Artipedia - Arts News

Castello di Rivoli

Roberto Cuoghi
Pazuzu (Progetto per il Castello di Rivoli), 2008
digital drawing
variable dimensions
Courtesy of the artist

Roberto Cuoghi. Suillakku
May 6 - July 27, 2008

Curated by Marcella Beccaria

http://www.castellodirivoli.org

With its “New generations” series the Museum showcases the work of young artists who are emerging on the international stage. Curated by Marcella Beccaria, the series began in 2000 presenting solo exhibitions of Franz Ackermann, Teresita Fernández, Anna Gaskell, Francesco Vezzoli, Thomas Demand, Candice Breitz and Yang Fudong.

With this new solo exhibition the Museum is presenting the work of Roberto Cuoghi (Modena, 1973), one of the most interesting Italian artists working today. Experimenting to the point of obsession, Cuoghi continuously reinvents himself and his method, working with a wide range of techniques, including photography, video, animations, painting, drawing and sound. In particular, Cuoghi has developed a personal investigation of the principle of metamorphosis. At the age of twenty-five he embarked on a path of physical transformation that lasted seven years and led him to age his appearance so he would resemble his father. Refusing to call this process a performance and to execute related works, the artist instead transferred his interest in the idea of metamorphosis into new works.

For Cuoghi, the invitation to develop a solo exhibition at Castello di Rivoli is an opportunity to make a vertiginous leap backward. Landing in Mesopotamia, at the time of the ancient Assyrians, the artist focuses on the most dramatic moment, when the empire fell into ruin and Ninevah is about to fall victim to attacks by the enemies. Made up of an imposing sound work and a monumental statue of the demon Pazuzu, the exhibition Suillakku, is the result of this latest metamorphosis on the part of the artist. A voyage in an apparently remote world, the project gives back the uncomfortable sensation of an irrational world, within which the past no longer seems remote and instead becomes a disquieting interpretation of a present that is all too near.

In conjunction with the exhibition Suillakku, Skira, Milan is publishing an in-depth catalogue on the work of Roberto Cuoghi. The book includes an essay by the curator, complete biographical and bibliographical appendices and images of most of the works the artist has created.

For information
Press Office, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea,
tel. +39/011.9565209 - 211,
fax +39/ 011.9565231
e-mail: press@castellodirivoli.org , s.bertalot@castellodirivoli.org

REGIONE PIEMONTE / FONDAZIONE CRT / CAMERA DI COMMERCIO INDUSTRIA ARTIGIANATO E AGRICOLTURA DI TORINO / CITTA’ DI TORINO / UNICREDIT PRIVATE BANKING –
GRUPPO UNICREDIT

MUSEO D’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA
Piazza Mafalda di Savoia - 10098 Rivoli (Torino) - Italia
tel. +39/011.9565222 – 9565280 fax +39/011.9565231
e-mail: info@castellodirivoli.org
http://www.castellodirivoli.org

frieze

frieze 115: Out Now

Additional exclusive content online at frieze.com

This month in an issue of frieze looking at film and photography…

Brian Dillon laments the decline of the technologically sophisticated but rapidly outdated Polaroid camera, a ‘curious dead end in the history of photography’.

David Campany considers the quietly meditative films of Mark Lewis, which fuse pictorial traditions with the art of movement.

In Marine Hugonnier’s films, referred to by the artist as ‘an anthropology of images’, Lars Bang Larsen considers the politics of vision. See frieze.com for an extract from her film The Secretary of the Invisible (2008).

Christy Lange discovers an unsettling side to the American Dream in Taryn Simon’s photographs of restricted locations and private moments.

Rosalind Nashashibi has said that it is the medium of film that most closely approximates the processes of thinking; Martin Herbert looks at her work and discovers why.

Watch Nashashibi’s film Eyeballing (2005) online this month at frieze.com

Jonathan Griffin reflects on Brian Griffiths’ installations and sculptures, which ‘drag their historical baggage towards an imaginary future’.

In the Melbourne City Report, Max Delany and Nicola Harvey explore a city that oscillates between a frontier town and a multicultural metropolis.

