Greater Torino. Alis/Filliol e Alessandro Sciaraffa

8 May 2013 – 29 September 2013

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

Curated by Irene Calderoni e Maria Teresa Roberto.


The artists invited to the fourth edition of Greater Torino are Alis/Filliol and Alessandro Sciaraffa.
The double solo show highlights the different approaches, through which the artists interpret sculpture and installation, and analyzes the multiple implications of these approaches on the physical, sensorial and mental space. Through a selection of both recent works and new productions, the exhibition documents these different paths, makes them converge and contrasts their different attitudes and interests – body and immateriality, silence and sound, opacity and brilliance. The common denominator is the cast, print, or recording, which the artists use as conceptual and operational keys, although with different results.
Alis/Filliol is an artist duo founded in 2007 by Davide Gennarino (Turin 1979) and Andrea Respino (Mondovì 1979). Their research focuses on sculpture as a rigorous dialectical process that gradually solidifies into a core, a nucleus generated by the multiple tensions that arise from working as a team of two, moving between ideation and improvisation, form and lack of form. For Alis/ Filliol, sculpture is a physical experience, an intensive space where they can experiment with new procedures or transform traditional techniques such as modeling and casting, which they associate with familiar materials such as metal and plaster, or unusual ones such as snow and polyurethane foam.
The research of Alessandro Sciaraffa (Turin 1976) explores different levels of sensorial perception, developing the functional and plastic potential of elusive elements such as sound, light, heat, water, and radio waves. The recording, both in its extended and literal meaning, is the capture apparatus the artist uses to materialize and give substance to the trajectories that run underneath human sensibility. Noise, rustles, crackles, sparkles re-surface thanks to the complex relationship that is established between materials, space, and the presence and the gestures of those who enter the sphere of the work.
Invited to design the workshops for adult publics, Alis/Filliol and Alessandro Sciaraffa propose performance-based experiences, with an emphasis on temporality and execution, but they will also leave room for interpretation and chance, which is a typical feature of workshop activities.