AlbumArte presents
Campo Grossi Maglioni
Curated by Lýdia Pribišová and Gianluca Brogna
Opening reception on February 15, 2017 at 6:30pm (performance by Acchiappashpirt at 7:30pm)
Open to public: February 16 – April 27, 2017
CALENDAR of event
March 4 and April 8, from 4 to 7pm: free workshop for the audience
March 16 at 7pm: performance together with the students of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Rome
April 27 at 7pm (finissage): Start in the Middle, performance by Per Hüttner and Carima Neusser (Vision Forum)
PRESS RELEASE >>>
AlbumArte is pleased to present the solo exhibition of the Grossi Maglioni duo (Francesca Grossi and Vera Maglioni), curated by Lýdia Pribišová and Gianluca Brogna. The exhibition has been designed through a reworking of three art projects developed and elaborated during the duo’s ten years of activity, which also defines the idea of work-in-progress that has always been part of the artists’ research.
Since their debut, the artistic duo has dedicated a substantial part of their research to performative practices, through which they investigated different themes related to society and politics, combining artistic research methods with those of anthropology and science, with several incursions into the realm of magic and parascience, always maintaining a feminine and feminist approach in the production of their work. In fact, the two artists often focus on politically controversial issues: the gaze that offends, occupations, séances that use female body as the object of operation.
All three projects revolve around the idea of the artwork as a device, its utility and interaction, the collaboration between the artists and the public as well.
Image: Grossi Maglioni, Campo Grossi Maglioni, exhibition view at AlbumArte. Ph. Sebastiano Luciano, courtesy AlbumArte
The show must be understood as a village, a camp, an agorà, originating from the central installation dedicated to Occupazioni (Occupations, 2014), located in the main room of AlbumArte’s exhibition space. This project, composed of drapes and painted curtains secured with ropes, proposes a model of a nomad camp – specifically a tent for child care – and investigates the relationship between basic necessities of life and the act of occupying a space by man.
The second project on show is Lo Sguardo che offende (The Gaze that offends, 2011-2017), consisting of a series of devices that resemble optic weapons, and part of the documentation of the performances carried out through the staging of these devices. The project starts from a reflection on visual devices and on gaze’s ability to ‘hurt’ the observed landscape. A brand new artist book will complete the project, featuring reproductions of drawings, watercolours and thirty original face mask.
The third series of works featured in the exhibition focuses on the relationship between magic and illusionism, it belongs to the 2006-2011 years of activity when the artists went by the pseudonym ‘The Grossi Maglioni Magic Duo’. It explores the relationship between reality and fiction, and the elusive edge standing inbetween the two realms, namely the unseen. Employing the operative methods of the magician or illusionist, the artists reflect over their artistic work, always based on dialogue and complicity, trying to compare the mystery that lies behind art and that of magic. The meaning of this work is in the process, based on communicative, performing and illusionist actions, using devices such as the spirit cabinet, the dematerializing machine, the ouija board, but also the book Conversations by Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, staging a situation at the same time meditative, ironic and erotic.
The installations will be joined by performances and workshops that will make the exhibition a live and changing environment.
The space will change several times during the workshops: on March 4 and April 8 2017, there will be public workshops; on March 16 there will be a performance which will involve the students of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Rome. The aim is to turn the visitor into the participant, into the active occupant. On April 27 2017, the exhibition will be closed by a performance of the artist Per Hűttner, founder of Vision Forum, an international research platform for performing arts, science and technology based in Sweden, of which Grossi Maglioni is part since 2008.
The project was developed with the patronage of the Assessorato alle Attività Produttive, Cultura e Sport del Municipio II of Roma Capitale We wish to thank Fondazione Catel for the partial support in the production of the works. The project is developed in collaboration with Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and Vision Forum.
Grossi Maglioni (Vera Maglioni and Francesca Grossi, Rome, 1982) began their collaboration in 2006. The Grossi Maglioni duo has mostly focused its research within performance art, installations and workshop based practices. The link to different fields of study such as anthropology, theatre, gender studies, science fiction, and the relation between the history of performance art and popular and mass culture, has been the point of departure for long term projects in which we found the moment of affirmation, verification and redefinition of the artistic process in the precise interaction between spectators and context. The performance practice combined with the production of several devices, which exploit and imitate characteristic elements of the entertainment processes that cause an interruption on the activity of the audience’s gaze, always hovering in between what it is revealed – through the paradox of camouflage and disguise also – and what is metaphorically removed from sight, concealed, as in the case of Dematerializing Machine and Spirit Cabined for Disappeared Bodies. The nature of the public-private relationship has been re-formulated and questioned in works such as Performance Season, Performance Art Didactic Festival, that take advantage of internet platforms , or, more recently, Lo Sguardo che offende, where the examination focuses on the perception of landscapes, on that territory in-between the objectivity of natural order and narration. From 2014 Grossi Maglioni has started researching on occupations of public and private spaces. The relations between mobile architectures and the needs of small communities are analyzed using installations for urban areas such as squatted buildings and natural environments. Their work has been featured in national and international shows in galleries, museums and academic institutions, among them: Nuova Gestione, Rome (IT); Acting in the city, Norrköpings Konstmuseum (SW); Do you know because I tell you so or do you know, do you know? memories, anecdotes and superstitions, Viafarini, Milan (IT); Re-Generation, MACRO museum, Rome (IT); Anti-Hospital, The Invisible Generation, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (AU); Correspondance 2.2, 26 cc spazio per l’arte contemporanea, Rome (IT); (Anti)realism- Workshot 2, ERBA Ecole Régionale des Beaux Arts de Besançon, Besançon (FR); Genealogia Futurista #1, Konstall museum, Vasa (FI); Cross Language, University of Technology, Guangzhou (CN); Rupextre artists and anthropologists residency, Matera (IT); (Anti)realism, Guanghzou Academy of Fine Arts (CN); Svenska konstskolan, Nykarleby (FI). From 2008, the duo is part of the international research platform for performance arts, science and technologies “Vision Forum”, based in Sweden, for whom Grossi Maglioni conceived and curated the first OnLine Performance Festival that was ever completely performed on the internet. grossimaglioni.com
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