In the Front section, Aaron Schuster iterates no less than 35 rules that define a contemporary work of art. Robert Storr examines the complex relationship between philanthropists and museums. Nicolas Bourriaud details the books that have influenced him in a new series ‘Ideal Syllabus’ and Mark Leckey discusses his favourite films.

And frieze considers the work of Nicholas Hlobo, Jimmy Robert, Li Dafang and Tatiana Trouvé in the regular Focus feature section. Plus a further 25 exhibition reviews, including the Whitney Biennial 2008, the 5th Berlin Biennial and exhibitions from Australia, Brazil, China, France, the UK, USA
and more.

Exclusively online at frieze.com

Nick Currie rounds up recent art world events, exhibitions and goings-on in Japan.

Design critic Jennifer Kabat uncovers the secret history of the Apple logo.

9/11, Susan Sontag and relativism; Ron Jones begins a new column for frieze.com with a two-part essay on language.

Mark Fisher reviews some recent music releases.
Plus weekly reviews of current exhibitions from London, New York, Paris, Berlin and beyond.

………………

Subscribe to frieze now and save 40 percent off the cover price.
http://www.frieze.com

Spinnerei archiv massiv

Lorenza Lucchi Basili
Space eighty-two, Leipzig
chromogenic print on dibond
105×70cm
2008

Bildarchive 5: Lorenza Lucchi Basili
May 1 - September 16, 2008

Spinnerei archiv massiv
Spinnereistrasse, 7, building 20A
04179 Leipzig
Germany

Tue-Sat 11am-6pm
tel. +49 - 341 - 47 84 141
archivmassiv@spinnerei.de
http://www.spinnerei.de

Spinnerei archiv massiv is proud to present Bildarchive 5, showcasing a site-specific project of Lorenza Lucchi Basili.

For each step of Bildarchive, Spinnerei archiv massiv invites international artists to develop a photographic project on Spinnerei, a huge, former cotton spinning mill complex extending over 70,000 square meters of active surface, distributed in 23 distinct buildings. Today Spinnerei is home to many international art galleries, artists’ studios, workshops, commercial and service activities, and represents the core of the Leipzig art scene. It has received substantial international press coverage as one of today’s global hot spots of contemporary art. As more and more new tenants come in to use and inhabit previously abandoned spaces, Spinnerei is subject to a constant flux of physical, perceptual, and psychological change. The aim of the Bildarchive project is to build a non-documentary narrative of this flux by asking artists with different backgrounds and approaches to photographical work to provide a personal, entirely unconstrained account of their experience of Spinnere
i as a physical, social, symbolic, economic space.

Lucchi Basili has developed her Bildarchive project during a one-month residence at Spinnerei, following a short preliminary visit. Lorenza began her residence without a specific idea in mind, and let it develop through the daily interaction with the place. As the complex’s buildings had been photographed so many times already, she tried to question their conventional imagery. She has found a most striking foundation for an alternative approach to Spinnerei in its receptive mutability to the ever-changing light and weather conditions that are typical of Leipzig’s early Spring, and that paved the way to a perceptual and conceptual conundrum. In her photos, Lorenza has eliminated any recognizable reference to the present age, developing a somewhat suspended imagery that seems to refer to Spinnerei’s past epochs, thereby evoking a sequence of layers of meaning that have piled up during its existence.

The images presented in the exhibition, six large, coupled 120×180 cm chromogenic prints in the main exhibition room, and a smaller 105×70 cm one at the space’s entrance, are only a partial outcome of the project. They establish a subtle dialectics among four of the space’s possible layers of meaning. The postcard set which accompanies each step of the Bildarchive project has been turned by Lucchi Basili into a project in itself, nested within the exhibition project, and presenting a sequence of ten images that define a conceptual and visual loop on one of Spinnerei’s less recognized identities. Any of the other communication materials of the exhibition, including the present release, contain more selected image samples from the overall project, suggesting a possible trans-media and almost viral expansion. The whole body of work of Lucchi Basili’s Spinnerei project will be eventually collected in a forthcoming monographic book, currently in progress.

Lucchi Basili will have another solo show in Germany later this year at uqbar Project Room in Berlin, within the framework of the 3rd European Month of Photography.