Tang Contemporary Art is proud to present “INEFFABLE WORLDS” a group show, co-curated by Giuliana Benassi, Michela Sena, presenting the works of six young italian artists: Marta Mancini, Andrea Martinucci, Alessandro Giannì, Luca Grimaldi, Marco Eusepi, Giulia Dall’Olio.
Bringing together over fifteen works, the exhibition juxtaposes different researches, still all united by the emphasis on the pictorial element. A total abandonment to painting is the common thread throughout the young generation responds to the current period of instability. Their painting serves as a code for decrypting the "ineffable" world we are living in. Through images and signs, the pictorial surface becomes the simultaneous translation of a new and unspeakable thought, where the natural coincidence of signifier with signified, both conceptual and perceptual methods of representation are combined, and the inexpressible finally takes shape.
Back in the spotlight the artwork renders a subtle message: in that specific time when the world and its globalising banner is losing its lustre, it reveals the empty and frayed texture of its overly constructed net. Just like a flower in the desert, the energy of this new generation has emerged, using the only weapon available, their most sincere and unconditional act of art.
In the curators’ vision this new generation of artists represents an attempt to return to a more objective and formal way of expression after the dominance, for a few decades, of a sort of conceptualism, which rejected the pretensions of other contemporary avant-garde art. Finally, through the works of these young artists we get a closer reflection of a particular social situation and a few “ante-litteram” keys to read the dramatic changing of the world we are living in.
Varied responses arise from the works on show and generate a multi-voice dialogue. Andrea Martinucci and Alessandro Gianni` deal with technology and digital world primarily as themes, even metaphors, developing their reserches into unique results of great aesthetic value; while Luca Grimaldi`s found objects, though with a painterly, expressive technique, return a somewhat romantic view of Pop culture fostered perhaps by a relative distance from it. An intimate and self sufficient relationship with Nature emerges from the paintings of Marco Eusepi, that stand out in a perfect balance between form and timeless suspension, a perfect example of a young artist who masters the classical aesthetic tradition. And while Giulia Dall`Olio exasperates the force of an anthropized Nature, Marta Mancini re-invents in her abstract canvas a new space, a meta-pictorial dimension.
In Marta Mancini canvas the creative spark becomes pure form developing to the extent of a formal research. Made of various painting layers, her works start with a colorful background, as a first step. Moved from a kind of “horror vacui” she erases the canvas vacuum and fills the emptiness of the first stage of the creation: colorful tangles made with large brush strokes become vital presences on the canvas. The impatient dynamism, she creates, eludes both abstraction and figuration. Her works are hymns to vitality, to a freedom of movement open to new discoveries.
Andrea Martinucci performs a similar operation, but translating the aesthetics of stratification as a vision of the future. He transposes onto canvas images taken from the digital world, then melting it with intimate visions, memories, random visual fragments, he gives voice to a new imaginary dimension where “memories of the future” exist. Hinting to the fact that digital images won`t survive unless they are elaborated, thus creating the memory of a non-existent past in favour of a totally new and unexpected scenario.
Similarly, Alessandro Giannì's works are generated by the flow of web images. An artificial intelligence system, set up by the artist, captures fragments of iconic works of art and mix them in a whirlwind of repetitions and superimpositions, until it generates a tangle of bodies and faces, sometimes recognisable, other times deformed to the point of being cancelled. The images seem to evoke the survival of a “mythology of the future”, where we can see ourselves from an external perspective while this very image becomes an oracle of truth.
In contrast to this chaotic magma, Luca Grimaldi’s research investigates contemporary icons focusing on the details of everyday reality. Random scenes caught into “Auge’s non-places” capture the Postmodernity with its inesplicable beauty still arising from its ambiguity as a transitional spatial concept. A refrigerator, the airport toilets, a simple shower curtain, become stylistic features of an era where the collective imaginary is lost in a no better defined universality. The artist thus transfigures the globalising drift into an aestheticizing artistic motif. Figuration in the artist's work always stems from a geometric grid that is then overcome or erased, this way, suspending the objects out of the time flow.
Nature and temporality, on the other hand, make their entrance into Marco Eusepi's works: a tree is the pretext for experimenting with painting as a tool for material research on canvas. It is always the same tree, which becomes a succession of signs suspended in the background or merged with it. The natural element travels from the artist's thoughts to the canvas, recomposing itself in a jumble of signs and matter. The artist records the imperceptible movements of the plant, with the intention of restoring on the canvas the micro variations of nature in relation to the surrounding world.
The sign seems to evaporate in Giulia Dall'Olio's works, where the attempt to contain the image deliberately eludes the artist. It explodes into an organic and dusty mass. In her works, nature overflows to flood the space of the canvas like in a sudden jet. The artist reflects on the extraordinary significance of nature and its invisible relations with human beings.
Curators
Giuliana Benassi
b. 1984
Giuliana Benassi is an independent curator and art historian based in Rome. Her undergraduate degree is in Art History from the University of Pisa. Her curatorial focus is on exhibitions that feature site-specific works which reexamine unconventional spaces. She teaches Contemporary Art History at Istituto Pantheon of Milan/Rome and she is professor at IED (European Institute of Design), international Master in “Curatorial Practice”. She is the Art Advisor of The American Academy in Rome. She is co-founder and director of the project There Is No Place Like Home which was awarded the Artribune Prize for Contemporary Art in 2017. Benassi is also the curator of ALT - The contemporary Art program of the national newspaper “Il Manifesto”. She is curator of the art residency “Ritratto a mano”. She is editor of the Italian art publications Rivista Segno and Exibart. She has collaborated with different institutions and associations among which Museo Laboratorio della Mente, Swiss Institute in Rome, artQ13 Rome; Fondazione Lac o Le Mon Lecce; MAMbo Bologna; Follemente Festival Teramo; Italian Cultural Institute London. She has also edited with many international publishers such as NERO, Viaindustriae, Palombi, among others.
Michela Sena
b. 1976
Michela Sena is a Rome-Bangkok based curator and art critic. Her research relates partly to the potential of global language and the relationship and dialogue between contemporary artists coming from different territories. After she graduated in museology and art history at Roma Tre University and got a Chinese language degree at SISU Shanghai Foreign Studies University, she was Director of Primo Marella Gallery Beijing and Director of Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok. She curated a wide number of shows proposing a punctual snapshot of contemporary art research, developing in recent years a focus on Chinese and South East Asian art.