roaming

how soon is now

curated by alessandro castiglioni, pavla jarc, sendi mango

matteo attruia, primoz bizjak
brida/tom kersevan, sendi mango, jurij pavlica
rita canarezza & pier paolo coro
ermanno cristini, oppy de bernardo
kensuke koike, anja medved
jernej in ivan skrt, valentina vetturi

opening 17 november 2009, h 18.00
mestna galerija nova gorica
trg ddvarda kardelja 5 - nova gorica
 





ROAMING, based upon an idea by Ermanno Cristini, consists of a series of exhibitions, curated by Alessandro Castiglioni, that last only the time of their inauguration. Like flashes surviving in the photographer’s finger, then floating in the indistinct dimension of the web.

Located in strong and representative spaces, thanks to their physical presence and the importance of their story – former industrial building which have been recovered - but also for their symbolic presence – institutional seats like museums -, the exhibitions are characterized by their rapidity and the way the space is occupied.

The artists change according to an invitation chain which neutralizes the concept of the curator itself. There’s a shadow of unspoken in the succession of invitations, because the affinity is established between the one who invites and the one who gets broken just afterwards. This generates a mechanism of chaos and coincidence, a heterogeneous one which is kept together by individuals, in a sort of “veiled curatorship”.

In contradiction with the amplitude and the aura of locations, the artworks mark a discreet presence: in the corners, in the gaps, on the ground, on the top of a stair; besides, they are mixed with other works in the museum, which allows them to be discovered gradually, as though they show themselves only at a second glance. This is in open contrast with the fugitiveness and transience of the event

However, in this way the exhibitions are transformed into an event, the image by the photographer is the only element which remains of the works of art and their relationship with the space. The work of art is bound to circulation only in the forms of images. Which is the work of art, then? The one created by the artist, or by the photographer, or the whole operation itself?

In this way, the photographer becomes part of the artist nucleus; furthermore the photographers change at every single initiative, in order to allow different perspectives: the advertiser’s, the art photographer’s, the architecture photographer’s – corresponding to different ways of crossing the boundary between work of art and image, between reality and representation, between real and virtual.

But what happens when the simulacrum – transformed into a system of pixels – is projected onto web, thus being mounted into SECOND LIFE?

Paradoxically, the only element of stability in the exhibitions occurs in a purely virtual dimension, a delocalized and virtual one. What changes, then, in the art work status, when its material, its space and its time are transformed?

What Roaming activates can be called a polarity breakaway: littleness as opposed to the greatness of the spaces, emptiness as opposed to the fullness by the public at the inauguration, the delay with regard to the acceleration of the event, the reality with regard to its representation, the physical with regard to the virtual…

In this breakaway, the will of the art work clashes with its destiny; but maybe this is the only way for this will to be accomplished, unveiling the ultra-subtleness which is nowadays all the more a necessity of the art work: “… something that isn’t caught with the sight, but with the gaze, with the attention, with the mind (…), the paper’s hollowness between the two faces of a subtle sheet” (Elio Grazioli, Una differenza ultrasottile, in Passeggiata Minima, Giovanni Ferrario, ed., UTET 2008).

www.roaming-art.it