”
Skumbuzo and Jordan exist within the organic creative frameworks that pulsate around them in Cape Town, and both artists have an ongoing interest in periphery spaces and working-class areas. The ARP experience in Rome has served to ignite a joint conversation about the peoples in Rome, their ‘landscapes’ and the city itself. Although both artists actively acknowledge that this is a social commentary from an outsider’s perspective, they too feel ‘there are ridges of social and cultural similarities between Rome and Cape Town, that they both had been addressing in Cape Town. By creating some mural artworks in Rome  both Skumbuzo and Jordan hope to reimagine the reality of what is present there. In addition to their social commentary, the artists have endeavoured to critique the juxtaposition between nature and urbanization: the kind of relationship the people in Rome have with their natural environments, and natural selves. The artists have observed there are ‘remnants of human artefacts in nature, nature is surviving in heavily built up spaces, nature it feels is versus the city, and humans are versus nature’. The artists explain: ‘Rome is like a big breasted mother who feeds the whole of Italy. All of Italy is in Rome, not just Romans. One can almost feel Rome struggling under the pressure’. IMAGINING REALITIES, investigates this reality too and gives scope to see the world re-examined and envisioned through Skumbuzo’s and Jordan’s synergistic discourse.

Emma Vandermerwe – Senior Curator Everard Read/CIRCA Cape Town

THE SERIALIST n.1 – with Mia D. Suppiej, Valentina Nascimben, Stefan Nestoroski, Mauro Piccinini, Luca Resta e Davor Suker – curated by Giulia Lopalco e Emanuele Meschini

10-31 October 2017

Opening: Tuesday 10 October 2017 – 6 pm to 9 pm

 

The Serialist project, created and curated by Giulia Lopalco and Emanuele Rinaldo Meschini, is a cycle of exhibitions that aims to investigate the relationship between artistic creativity and the phenomenon of television and web series. Beginning in recent years to get out the mere entertainment product, the series has become a paradigm of analysis for complex socio-cultural phenomenon and an elaborational space of new mythology of contemporary society.

The first show presents specific works dedicated to the TV serie Baywatch (1989-2001) and involves six young italian and foreign artists: Mia D. Suppiej, Valentina Nascimben, Stefan Nestoroski, Mauro Piccinini, Luca Resta e Davor Suker.

The exhibition takes place during the 13th edition of Giornata del Contemporaneo by AMACI – Association of the Italian Museums of Contemporary Art.

DITTICO – Casciello/Vollaro – curated by Massimo Bignardi 7-30 June 2017

The exhibition proposes, as two small “monographs”, the recent works of two artists who, after about thirty-five years, return to exhibit at Centro Luigi Di Sarro.
In the exhibition, together with the iron sculptures by Angelo Casciello, the “copper constructions” of Luigi Vollaro and some drawings, works performed in recent years, are two works of the early eighties, ideally pointing to the starting point Of a dialogue and a relationship that artists have established since the years of formation.
“Dictico sums up the meaning of a relationship that, from the early eighties, keeps alive the friendship with Angelo Casciello and Luigi Vollaro. Ours has been and is a dialogue, a constant confrontation – notes Massimo Bignardi – that goes beyond occasions dictated by exhibitions or professional commitments. It has not been and is not a ‘team’, but wants to respond to the need to work in common, to weave a much larger ethical perspective. […] In the recent experiences of Casciello, the sign that holds together pictorial paintings The “plastic architectures”, is more clearly proposed as a gesture that expresses the vitality of an uninterrupted dialogue with nature. It is a gesture that affirms the bond of identity with its place of existence, with the times of its narratives. The Mediterranean, Greece, Vesuvius with its history and myth are “figures” that emerge today with greater strength: it is a cry of energy and, at the same time, of a fertile humanity. […] For Vollaro, the shape, derived from thin copper plates, is loaded with original energy: from the small sculptures realized in 2016, in fact, the features of architectures in which the artist places organic shapes, but posed in Log of a plastic image configuration. Vollaro does not try formal abbreviations or ‘abstractions’ or ‘figurative’ redemptions: he works with extreme imagination, without ever losing contact with ‘hands’. ”

MARGINALIA. The Figurative Thought of Magdalo Mussio – curated by Paola Ballesi

The Centre of Studies Luigi Di Sarro present the book “Marginalia. The figurative thought of Magdalo Mussio”, published by Quodlibet, curated by Paola Ballesi, which reconstructs the complex story of Magdalo Mussio thanks to the contribution of many scholars and experts, and the testimonies of those who have crossed his creative activity and the search path during his life.

Accompanying the book launch will be a selection of works by the artist that will remain on display on May 9 to 31.

The Municipality of Recanati, in collaboration with the Centre for Documentation of Contemporary Artistic Research Luigi Di Sarro in Rome and the Space Culture Association in Recanati, paid tribute to Magdalo Mussio – ten years after his death – with the retrospective Magdalo Mussio. Marginalia, curated by Paola Ballesi, held in Villa Colloredo Mels last October-November.

