Inhabitants/Habitats
curated by Silvia Lucchesi

Daniela De Lorenzo / Zoè Gruni / Kinkaleri
Tuesday 13th Feburary – Saturday 17th Feburary 2007

Raffaele Luongo / Franco Menicagli / Virgilio Sieni
Tuesday 20th Feburary – Saturday 24th Feburary 2007

Inhabitants/Habitats, the exhibition curated by Silvia Lucchesi at the Galleria Il Ponte, is structured in two consecutive five-day sections, and brings together the work of six artists: Daniela De Lorenzo, Zoè Gruni, Kinkaleri, Raffaele Luongo, Franco Menicagli and Virgilio Sieni. They demonstrate their own personal visions on the theme of the relationship between the body and space, using different media, from video to photography and installations. One’s own body, that of other people, changing bodies which live in and exist in relation to environments from the home  to the city, and in relation to abstract habitats through gestures ranging from the everyday and private to the staged.

Daniela De Lorenzo is from Florence and presents Geotropico, a previously un published double video projection, in which the graceful body of a dancer carries out simple actions. Just like plants which have the ‘geotropical’ property of turning in a direction which corresponds to or is opposite to that of gravitational forces – roots towards the centre of the earth and stems in the opposite direction – the dancer rises from the ground and moves by rolling her body which is bent forward. But the version which had been edited backwards generates a sort of internal deviation of the gesture, both mysterious and disconcerting. The body appears heavy, the action stilted, laborious. The scene is a silent empty interior which concentrates on the repeated action in a vision which has been squeezed in order to extract the volumetric essence from form, while the sound of amplified silence is heavy, indeed leaden.

Geotropico, 2007
Two video projections, with sound, 2’ 10”, 1’ 20” loop
Editing: Angelo Teardo
Filmed at Cantieri Goldonetta, Florence


Zoè Gruni, the young artist from Pistoia, has created Copricorpo (Body cover), a photographic tryptich which depicts her wearing three scultures sewn by her from jute packaging fabric. “I’m a woman and just like a package I’m a container”, says the artist. Because of this she has chosen that rough material which is strangely smelling and difficult to work with. Her figure becomes almost entiredly engulfed in the complex construction of strange  garments. She is transformed into a primordial being, with no modesty in the cold light of an unmoving, timeless landscape.

Copricorpo, 2007
triptych
Lambda prints on aluminium


The new photographic work of the Tuscan theatre dance group Kinkaleri, developed specailly for this occasion, is formed of stills taken of the forst eight videos of the WEST project. WEST is a project which began in 2002 and is still work in progress, finishing in 2007. It is a journey which examines the West through the “mortal remains” of an act which is repeated in front of a video camera. Anonymous inhabitants are filmed in urban contexts while they “fall dead”. The sets are the streets and squares of a dozen cities chosen as icons of Western culture. Here “Western”, rather than a geographical description, is understood as the dominant economic-anthropological model, and to date, include footage taken in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna and London. These were joined by the recent addition of beijing in Novembre. From the action of the fall, the silent series of video-stills captures the body lying on the ground, the culminating moment of this construction represented by so many acts of dying.

WEST Video-stills, 2007
stampe lambda su plexiglas

All Raffaele Luongo’s work is a single self-portrait. è un unico autoritratto. A depiction of himself, which in a society which boasts of strength and self-confidence, does not hesitate to recognise his own weaknesses. He incessantly depicts his own story, using his own blood. The subjects of his work belong to his world of memories: eppisodes and images from his life, often portrayed using comic-strip techniques. By using blood as a residual element, the evocation of the past is linked to the  body of the artist. When this blood is exposed to the light, it coagulates immediately, blocking me. A silent and withdrawn artist, Luongo, who lives between Naples and Florence, presents a previously unpublished video and two sculptures which were executed specially for this occasion.

Me, Dad and friends at Bar Charlie, 2003
video, silent, 17’
La substance of all things, 2007
wood, watercolour card, blood

Raffaele and the self-portrait with no residue, 2007
watercolour card, blood

Franco Menicagli (vive e lavora a Firenze) presenta un video e una installazione appositamente realizzata per la mostra. Si tratta di una sua collezione di strani ninnoli. Sono esseri in ceramica e in carta di piccole dimensioni dalle sembianze animali e vegetali, si direbbero geneticamente modificati. Nel video ci sono un cavallo con delle ali a cui sono attaccati dei missili, un sommergibile con zampe di rettile, un carroarmato e un aereo con ali di uccello. Su delle mensole invece ci sono delle piantine le cui foglie non sono uguali fra di loro, da una stessa pianta vengon fuori escrescenze diverse, presentano malformazioni. Sia gli uni che le altre sembrano il frutto di esperimenti, abitanti di un mondo ribaltato in cui la tecnologia, segno massimo del progresso dell’uomo, è impazzita. E’ così che nascono questi ibridi che evocano l’industria militare e la biogenetica.


A modo mio, 2005
video, sonoro, 4’51” loop
Senza titolo, 2007
cartoncino, colla a caldo

Il dittico Bratto Ballet è una delle tre videoinstallazioni realizzate dal coreografo fiorentino Virgilio Sieni nell’ambito di Family, progetto di residenza della Compagnia svoltosi a Siena nel 2006. L’incontro con quattro famiglie senesi ha prodotto un lavoro di studio durato tre mesi dal quale sono nati video, eventi performativi e una serie di manifesti. Nei video, i membri della famiglia, bambini, adulti, anziani, legati da gradi diversi di parentela, affrontano uno studio coreografico e figurativo centrato sul rispetto della naturalità del gesto rivolto a un approccio conoscitivo, antropologico ed etico dei vissuti quotidiani e della loro trasfigurazione. Il set sono gli spazi domestici ripercorsi e agiti dalle persone stesse che li vivono abitualmente attraverso precise coreografie che lasciano emergere il senso enigmatico delle relazioni spaziali, le attitudini posturali, il senso quotidiano e ineffabile di brevi cerimonie gestuali.

 

Two video projections, silent, 5’ 37’’ loop
With: Anna Covati Bratto, Cecilia Bratto, Chiara Bratto, Marialuce Bratto, Matteo Bratto, Patrizia Salvestrini Bratto, Tommaso Bratto, Gianluca Cinci, Elisa Montanelli, Marta Montanelli, Roberto Montanelli
Video and stills: Luca Ballini

Production: Comune di Siena Assessorato alla Cultura, Compagnia Virgilio Sieni, in collaboration with the Palazzo delle Papesse Contemporary Art Centre

Press office: Susanna Fabiani (susy@galleriailponte.com). Catalogue and photographs available on request.