18/03/2013

Giuseppe Gabellone at GAMeC

Giuseppe Gabellone at GAMeC

Giuseppe Gabellone (b. Brindisi, Italy 1973, works and lives in Paris) is probably one of the most celebrated member of the Italian scene of artists and friends known as Il gruppo di Via Fiuggi (the group of the Fiuggi street); young authors from the late 90’s, who actively work for the re-definition of contemporary art in Italy, giving new meaning and developments to the hard heritage left by the Arte Povera and conceptual art. 
The absolutely independent artistic research carried on by Giuseppe Gabellone first focused on the crossing of sculpture and photography. With a particular analytic and incisive approach in regard to the media, he initially created visual enigmas made of sculptures, which couldn’t survive without the distance achieved only through the photographic reproduction.


Strange shapes that seem to refer to recognisable and functional objects and places, were actually reproductions of shapes, which alluded to the reality, but deprived of their physical status and natural contest, photographed and then destroyed to add further obstacles to their uderstanding. Among them: a cactus made of wet clay pent-up in a garage; curvilinear streets of down tree that never leads to any places; flowers and plants scaled down and apparently out of order, plus objects set into heavy armored structures. 
From this first approach suspended between sculpture and photography, Gabellone moved to a new series of works where matter is represented through the form of bas-relief. Characterized by the use of unusual materials, which contrasts with the tradition of their shapes, these sculptures create ambiguity whilst surprising the viewers by referring to exotic imaginaries.




For the exhibition, expressly thought for GAMeC space, and after a long absence from the Italian artistic scene, once again, Gabellone created original works that analysed the sculpture as main media, but this time focusing on high relief. To do this, the artist put themes like color, surface, and contrast between vast and master to the centre of his research, producing intense chromatic juxtapositions, which remind drawings made by children with crayons. 
This strange promenade made of stuffed fabric guides the path throughout giant components that remind the “movable type”, hypothetical letters that seem to compose only meaningless words, which don’t allude to anything specific, but maintain their conceptual potential, both striking and puzzling the viewers.

Giuseppe Gabellone’s show will run until 5th May 2013.

Riccardo Conti – Editor’s thanks to Monica Lombardi – Photos by Roberto Marossi, Courtesy greengrassi, London e ZERO…, Milano, Courtesy GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo

17/03/2013

Sunday Breakfast by Love For Breakfast

Sunday Breakfast by Love For Breakfast

Green, the color of spring, of the fields that tempt to let yourself go on the grass. Now it’s just hope, but soon it will be real.

Alessia Bossi from Love For Breakfast

15/03/2013

Parking in London

Parking in London

It’s that time of year when we in the Northern Hemisphere consider braving the outside world again. Even if the weather isn’t quite warm enough for frolicking just yet, it is dreams of the happy summer months ahead that keep us going through the last miserable cold days. In the interest of encouraging your sunny fantasies, we’ve put together a list of delightful London parks that we know you’ll be dying to get into by April (and, lets face it, with the right preparations, you could enjoy these parks right now. After all, the Scottish say, ‘there’s not such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing’).

1) Regent’s Park
Located in central London, Regent’s Park has many reasons to recommend it: a boating lake, the elegantly sculpted Queen Mary’s Gardens, the London zoo and even an open-air theatre in the summer months. Its location, its (relatively) small size and the gorgeous flowers on view in the gardens, make Regent’s Park an ideal spot for a workday coffee or lunch break; it is your own personal idyll in the middle of the bustling city.

2) Hampstead Heath
The rolling hills, ponds and large trees that hide the surrounding houses, all combine to make Hampstead Heath feel like a tiny bit of wild English countryside growing free in the city. Dogs gambol happily across the fields, their owners fast on their heels. The wonderful view from Parliament Hill over the rest of London makes the city feel a million miles away. Hampstead Heath is the perfect place for a summer Pimm’s and cricket party.


3) Greenwich Park
Located as it is next to the Cutty Sark museum, the National Maritime Museum and the University of Greenwich, visiting Greenwich Park is like stepping back in time to grand Regency era England. Greenwich Park’s main avenue boasts an impressive view across the Thames to the financial district. The oldest of London’s parks, Greenwich is also home to the Royal Observatory and the Meridian Line. A must-see park for naval and historical enthusiasts.

4) Richmond Park
If you’re feeling cramped and all you want is space, space, space, then Richmond Park is the place to be. The largest enclosed area in London, this is a park to forget yourself in amongst the roaming deer, the ancient trees and lovely wetlands. If you’re a fan of cycling, the cycle paths will be a treat and for those of you without your own set of wheels, there are bicycles for hire at the park entrance. A park for explorers and adventurers stuck in the metropolis.


