The coldest summer
Gabriele Mallegni/Caterina Sbrana
curated by Claudio Cosma
Sensus luoghi per l’arte contemporanea, Firenze
Many of the works in this exhibition were born in the summer.
Really hot summers in which you can hardly breath, rainy summers, long summers and missed summers.
Summers spent on the mountains walking trough blockstreams left over from the ancient glaciations, summer nights spent looking for the marks left by the bombs on the walls of the city one summer many years ago.
Extremely cold summers of the imaginary, such as those of 1816 in which the explosion of the Tambora volcano marks “the year without sun” and without summer and in which Mary Shelley, by bet, forced into Villa Diodati by a never ending rain, “in this chiaroscuro (light-dark)where monsters surge” writes Frankenstein.
This relationship between micro and macrocosm, between great events and great mutations and the relation with an intimate and inner dimension, subtly crosses this selection of works that come from both the individual and common research of the two artists.
Among the works also a small archive from the studio, from the private space of Caterina and Gabriele, which shows works of small and very small size, unfinished works, maquettes, ideas and which returns to us an unusual dialogue in which we can find assonances, divergences, stratifications.
Lost geographies and new geographies under construction, disturbing and hybrid objects,familiar and at the same time unknown presences tell through two gazes that meet and move away the vital and saving experience of the imagination: an inalienable space, an indispensable chance of exploration and transformation of reality.