Giò Marconi with Carlotta PesceEncounter with Giò Marconi
January – March 2011
The series of appointments with internationally renowned gallerist, inaugurated last year with the exhibition Encounter with Lia Rumma (March-June 2010), continues at Studio Carlotta Pesce.
The exhibition Encounter with Giò Marconi presents a selection of artists represented by the Gallery.
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 collectors, 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 put forward Studio Marconi’s historic artists.
The exhibition Encounter with Giò Marconi presents the works of artists who are already known and affirmed on the international artistic scene thanks to exhibitions in prestigious Museums and public institutions. Grazia Toderi, Nathalie Djurberg, and Elisa Sighicelli were invited at the Venice Biennial in 2009, Francesco Vezzoli in the Biennials of 2007 and 2005, and Atelier van Lieshout in the Venice Biennial of Architecture in 2006.
ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT
Joep Van Lieshout, born in Ravenstein, the Netherlands, in 1963
He lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Atelier Van Lieshout (better known as AVL), under the direction of Joep Van Lieshout, is an artistic association which has developed numerous projects that unite art, architecture, and design, proposing a particular, recognisable style for furnishings, furniture, modular houses, objects and sculptures for outdoors. Atelier van Lieshout’s works are characterized by a double nature: they are contemporary utopias and at the same time practical and functional solutions for living in harmony with the environment while respecting the freedom of the individual.
NATHALIE DJURBERG
Born in Lysekil, Sweden, in 1978
She lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She won the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Biennial in 2009.
Nathalie Djurberg’s videos, made with the technique of stop motion, and accompanied by the evocative music of Hans Berg, are frighteningly alarming and naïvely tender at the same time. Dreamlike and monstrous visions populated by hand-made clay characters: slimy fakirs who roll themselves up in blue snakes, vicious creatures and grotesque animals. The artist explores humans’ most beastly instincts and primordial desires, which appear even more perverse as they are in contrast to the childish simplicity of animation.
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.
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 shows 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.
FRANCESCO VEZZOLI
Born in Brescia, Italy, in 1971
He lives and works in Milan, Italy
Francesco Vezzoli’s work combines two practices which at first glance appear completely different: the art of film and the art of embroidery. However, they are firmly woven together under the thematic outline and converge in Vezzoli’s theatrical installations, dedicated to the world of cinema and its stars. The works, in the form of video productions, needlepoint (petit point) embroidery, photographs or performances examine the mechanisms of contemporary systems of communication and production of the collective imagination. Works in which “high” culture co-exist with “low” culture thanks to closely woven citations and references to the artist’s personal obsessions, which include an in-depth knowledge of the history of cinema, love of embroidery and a passion for the icons of popular culture.