Jennifer Williams 

14/03/2013

Knitting Peace

Knitting Peace

“Is it possible to knit peace?” This is the question behind the new performance by Cirkus Cirkör: a Swedish contemporary circus that aims to promote the circus as a contemporary art form worldwide. Since 2005 Cirkus Cirkör has approached the contemporary circus as an art and pedagogical tool to promote and discuss issues of our contemporary society. Directed by Tilde Björfors, Knitting Peace follows this direction and proposes a parallel between the dangerous life of the contemporary circus artists and our condition as a human being. The performance asks: Why would anyone choose to spend their entire life walking on a thin line?

The answer is left to the emotional stage where each acrobat challenges his/her own aspirations by walking or flying on threads. Circus’ chains and trapezes are replaced by white knitted threads that resemble the thin-line on which we constantly live our lives.


The artists involved are five of the most world-renowned contemporary circus artists: the handstand and acrobatic dancer Jens Engman, the live-knitting Aino Ihanainen: the ring acrobats and rope equibrists Ilona Jäntti and Matleena Laine; and the aerial acrobats and singer Alexander Weibel Weibel. Knitting Peace is an astonishing performance and the artists look like spiders on a stage. They entwine themselves in knit-human compositions that seem to suggest that the only form of liberation for us is to be woven all together.


Knitting Peace will be held at the Dansen Hus in Stockholm on the 15th, 16th and 17th March 2013.

Marco Pecorari – Images Mats Bäcker, Mattias Edwall 

14/03/2013

Martin Kippenberger: sehr gut | very good at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Martin Kippenberger: Sehr Gut | Very Good

On February 25th this year, the iconic artist Martin Kippenberger would have turned 60 years old. That said, if the multi-talented enfant terrible of German art wouldn’t have died way too early at the age of 44, following a life of too much too fast. For the first time in Berlin, the National Gallery in Hamburger Bahnhof, the German mothership of contemporary art, is now honoring Kippenberger with a large retrospective. 300 of his works – paintings, drawings, sculptures, posters, books, music and photographs – are on view in Martin Kippenberger: sehr gut | very good, arranged as an approach to Kippenberger as a person and artist rather than a chronological retrospective.


Kippenberger was a painter, actor, writer, musician, drinker, dancer, traveller, charmer – an ‘exhibitionist’ in his own words, and his life cannot be separated from his work. During the few years he spent in West Berlin, from 1978 until 1981, he set up Kippenberger’s Office together with Gisela Capitain, where he exhibited his own or his friends’ works and offered a whole range of other art-related services. Later he became the business director of the punk, new wave and visual art venue SO36 in Kreuzberg, and even started his own punk band. In the legendary Paris Bar in Charlottenburg, where the German and international crème de la crème of artists, actors, musicians and other heavyweights were hanging out back then (and to some extent still do), Kippenberger traded his paintings for a life long provision of food and drinks.


Martin Kippenberger: sehr gut | very good at Hamburger Bahnhof is an ambitious attempt to show every side of this multi-faceted artist, as well as his private and public person. In one of the side rooms, the seldom exhibited so called “white pictures” are on view; fusing irony, concept and avant-garde rhetoric into transparent, glossy writing similar to school reports stating “sehr gut/very good”. Refusing to adapt to one single style, Kippenberger’s enormous variety of artistic output still feels rebellious, but sometimes also slightly confusing. The widespread exhibition takes a while to get through, but is worth every turn. Be prepared to get surprised: there is a very small chance that you will be able predict what will be on view in the next room.


Martin Kippenberger: sehr gut | very good is on view at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – from February 23rd through August 18th 2013.

Helena Nilsson Strängberg

13/03/2013

Turkish Red by Formafantasma

Turkish Red by Formafantasma

There is something about certain colours that leaves us speechless. Deep blue, aquamarine, bright yellow, each colour has a profound ability to communicate a lot about both our culture as well as our history and surroundings. It is inevitable that we link certain colours to certain material artefacts, hence TextielMuseum in Tilburg has decided to dedicate an entire exhibition to Turkish Red, a particularly vibrant hue of red. The curator of the show, titled Turkish Red & More, Caroline Boot has invited five Netherlands-based designers to draw inspiration from the museum’s archives and develop a new project around what they have discovered: “the five projects are presented in a special context, together with the sources that they refer to: Art Nouveau weavings, objects from the Art Deco period, sample books, dye recipes, antique handiwork manuals, blankets and trimmings.”


The Italian duo based in The Netherlands, Formafantasma, has created a collection of 17 silk textiles titled BTMM1514 (Turkish Red), based on the archive of Driessen family and numerous samples of turkish red Felix Driessen has collected through the years.


