Delfina Marcello. Love Accessories Curated by Vittorio Urbani
Realized by Nuova Icona, Scuola Internazionale di Grafica and Ewa Gorniak Morgan
Vernissage September 2, 2022, 5:00 pm
Open until September 30th, Wednesday to Sunday, from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Oratorio di San Ludovico
Calle dei Vecchi, Dorsoduro 2552, Venice
The project is realized by Nuova Icona for Oratorio di San Ludovico with the support of Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice; Fondaco Marcello, Venice; We Exhibit, Venice; Fondazione Morra, Naples; Galleria ArteRicambi, Verona; AlbumArte, Rome with a contribution by Pietro Marcello.
AlbumArte returns to Venice, during the 79th Venice Film Festival with the first anthological exhibition of Delfina Marcello’s artist films entitled Love Accessories curated by Vittorio Urbani.
“Five years after her premature death, Delfina Marcello’s video oeuvre is being presented in Venice, the artist’s native city, from which she tried to escape as often as she tried to return. The body of work, stylistically uniform at times, at times varied, is a testament to the unceasing search by the artist. An international figure by character and training (she lived long periods in New York, Berlin, London), Delfina used more than one medium or genre as means of expression: beginning with video, then drawing, installation, painting, photography, and writing. Research involving gallerists, curators, and friends allowed us to identify and put together a significant bulk of her work. The work of a generous, unmethodical, unclassifiable, independent artist that was at risk of being lost, forgotten, or dispersed among collectors, heirs, friends, gallery deposits. The urge to document and preserve it has been the driving force of the “Delfina Marcello” project by Ewa Gorniak Morgan, Lorenzo de Castro, Margherita Fabbri and Vittorio Urbani.”
The exhibition presents a collection of films that can be considered complete at the current state of the research. It is also the most consistent body of work in the multidisciplinary oeuvre of Delfina Marcello. The protagonists of Delfina Marcello’s videos are alone in their brief adventure. They are followed by the caring eye of the artist who becomes the witness, as well as their companion on the road. The contemporaneous presentation of all the films in one venue for the first time, in the spaces of the Oratorio San Ludovico in Venice, will undoubtedly allow a more profound understanding of Delfina Marcello’s complex work. A new publication will be available, featuring texts by professionals and friends and, in particular – given the focus of the project – an essay written on the occasion by the film critic Roberto Ellero.” (Vittorio Urbani)
The exhibition is accompanied by a book edited by Ewa Gorniak Morgan and Margherita Fabbri, designed by Lorenzo de Castro, with texts by Delfina Marcello, Elena Barbalich, Roberto Ellero, Ewa Gorniak Morgan, Živa Kraus, Francesco Pandian and Vittorio Urbani.
DELFINA MARCELLO (Venice 1966 – Mogliano Veneto 2017). A descendent of a patrician Venetian family, Delfina Marcello was one of the most original and independent artists of her time. Her work consisted as much of film, painting, drawing, photography and writing as of her way of being an artist and a woman – as everybody remembers her – rigorously faithful to the ethics of art and to herself yet with lightness and allure. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, she expressed herself as filmmaker, painter, illustrator, and cartoon designer. In the 1990’s she worked in New York as script supervisor, sound and photography editor, and cinematographer for independent film productions. In the beginning of 2000’s she taught a master course in TV production and post-production at the University of Padova and art history at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice.
She lived and worked in Venice, London, New York, Pa- ris, Berlin, Milan and Mesenzana. She constantly experimented with different forms of artistic expression: from performance to video installation, from old painting techniques to poetry and prose. She wrote and directed short films and animations presented and awarded in major film festivals in the United States, England, Germany, Holland, and Italy.
“A video camera is a taming agent to me. Images are governed by an affective and organic process. I “play” with memory from the perspective of a gift and not a creation, grafting and instability nstead of sprouting and opening. Memory becomes an “object” – soft and sensual, with the duty to omit rather than to be precise. The softness is the only transforming agent capable of infiltrating into any kind of system, it’s reproductive quotient has no limits, it’s a positive infection, the carrying element of mutation.” (Flash Art June – July 2002). She wrote a historic novel, not yet published, entitled “Il medico di Dio” [God’s doctor] set in Venice of the XVII century with a strong component of metaphysics and philosophy which were subjects of her passionate studies.