Dal 02/06/2012 al 23/06/2012

Xiao Lu

Curated By Dores Sacquegna

The portrait is one of the oldest genres of painting that art history handed down to us, act to witness the preservation of memory, making the Faustian dream of immortality and in the time has characterized the identity of a people and its culture. Physiognomies is a sort of “face-to-face” with the political, social and cultural landscape that engages in a self-narrating wants playing with dynamic coordinates, ironic, psychic, revealing its complexity, the fragility of human being.

Among the historical works and the artists on display, two video-biographies: the first is on itaian artist Pietro Coletta(Bari, 1947, lives and works in Milan) a biographical movie by Rai Cinema’s Edition. The artist from the 70s is a leading research sculptural, with a clever use of optical illusion and space, and the second film is dedicated to Emilio Isgrò (born in Messina in 1937, lives and works in Milan) in the movie “Emilio Isgrò is and is not” directed by Jacopo Maria Gandolfi (Bologna, 1980, lives in Istanbul, Turkey), which describes the production of an artistic and poetic among the first artists of Visual Poetry and Conceptual Art, known for the famous “erasures” of books and encyclopedias.

 Among other famous works on show, the short film “The Kiss, 1963″ by Andy Warhol, great artist of the Pop Art, the works in mixed media of “The Secret Landscape” by Michele Zaza (Molfetta, 1948, lives and works in Milan) in addition, the work of Chinese photographer Xiao Lu (HangZhou, China, 1962, she lives and works in Beijing), known to the international press for its art behavioral research. For his provocative installations and performances, the artist (along with Tang Son, in 1988) are stopped. The incident caused an uproar, and in fact devoted her work internationally (including the photo “Open Fire” in the show) and her figure making it become a sort of icon of Chinese contemporary art.

The exhibition opens with the performance “TRANS-MIGRATION” by Ezia Mitolo (Taranto, 1966) is a kind of “membership of the body”, through a survey on the centrality of, the human body as the skin of an ever-changing society.  Sculpture, painting, photography, digital art, installations and video are the mediums used by all the other artists in the exhibition – as many as 12 nations represented: Italy, Serbia, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Venezuela, Canada, USA, Mexico, China, Republic of Korea, Australia – artists who have contributed to offer an insight into the meaning of making art today.

The Apulian artist Uccio Biondi (Ceglie, 1946, where he lives and works), with “The bride impossible” and “Madame Bigbubble” on pictishsculpture on real size, with signs and mysteries able to awaken the imagination. Dario Manco (Melissano, Lecce, 1959, where he lives and works) with this picture “fragile characters”, reversing the biblical vision of paradise in a continuous oscillation between being consumed and not to consume “the pineapple of sin.”

In this exhibition its capture the interest of self-expression open outward, toward dialogue with each other one. The body is the portrait of existence. This is the place where there continues to happen, to know the opening, the spacing, the difference. So take the portraits in the form of bichromate’s gum prints by Massimo Attardi (Rome, 1961), body-worship of Maria Luisa Imperiali (Milan, 1958, where she lives and works) and the series “Infinite Present – In-addition,” a portrait on Muslims’s womens who embrace a skull, by Pina Della Rossa from Naples, Italy. On additional the “face of human being” by Nadia Cera (Lecce, 1965) with a portrait on glassmelting. In the sphere of international artists were invited the Venezuelans artist as Carlos Anzola.

The exhibition of the portraits emerge Kamalky Laureano, one of the most popular young artists of Mexico, and Teresa Olabuenaga, she is Mexican, also. From Australia to the works of pop artist BettySargeant and videos by Carolyne McKay that she investigates the relationship between psychology and criminology. In the pop realm the works “Suicide Girl” by Korean artist Alice Jung and the Swedish artist Gun Mattsson, and Belgian artist Frans Frengen.

Between figurative and representation the works of Germans and Canadians artists as Liane Amendy, Tina Dolter and Tom Ma. Between hybridization and cyborg the portraits of the American artist Suzanne Anan and Serbian artist Jana Stojakovic. A portrait of Chinese artist Xiao Lu, devoted by Wang Haiyuan in the his video.