Turkish red is drawn from madder roots, and was first developed in India and later brought to Turkey and Greece. Playing with the traditional modes of production, particular of Andrea Trimarchi‘s and Simone Farresin’s approach, they have created a series of silk textiles dyed with madder roots in collaboration with a German colourist, while the patterns were taken from the Driessen’s books, together with other visual element historically associated with Turkish red.

This apparently simple project clearly evokes the influence of colours, the Turkish red in particular, in our historical and present economic, geographical, cultural, aesthethical, social context. 
Turkish Red & More is on display until the 26th of May 2013 at TextielMuseum in Tilburg.


Rujana Rebernjak

12/03/2013

David Bowie Is Alive and Well

David Bowie Is Alive and Well

When the Flaming Lips released a song called “Is David Bowie Dying?” in 2011, they seemed to be highlighting what was in the back of everybody’s mind. Ever since suffering a heart attack onstage in Germany in 2004, David Bowie has remained more elusive than Thomas Pynchon, cropping up only for the occasional fashion show photo or Arcade Fire concert. No tours, no new songs, no albums, no interviews. For a while he seemed to vanish into thin air. Where was he? Was he ok? Was David Bowie dying? Until very recently, the question seemed appropriate.

The Next Day, his first album of new material since 2003, finds Bowie alive and as relevant as ever. “Here I am, not quite dying,” he chants in the title track, the first of the album, picking away at the inevitability of his own mortality, and the public’s fascination with it. The Next Day is deeply rooted in Bowie’s own eclectic past, from the bizarrely re-appropriated Heroes cover to “Where Are We Now?”, a deeply moving “Five Years”-esque ballad that finds the elder statesman looking back whimsically on his mid-70s Berlin heyday. “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” doesn’t hit the same emotional high-water mark, but it works as a flashy radio single, and the Lynchian video finds Bowie and actress Tilda Swinton being stocked by celebrity vampires that look eerily familiar to Ziggy Stardust. For her part, Tilda Swinton looks like The Man Who Fell to Earth, and by the end it’s hard to tell exactly who’s who.


The Next Day has the air of a final statement, but maybe that’s because many of us had already written him off as long gone, retired, dead. In the last few weeks plenty of comparisons have been made to Bob Dylan, whose late-career resurgence seems to have no end. In addition to a new album, there’s also “David Bowie Is…“, an upcoming exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum that will run from March through August. But unlike Dylan, Bowie has no plans to tour, give interviews, or otherwise open himself up to the public. Maybe having a heart attack on stage has something to do with it, but either way it’s refreshing to see a guy who’s spent most of his life endlessly toying with the notion of celebrity identity seems content to step back from the limelight and let his work stand on its own this time around.


Lane Koivu

11/03/2013

White Socks in Men’s Wardrobe

White Socks in Men’s Wardrobe

Socks are that kind of stuff fashion universe loves to experiment on or make it disappear in turn. It depends on the year and on the single designer. They are a part of the so-called details of a whole look; they can make the difference, or not. Apart from that, there is always something related that remains ambiguous, something that keeps dividing opinions: men who wear white socks. Are they actually cool or just geek?


It may sound corny, but reality shows that although people are not scared of wearing colored patterned socks, many of them feel very uncomfortable about wearing the white ones. Most of us do not really know about the history of this curious element of men’s style, which can really be hard to match with, but on the other hand, give you a very personal and strong impact.

White socks have been identified until 60s as the classic, comfortable and better choice for worker men, and they have been called for years “athletic”, since everyone used them in sports. Around the end of 50s the term preppy became even more known and it was in 1961 that The Beach Boys came out. Buttoned-down shirt, chinos, penny loafers and white socks: male youth wanted to look exactly like them.



So if you were young, American and going to college during the end of 50s/beginning of 60s, wearing white socks was a must. It remained as a hit for several years till mid-60s, when they disappeared again. Some time after one noticed a shift from white to black, thanks to the upcoming era of urban look. Everyone, back then, aspired to dress up like Marlon Brando in the 1953 movie The Wild One. There was not more space for preppies.

After almost ten years, white socks came back. This time it was because of the black American youngsters who were going to school dressed up in a urban-sporty way but wearing, very proudly, their white socks. The socks started being popular among the very “cool” people again. The 80s arrived and Michael Jackson made them part of his own signature style.

You may love or hate them, in any case they have been, and still are, an interesting trend in the male fashion universe.