Magdalo Mussio (Volterra 1925 – Civitanova Marche 2006) studied scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and animated drawing in Canada, with Norman McLaren. From the encounter between “motion graphics” and visual arts comes  out the interest in the relationship between writing and figuration, which marks his entire artistic career. After his debut in 1955 with an exhibition by Giuseppe Ungaretti, in the early sixties he became chief editor of “Marcatré” magazine linked to the ’63 Group. Protagonist of the avant-garde ‘verbovisiva’, invests his creativity in graphic works and paintings, artist’s books, animated films and scenes. In the early Seventies he moved in the Marches region, where he joined the editorial manager activities of the New Sheet teaching of Engraving Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata. His long career is full of numerous awards and important exhibitions from New York to Tokyo, Montreal, Sydney, Paris, Milan, Rome, Genoa and many other cities. “The visual poems” of Magdalo Mussio – like calling them Gillo Dorfles – are exposed to Finch Museum in New York ( “Italian Visual Poetry”), the Center Pompidou in Paris ( “Identité Italienne: Art en Italie depuis 1959”) and other prestigious Italian galleries.

 

LEARNING CAPE TOWN – VALENTINA COLELLA – ARP 2017

ARP-Art Residency Project 2015-2017  is concluded.  The project, ideated by Centro Luigi Di Sarro in Rome now in collaboration with Everard Read Gallery Cape Town, began in 2009 and involved various important galleries as well as 13 artists. This fifth edition enjoys the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation; in the period 2015-2017 the project’s activities increased, witnessing many young art enthusiasts as well as art students actively contributing to the residencies in Rome and Cape Town of the two winners of the selection, Valentina Colella for Italy and Zwelethu Machepha for South Africa. Young curators, art historians, photographers, videomakers and students of various disciplines collaborated with the two leaders of this exchange, the artists, through training contributions and the participation to meetings and workshops. It is because of this activity, considered of high cultural, Educational and social value, that ARP project was invited this year to take part to Cape Town Art Fair in the Cultural Platforms section, next to the most important South African non-profit organisations.
The final actions af the ARP project, which enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the Italian Consulate of Cape Town since the beginning, saw two conclusive events:
The exhibition at Everard Read Gallery Cape Town, “Learning Cape Town by Valentina Colella the italian artist, who was selected for a residency in the framework of ARP Project V Edition. Paintings, sculpures, photographs and video installation to celebrate the monthly artistic residency in the Mother City for the 32 years old italian artist from Introdacqua, a small village settled on the Appennino Mountains in central Italy.

16-31 March Valentina Colella Solo Show LEARNING CAPE TOWN Everard Read/CIRCA Gallery

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Saturday 25th March in Philippi the “INKCUBEKO YETHU ART EVENT” concluded the 2015-2017 edition of ARP Project.

This event, introduced for the first time in this 5th edition of ARP, will be held at TSOGA CENTRE in Samora Machel, Philippi. It was an ART DAY focussing on young and emerging artists, with music, art workshops for children, and theatrical drama. Special guests of the event – set up by RAINBOWMEDIA NPO and by the UBUNTUBETHU youth collective, which is also the force behind IQFM community radio – were the two ARP artists, Valentina Colella and Zwelethu Machepha (who created a site specific artwork interacting with the audience); during the day was also displayed, in the spaces of the Tsoga Centre, an exhibition of artworks selected among the entries for a call for U35 artists working and living in South Africa. The winner, selected by a jury of experts, received a cash prize delivered personally by the Italian Consul, Alfonso Tagliaferri.

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FOOTPRINTS by VALENTINA COLELLA – Everard Read/CIRCA Johannesburg

Exhibition/Event curated by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro and presented by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Pretoria in collaboration with Rainbow Media. Sponsor: HIP Hellenic Italian Portuguese Alliance – Italian Section e Associazione Abruzzo Sudafrica.
Thursday March 9, Circa/Everard Read Gallery, 6 Jellicoe Ave, Rosebank, Johannesburg.

A visionary, hyperconnetted, contemporary dream. The Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Pretoria supports young italian artist in Sud Africa and present the exhibition/event titled FOOTPRINTS by VALENTINA COLELLA a collateral event of the bigger project ‘ARP – Art Residency Project 2015-2017’, by Centro Luigi Di Sarro in Rome, that has planned the residency of the artist in Cape Town for February and March 2017.

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The show is made up of three parts: the first one is focused on Abruzzo, Valentina Coltella’s homeland, and presents a video shot in Campo Imperatore; the second displays a multimedia piece in which a route is traced starting form her town, Introdacqua near Sulmona, up to the mountains till a shelter overlooking the Peligna Valley. Then the route is transferred on the map of the same town indicating some topical points, corresponding to some places which are fundamental for the local residents. Each of this points is accompanied by pictures with latitude and longitude coordinates so allow the visitors to locate the places on GPS. The third and last part is the pictorial one, composed by 9 works on paper with studies on essential forms of the earth, the sky and the flight between the two spaces.

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Valentina Colella is a concettual artist who expresses herself with different media, as paintings, drawings, installations, video and photos. After completing her studies, she started an in-depht analysis of scenarios referring to the concept of opposition intensified by the various tranfers from the reality to digital. She draws her inspiration from nature and the landscape surrounding her. That landscape is that of Abruzzo, so beautiful and wild, but deeply devastated by telluric episodes and unusual meteorological happenings in recent times. Colella exhibited her work in London, Cologne, Rome, Argentina, Taiwan. With her project “Learning”, Valentina has been selected for the ARP-Art Residency Project to a 6 week residency in Cape Town.