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Art Club #36 Rosa Barba
14.09 - 27.10.2022
- Artist
- Rosa Barba
- Curator
- Pier Paolo Pancotto
September 14 to October 27, 2022
Since its creation in 2016, the Art Club cycle of exhibitions has brought works by international contemporary artists into dialogue with the centuries-old heritage of the Académie de France in Rome. Taking the form of visual and plastic interventions scattered throughout the strolling spaces of the Villa Medici (loggias, gardens, salons), the series Art Club series renews the experience of visiting a place where eras intermingle and unexpected connections arise. For the next event in the series in September, Villa Medici welcomes Italian artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba. His work, at the crossroads of cinema and contemporary art, will be exhibited alongside the Villa Medici Film Festival from September 14 to 18, 2022.
Rosa Barba presents three pieces that offer an overview of over 10 years of artistic practice, combining film, sculpture, sound and text.
With Disseminate and Hold (2016), Rosa Barba explores man-made landscapes and how they are often the result of political considerations and utopian visions. Shot in Brazil, the film depicts the daily chaos of the Minhocão (“Great Earthworm”), the elevated highway that runs through the center of São Paulo, and is the starting point for a reflection on the traces that history leaves on the urban landscape and environment.
Color Clocks: Verticals Lean Occasionally Consistently Away from Viewpoints (2012) consists of three spatially arranged objects, each reminiscent of a clockwork mechanism. Each, with its specific rhythm, produces a kinetic image. By playing with different modes of perception, the Color Clocks installation seeks to capture the very measure and experience of time, and invites an endlessly repeated meditation on color, time, perception and language.
Weavers (2021) is an installation of moving frames made from a weave of 16 and 35 mm film, forming a surface that is sometimes reflective and sometimes transparent, allowing the surrounding space to be perceived. The irregular weavings, accentuated by a short-throw light projector, create fleeting sequences. Rosa Barba questions the plasticity and transparency of film as a medium in a work that unfolds like a cinematic image and a rotating suspended screen.
The exhibition is supported by Vistamare, Milano / Pescara.
Rosa Barba
Rosa Barba is an artist and filmmaker who combines conceptual work and personal vision in projects that combine film, sculpture, installation, performance and text, and draw on the material and conceptual qualities of cinema. She also creates site-specific installations and interventions that explore how film structures space and produces a new relationship between the work and the viewer.
Her work has been exhibited at international institutions and biennales, including Cukrarna, Ljubljana (2022); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2021/2022); 7th Beaufort Triennale, Belgium (2021); Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2017); and the 56th (2015), 53rd (2009) and 52nd (2008) Venice Biennales. In 2020, Rosa Barba was awarded the Calder Prize by the Calder Foundation. Her work is part of numerous public and private collections and has been the subject of several publications, including the monograph : On the Anarchic Organization of Cinematic Spaces. Evoking Spaces beyond Cinema (2021).
Pier Paolo Pancotto
Pier Paolo Pancotto has curated the Art Club exhibition program at Villa Medici since 2016. Previously, he curated the Fortezzuola cycle of exhibitions at the Museo Pietro Canonica in Rome in 2016-2018.
He has also led exhibition projects at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London; Galleria nazionale d’arte, Tirana; Lateral Art Space, Cluj; Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna, Rome; Museo H. C. Andersen, Rome; Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome; Nomas Foundation, Rome; Casa Scatturin, Venice; and La Fondazione, Rome. His publications include Artiste a Roma nella prima metà del ‘900 (2006) ; Arte contemporanea: dal minimalismo alle ultime tendenze (2010) ; Arte contemporanea. Il nuovo millennio (2013).
Initiated in 2016 under the curatorship of Pier Paolo Pancotto, the Art Club series presents the work of international contemporary artists at Villa Medici in a spirit of openness to the most varied forms of creation. Recent exhibits include Jean-Marie Appriou, Giuseppe Penone, Katinka Bock, Mircea Cantor, Namsal Siedlecki, Achraf Touloub, Arcangelo Sassolino, Julius von Bismarck, Marinella Senatore, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Cyprien Gaillard…
Photo credits:
Cover image: “Color clocks”, 2012, installation © Daniele Molajoli
Portrait of Rosa Barba: © Saskia Uppenkamp
Portrait of Pier Paolo Pancotto: © Daniele Molajoli
Images of the works: © Daniele Molajoli
