ESTRATTO FREDDO
Concept and curation by Anna Guillot
On the Contemporary
Catania, Piazza Manganelli 16
Opening: March 9, 6:00 PM
March 9 – April 30 // By appointment
Artists:
Alessio Barchitta, Fabrice Bernasconi Borzì, Alessandro Costanzo, Michel Couturier, Martin Declève, Vittorio Messina, Carmelo Nicotra, and Jan Vercruysse.
Approximately 35 years ago, Germano Celant curated “Periodi di marmo. Arte verso l’inespressionismo” (Periods of Marble. Art towards Unexpressionism – Acireale, 1989), featuring artists such as Bagnoli, Lavier, Salvadori, Schütte, Spalletti, Steinbach, and Vercruysse.
Moving beyond Minimalism, Celant theorized an objective and rational art, contrasting with any “neo-expressive” statement. As he wrote: “We have entered a ‘period of marble’ where every visual ephemeral has fallen away, and artists focus on solid and stable, rigid and silent effects, whose presence composes and evokes the world. They linger on the memoryless surfaces of television screens and moving signs, on the structural and combinatorial play of the display, avoiding the traps of psychological depth.”
“Estratto Freddo” is a contemporary acknowledgment of Celant’s pioneering reflection. Today, a significant portion of current art—particularly due to the prevalence of techno-science—has fully assimilated the preceding process of reduction that led to the “Degree Zero” of the work in the 1960s. This project explores the reintroduction, albeit in a calibrated measure, of accessory and symbolic aspects once discarded, grafting them onto a language that is necessarily “cold and impersonal,” centered on logic and philosophy, with socio-anthropological implications.
This synthesis aims to highlight, on one hand, an effective sampling of what is emerging from the younger Sicilian generation. Artists such as Alessio Barchitta, Fabrice Bernasconi Borzì, Alessandro Costanzo, and Carmelo Nicotra (alongside Diego Miguel Mirabella and Alessia Arnone in the introductory exhibition at OtC—in the Garden) express that “cold” side—as radically intended by Celant—but are now capable of restoring, in a controlled and contemporary spirit, those allusive aspects of language and “light tones” of communication that were strictly excluded by artists in the late 1980s.
On the other hand, Michel Couturier and Vittorio Messina (along with Pietro Fortuna and Luca Vitone in the introductory show) allow for the introduction of nuances and derivations of what the “period of marble,” now formalized and historical, has expressed and continues to express. Their rigorous languages, subtly animated by an acute contemporary feeling and sense of history, observe urban space, place, and time with a poetic spirit, focusing on “solid and stable, rigid and silent effects whose presence composes and evokes the world.”
Martin Declève represents an “other” presence. His photography, specifically in the “Marmoris memoriae” cycle, investigates the image through history from an intimate perspective (using reproductions of plaster molds dating mostly to the 19th century). In his work, the severity of the gaze and the inflexibility of the hand penetrate the meaning of research through the “face of the image.”
The exhibition includes a special homage to Jan Vercruysse.
Introductory Exhibition: Caltanissetta
To introduce the theme, the Caltanissetta venue of On the Contemporary (OtC—in the Garden) will feature works by Alessia Arnone, Alessio Barchitta, Alessandro Costanzo, Martin Declève, Pietro Fortuna, Vittorio Messina, Diego Miguel Mirabella, Carmelo Nicotra, Caterina Sbrana, and Luca Vitone. These works are drawn from the KoobookArchive collection and will be on display from February 23 to April 30.
The initiative, conceived by Anna Guillot, is promoted by On the Contemporary and KoobookArchive, with the patronage of the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania.
Venues & Info:
On the Contemporary: Piazza Manganelli 16, 95131 Catania
OtC —in the Garden: Palazzo Mazzone-Alessi, 93100 Caltanissetta
Website: www.onthecontemporary.com
Visits: By appointment
Contact: +39 338 4038 060 | [email protected]
https://onthecontemporary.it/Estratto-Freddo