STAGING THE [UN] HUMAN
CAROLINA PAPETTI B2B LORENZO CONFORTI, MARTINA ROTA, VALERY FRANZELLI, SUSANA LJULJANOVIC
Photo: Ivano Triolo
Opening 01.02.2024, 6pm-9pm
Until 28.02.2024
Through the coexistence of elements of temporariness and permanence within the same exhibition context, the exhibition endeavors to establish a stage, portraying not the commonplace, but rather orchestrating a representation of the unusual, oscillating between the human and the un human.
In this setting, Carolina Papetti’s goal of “making the space itself speak from and about” is realised in her dialogue with the practices of several other artists, subli-mated to actors and singers of the long history of different human experiences and lives, to which the space has borne witness. It becomes a stage where destiniescome together—an eschatological reality that shows the thin line between desire and free will, destiny and primitive instinct, torn between the mephistophelean andthe divine. Through the path of the exhibition space, whose constant transformation testifies to its hybrid and ambiguous nature, the viewer is invited to engage withsome of the most profound and challenging anthropological themes of the contemporary and non, an expression of some moments of synthetic abstraction about the shared reality of the human. This involves a fusion of visual and temporal elements, incorporating elusive visual and narrative concepts that constantly evolve and reinvent themselves, encouraging viewers to activate their subjectivity. There is a palpable impression of being in front of or inside something that has already happe- ned or is about to unfold—an accumulation of temporalities threatened by our unconscious. When looking at Carolina Papetti’s works in the exhibition, it appears, in fact, that they constitute a kind of detournement of the Deus ex machina: the space God, reluctant to intervene on the scene to untangle the plot of the human that has unfolded in it, grants only a few brief moments of understanding and interpretation, jealousy preserving the ambiguity about the final solution.
CAROLINA PAPETTI [Brescia, Italy, 1992]
She lives and works in Milan. Moving between installation, sculpture, video, theatre, performance, and writing, the artist sees her creative journey as an exploration to expand the notion of biography, a desire for self-proliferation, transformation, or biographical metamorphosis, and a transgres- sion of lived experiences. An unstable atmosphere develops in her works, oscillating between a sense of familiarity and apparent identification, jux- taposed with a looming threat of something much darker and more distant. It is as if images, interpretations, and meanings are continually evoked, only to be rejected or postponed, giving rise to new narratives. The artist uses space to create ambiguous, seemingly unfinished scenes that unfold between the cryptic and the explicit. Ambivalence is a guiding principle of her artistic practice, in which the constant exploration and creation of spaces, objects, texts, images, characters, and materials form a material and conceptual juxtaposition that tends to evoke simultaneous feelings of desire, suspicion, and indeterminacy.
LORENZO CONFORTI [Tolentino, Italy, 1996] b2b 01.02-10.02
He lives and works in Milan. His practice starts at a young age with graffiti and then develops in an unconventional way, combining the dynamism of the gesture with a more pictorial approach. In his works, the primary discourse is that of imagination: the images created are suggestions, and they may remind us of something, but in reality, there is nothing real to recognise, only something ambiguous that develops within us, touching our most personal experiences and reconstructing stories with a temporality suspended in our unconscious. Through formal and wild gestures, the figurative structure is pervaded by matter, giving movement and rhythm to indefinite atmospheres inhabited by bio-morphic presences.
MARTINA ROTA [Bergamo, Italy, 1995] LIVE PERFORMANCE 09.02 - 8pm
She lives and works between Bergamo and Milan. She is an active artist in the field of visual and performing arts. Her artistic research investigates, through strong interdisciplinarity, the urgencies, desires, and traumas of the body in both collective and personal dimensions. Martina considers her work an opportunity to create kinship with space, pose questions, and reflect on shared feelings.
VALERY FRANZELLI [Chiari, Italy, 1998] b2b 13.02-17.02
She lives and works in Brescia. Her artistic research concerns the use of words, which are often whispered or concealed at first sight. At the center of her practice is an alternation of voice and silence in which emptiness becomes the purest form capable of imprinting the most authentic essence. Her works require an effort on the part of the viewer who, if they want to find the hidden words, will have to dig deep by imagining possible hiding places, even as a deeper metaphor for life, to reveal the non-visible, to hear the inaudible, to imagine the impossible. The word goes beyond just hearing.
SUSANA LJULJANOVIC [Roma, Italy, 1987] b2b 21.02-29.02
She lives and works in Bologna. Her practice includes multimedia, performance, painting and sculptural installations. Her works are mainly made with textiles, on which objects taken from the environment of contemplation of the work are sewn. These actions of stitching, adding and subtracting elements go on to compose bodies whose forms emulate the nature that suggested them: anatomies reminiscent of organic matter. This exchange leads to a work that becomes an instrument of absorption, containment, transformation and creation of a personal yet universal language that resonates with the viewer.
