Art Club #7 Summer memories

“Summer is coming to an end. The colors and warm lights that (…) accompanied it are gradually fading, giving way to new chromatic variations. (…) The phenomenon is manifesting itself in many forms, and some artists are interpreting it (…).

Bora (2011) by Yuri Ancarani (Ravenna, 1972; lives and works in Milan and Los Angeles) ‘captures’ a fragment of nature (…) and imprisons it in a small screen from which it emerges, in all its power, as a video. This is the force by which the zoomorphic and vegetal presences that once occupied the Villa come to life in the Studiolo frescoes (…).

VETTORI (2016) by Alfredo Aceto (Turin, 1991; lives and works in Lausanne) is a modern merzbilt composed of waste from the Villa (…). He thus emphasizes the ephemeral nature of life at the Academy, which he (…) perceives as a ‘non-place’ where everything is transitory, as evidenced by his own remains.

Lupo Borgonovo (Milan, 1985; lives and works in Milan) interprets gardens as a kind of Eden where new forms of existence come to life. He discovers some of them in the fountain at the center of the park, others at the crossroads of the tree-lined paths. The former manifest themselves as multicolored snakes(S, 2016), the latter as prehistoric shells(Bianca, 2016).

Alberto Di Fabio (Avezzano, 1966; lives and works in Rome) compresses in his tapestries(Energie, 2016; Paesaggi della mente, 2015) all the tonal and chromatic range that the flowers, plants and animals of the Villa have made available to him, and combines them with that of the cosmos, reflecting on possible affinities (…).

Nicola Martini (Florence, 1984; lives and works in Milan) takes a few traces from tree trunks destined for combustion (…) and makes copies of them(Senza titolo, 2016), which he arranges near Cleopatra’s Loggia, as if to avenge their fate and sublimate their function.

The concepts of order, symmetry and proportion that regulate natural balances appear in the plastic compositions Gregor (2015) and the other two, entitled Le Solite Cose (2016) by Arcangelo Sassolino (Trissino, 1967; lives and works in Vicenza), as well as in the Gypsotheca that houses them.

Francesco Simeti (Palermo, 1968; lives and works in New York) places Thornlike (2016) in a corner of the garden, between acanthus plants and archaeological remains. The composition recalls (…) the various historical phases of the Villa, in particular the earliest ones, which the artist recaptures in their full, unchanged vitality.

This vitality is the lifeblood of True Faith, 2016 by Nico Vascellari (Vittorio Veneto, 1976; lives and works in Rome). The installation, placed under the Loggia (…), is made up of innocent tubes, aluminum sculptures and a video system that reflects in metaphorical form on the concept ofcontrol – scientific, intellectual, social, political – through which we can read, in diachronic key, academic reality as a whole”.

Pier Paolo Pancotto, exhibition curator