Caroltta Pesce con Giò MarconiCaroltta Pesce with Giò Marconi
International artists born in the 60’s and 70’s
April – May 2011
The series of appointments with internationally renowned gallerists, inaugurated last year with the exhibition Encounter with Lia Rumma (March-June 2010), continues at Studio Carlotta Pesce.
The exhibition AROUND FORTY presents a selection of artists represented by Giò Marconi.
The Giò Marconi Gallery, was opened in Milan in 1990 by Giò Marconi, the creator and director of Studio Marconi 17, an experimental laboratory for young artists, criticis and curators, from 1986 to 1990. Initially the new gallery was directed by Giò and his father Giorgio, founder of Studio Marconi (1965-1992) which exhibited the works of some of the major protagonists of modern and contemporary art. The Giò Marconi Gallery is characterised above all by interest in proposals from the new generations of the European and international panorama while continuing to propose Studio Marconi’s historic artists.
Around Forty presents the work of artists who were born in the 60’s and 70’s and are already know and affirmed on the international artistic scene thanks to exhibitions in prestigious Museums and public institutions.
JOHN BOCK
Born in Gribbon, Germany, in 1965
He lives and works in Berlin. Since the end of the 90’s he has participated in the most important exhibitions of international contemporary art including two editions of the Venice Biennial, Manifesta 5 at San Sebastian and the latest edition of Documenta at Kassel.
John Bock combines everyday materials and language to create installations, sculptures and costumes that he uses to develop delirious performances as well as imaginative and and extravagant videos, where everything is chaotic and unleashed. Bock’s “stages”, made of tables, planks and wooden or metal elements on different levels, become structures with a strong visual impact, in which handmade objects or accessories made of cloth, plastic and electrical material become instruments to illustrate the artist’s playful and surreal world, made of mathematical lucubration and reflections on contemporary man’s sense of anxiety.
MATTHEW BRANNON
Born in Idaho in 1971. He lives and works in New York. A personal show at Portikus in Frankfurt, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, curator of the Venice Biennial in 2009, has just closed.
A humorous and bitter reflection on the human condition in contemporary society strongly marks Brannon’s art, which includes paintings, drawings, prints, installations and tapestry.
In his works elements of mass communication and everyday objects are reworked in an original way, suspended between narration and autobiography, investigating themes related to the individual’s self-destructive power, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, carrier anxiety, sexual misadventures, ambition and inconsistency.
LOTHAR HEMPEL
Born in Cologne, Germany, in 1966
He lives and works in Berlin. Hempel’s works are part of important public and private collections. Amongst others: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Saachi Collection, London; FRAC Champagne, Reims.
Hempel’s work is full of references to history, music and a wide range of disciplines and media: from experimental underground cinema to contemporary dance, from the theatre of the absurd to animation; an eclectic and fevered search suspended between illusion and hallucination that plays with the codes of representation. All these references melt into an imaginative alchemy of images and tones which are placed by the artist in a timeless dimension.
MARKUS SCHINWALD
Born in Salzburg in 1973. He lives and works in Vienna. He will represent Austria at the next Venice Biennial. In 2007 the Museum of Modern Art of Bologna (MAMBO) Poggi Hall Museum, housed his personal exhibition.
In his works Shinwald makes reference in a very personal way to historical myths, psychoanalysis and cultural theories. His attention focuses on the meaning of the body, its multiple historical and cultural facets, and its being put on display. Prostheses and mechanical apparatus often force the protagonists of his films (actor-dancers) to move like marionettes, transforming the human body into a cultural artefact. Schinwald works with a wide variety of artistic techniques in his installations, which appear to be actual stagings, as well as in his photographic works and films, adapting the respective aesthetics to his stories to create special mystical environments.
DASHA SHISHKIN
Born in 1977 in Moscow. She lives and works in New York. Her works are part of prestigious public and private collections. Amongst others: the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.
Dasha Shishkin is acclaimed as a great emerging talent on the international art scene. Maurizio Cattelan counts her amongst his favourite artists. Her “coloured drawings”, as the artist loves to define them, have been compared by international critics to Goya and Brueghel, Schiele and Toulouse Lautrec as well as antique Japanese cloth prints. The artist expresses herself through drawings and etchings, using surfaces ranging from canvas to everyday domestic materials such as wallpaper; techniques vary from acrylic to crayons, from ink to graphite. Shishkin’s imagination is poised between macabre and fantastic, graceful and melancholy and is inhabited by animals and humans, usually female figures, engaged in banal or repugnant activities.
ELISA SIGHICELLI
Born in Turin in 1968, she lives and works in Turin. She took part in the Venice Biennial of 2009.
Elisa Sighicelli has always explored the dynamics of vision with her works through her use of a particular technique: a photograph is printed on paper and applied to plexiglass which has been partially painted on the reverse side, set off by one or more light sources. A search that develops in parallel between the photographic image and video, characterized by the poetic ability to frame ordinary places and objects, extracting them from the everyday dimension, creating fascinating atmospheres, wrapped in a sense of mystery and deep silence, in an apparent absence of life. Details of the environment, immersed in the darkness, are revealed by light, the real protagonist of Elisa Sighicelli’s creative process.
GRAZIA TODERI
Born in Padua, Italy, in 1963
She lives and works between Milan and Turin, Italy. She won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennial in 1999 and took part in the Venice Biennial in 2009.
Grazia Toderi is an artist who has adopted a very particular approach to video and photography. She is constantly fascinated by the use of images from pre-existing films and the dynamics of cultural and sporting events as a moment for coming together. Grazia Toderi works with images from stadiums, arenas and large historic theatres. Using aerial images she recreates nocturnal views of the city, transforming them into a kind of firmament, animated by movements which are always the same, frozen. The sight of well-known places from above transforms them into magical, mysterious territories which question our ability to understand reality and the way it is represented.