Artists: Riccardo Arena, Matilde Cassani, Tommaso De Luca, Riccardo Giacconi, Matteo Stocco
Since you were a child you’ve been constructing your own reality. You collected fragments of the world, built castles from sand and played out the stories from your imagination. The older you got, the weaker your grip on fantasy became, and the tiny thread that tethered your dreams to your hands became frail and perhaps disappeared. Today you are reminded of the concrete reality of life at every impasse. You see it most clearly in the built environment, in infrastructure, in habitations, and in the chairs in which you sit.
The physical world coerces and corrals. By touch and instruction, it teaches you how to be in the world, how to act, and what shape to take. It is the fodder of fantasy but also the structure to which your reality is anchored. Each of the artists in this exhibition have found ways to circumvent the iron pillars of reality, by becoming the architects of their own mythologies.
Riccardo Arena traces the epic journey of a mystery enigmaacross the landscape of his metaphysical environment, while Matilde Cassani pulls the ceiling down to the floor in tendrils and tendons that conceal and connect. Throughout the space Tomaso De Luca’s choreographed arrangement of panels play with the absence of a single protagonist. In remembrance, a flickering light bulb speaks of the inventions and misadventures of Riccardo Giacconi’s great-grandfather. As a means of interpreting and reconfiguring the artists’ ideas, Matteo Stocco re-imagines the exhibition through visualising alternative spectres of space, creating a potentially infinite sequence of digital possibilities.
Residency for Young Curators
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo annually promotes the programme of Residencies for Young Curators. The project has the dual objective of developing the professional and intellectual skills of young, novice curators and promoting Italian contemporary art on an international stage. If from an immediate point of view the initiative is an experimental laboratory for curatorial practices, the contact of international professionals with young artists in Italy is intended to create a network that spreads knowledge of the Italian art scene indirectly. The residency acts as a trait d'union between the end of the educational path and the entry into the professional world and is structured as a semi-autonomous didactic activity with a series of training meetings and part-time support activities.
The residency is organised with the support of the Compagnia di San Paolo.
