Vernissage Sunday, May 11, 2014 17:30
The exhibition “Should I Stay or Should I Go – Escape and Persistence” is divided in two opposite and parallel paths, two poles that are defined relative to one another: the escape and that of persistence. On this occasion, in fact, the two artists have chosen to go to the bottom of each one of two paths, one of the two movements that are also two attitudes, two approaches to reality. Both the roads all the way, in a game that the parties, in triggering a dramatic tension between the two ends, it reveals the rollover, it is impossible for one to do without the other. Valentina Lapolla presents photographs and sounds on the run, traveling without hope of success, real or imaginary boundaries to face. If the leave had already been the focus of a number of his works in this exhibition, the investigation into the escape becomes more systematic, almost to explore the different possibilities, like a fugue with its theme. In all the works presented the gesture of escape in the work determines a time dimension, creates a before and after: in the absence of a true story is a narrative dimension. With many references to literature, from the stories of Alice Munro, to those of Kafka, the myth of Orpheus, the works presented in the exhibition are reminiscent of the actors, protagonists of an traveling without hope of success, real or imaginary boundaries to face. If the leave had already been the focus of a number of his works in this exhibition, the investigation into the escape becomes more systematic, almost to explore the different possibilities, like a fugue with its theme. In all the works presented the gesture of escape in the work determines a time dimension, creates a before and after: in the absence of a true story is a narrative dimension. With many references to literature, from the stories of Alice Munro, to those of Kafka, the myth of Orpheus, the works presented in the exhibition are reminiscent of the actors, protagonists of an imaginary piece. Looks like a performer, in fact, the photograph of “Born to Run“, that taking the title literally flees from its frame, leaving the ground breaking glass, as well as the gaps that portray the story “Life in the City” of Kafka. Result of a performance also two photographs “Orpheus,” and the sound installation “Eco”, in which the sound is literally on the run from the body; it is up to the size acoustic bring in direct contact with the action, in an intimacy that is also elsewhere, an ideal destination for any escape attempt. Federica Gonnelli try the opposite path, through the overlaps of materials that characterize it, obsessive repetitions and resistances, tries to take root, to counter the adverse forces, to persist, the central themes and fundamental research of the artist. In the video installation “(P) and (r) existence“, where the artist comes into play in the first person, is the use of the obsessive repetition, multiplied and duplicated on the visual device of the mirror box, to help us to remain in balance in this difficult time both in terms of social and economic terms. Persistence can be found also in the use of layering and transparency of that particular device that every work implements. A restituted in a place that is also to the installation “Regret”, where the title plays with himself by referring to regret in the sense of putting a plant in the ground again. One of the materials used by the artist is a veil that allows the look to cross it and, at the same time, restraining it, so as to allow a perception that it is fully spatial. As in the works on the wall of the series resistance, the result of the overlap between the investigation of a theme and contemporaneity of a life that has to do with the wool industry, showing the human figure within the workspace, now abandoned, due to the overlap of the printed image on the image of organza fabric.