Francesca Crippa

08/03/2013

Clet – The Man on the Streets

Clet – The Man on the Streets

Have you seen them? Road signs modified with stickers. They’re works by Clet Abraham – an artist from Brittany, based in Florence – who has for few years been globetrotting the Italian and European cities with an unusual mission: attaching removable stickers to road signs, to modify their meaning without making them unrecognizable to drivers. From Bologna to Paris, passing through Valencia: Abraham’s nightly guerrilla changed “no entry” signs into pillories that imprison a man’s head and hands, the T indicating a “no through road” into a cross for Jesus Christ, the triangle that gives warning for the presence of an asymmetric bottleneck and the arrow indicating a one way direction, together, into two lovers and a pierced heart.


The 46-year-old artist declared that his art, rather than an hymn to anarchy, is a motivation for reflecting on the chains that tie modern society and its citizens, forced to do things because of the invisible road signs that give the obliged directions to everything. Judging by the presence of religious references, especially Christ and angels, Abraham seems also to attempt a critique to the religions, and gives life to a personal warning oriented towards local administrations, that often waste public space for useless buildings and architectural projects. You see, the ingredients for visibility are served: a smart, easy-to-use creativity spiced with messages of social, political and religious denunciation.


Abraham is, for definition, a street artist, but he considers his art less damaging and invasive than the graffitis, as an art form. Thinking about it, he is not much different from the Writers, especially from the most exhibitionist ones. He issues interviews, makes photos of his works and posts them on his Facebook fan page, followed by more than 25K fans. In 2010, he placed a self-portrait in the Loeser collection of Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, in place of a Bronzino painting that was previously moved. Just few years earlier, in 2003, an unknown english graffiti artist entered into the Tate Gallery in London and casually hung his painting as if nothing had happened. You can bet that beyond all his good causes, when he carried out this little act, Abraham desired for himself even just a little piece of the fame that the graffiti artist had gained with his deed. His name was Bansky.


Antonio Leggieri

07/03/2013

The Spotlights of Paris for AW1314

The Spotlights of Paris for AW1314

La ville lumière strikes again, and for next winter seems to tell us that when everything seems to be already said and done, and you can’t go too forwarding, then, let’ s all go emotional, doesn’t matter if you have to do it in a minimal or in a chaotic and apparently messed way. Note to self: always stay masculine and wear dark tones.

What we have seen on the catwalks is a particular emotional side of clothes, which embraces you subtly, then gently whispers to your ear. These voices are embodied in the warmer and rounder clean lines of Celine, in the combination of the mesmerizing set and perfection of the clothes Raf Simons creates for Dior, or in the colorful “over layered” chaos of Vivienne Westwood, up until the theatrical and monastic vibes Ann Demeulemeester, Rick Owens, and his pupil Gareth Pugh have shown.

Minimal is a long time trend in more recent years, especially in these so called crisis days. More than ever, this season, there is no space for too frivolous or baroque volumes and details, at all. Damir Doma takes all off, leaving just the simple shape and just few important enlightened details; somehow similar to what Alexander Wang has done, his own way, in a B/W palette for his first collection at Balenciaga (very Cristobal indeed), keeping the traditional curved volumes of the house. The absolute certainty “less is more” has reached everyone, gets when an enfant terrible like Jean Paul Gaultier goes rather simple and serious with his dummy-like corsets and long chiffon skirts, or John Galliano’s former label flirts with discipline and a clean lines and volumes.

Chaos, a clash of moods and styles, is the key for the historical/ethnic pastiche of Madame Westwood, but also for the grunge meets 70s bohemian collection of Saint Laurent or the fil rouge at Junya Watanabe, where biker perfecto meets punkish tartan and tweed to become patchwork dresses. On the other side, at Givenchy, Riccardo Tisci is able to create a well balanced “Victorian meets gipsy meets flamenco meets punk and… Bambi prints”.

The trend of trends, this season, is being feminine on masculine wardrobe. If you have a quick look through, you’ll bump into several classic pinstripe fabrics, and you’ll see trousers winning over skirts 10-1. One collection says it all: Stella McCartney, after getting us used to a very feminine line, following the body curves, now, showing on the catwalk a strong pinstripe/tartan collection, deeply inspired by a savile row touch on classic men pieces with a sort of Japanese exaggerated sheltering volumes approach to them.


Last but not least: black is still up. We know it’s A/W, but for what we see on the catwalks, there is not much chance for bright plain colors: if designers are not going for dark tones, then it will be white or classics like tartan, brocade or floral prints and interesting surreal/playful patterns like the stylized eyes we have seen at Undercover, Givenchy and Kenzo. On the catwalks just few pale or acid pastels survives this “army” of B/W.

In the end, what counts more than trends, is that Paris sees a more-than-ever strong, subtly dressed, and self-confident woman coming for winter, even if she likes sneaking stuff by her man’s wardrobe.

Nicolò Parisi

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