Art Club #32 Mircea Cantor

May 20 – September 19, 2021
Curator: Pier Paolo Pancotto

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. From May 20 to September 19, 2021, Art Club #32 presents the work of Mircea Cantor.

Drawing on a universal iconographic and iconological repertoire, represented by images and simple gestures belonging to everyday life, Mircea Cantor reflects on the historical and cultural components that make up reality and the various semantic nuances that articulate it. This process of observation often stems from the artist’s individual experience, first in Romania and then in France, and is expressed through numerous linguistic forms, some of which are represented in Rome on the occasion of his individual debut at the Villa Medici. The exhibition brings together a variety of works, some of which were conceived for the occasion, which are displayed in different areas of the Academy’s gardens.

After crossing the Grande Loggia, overlooked by the monumental Flag (2017), the tour opens onto the Loggia Balthus where, traced in candle smoke (a technique as ephemeral and transitory as the meaning of the text it expresses), appear on the ceiling the words Ciel variable (2007-21), part of the series of the same name begun by the artist in 2007 and centered on the theme of the fragility of the human condition. The same loggia, on whose walls DNA Kiss (2008-21) appears, introduces Atelier Balthus, where a new film shot in Rome for the occasion is screened, testifying to the artist’s longstanding ties with the city. Other video works – I decided not to save the world (2011), Regalo (2014) and Am I really free (2020), with their strongly autobiographical structure – are distributed between the Piccolo Balthus, Cleopatra’s Loggia and the Gypsotheca.

In front of the Loggia Balthus stands a geometric structure along which the piece Chaplet (2021) unfolds, made up of 120 meters of film marked with the artist’s fingerprints which, like a rosary, unfold without discontinuity on the celluloid strip to form a kind of recording of the author and, consequently, a reflection on the concept of identity and individual freedom.
Festina lente (Empire of all poetic encounters) (2017-21), consisting of a painted palette (a flat structure on which goods are placed) stands in the center of Ferdinand’s Pavilion, entering into dialogue with the frescoes above it, while the plaster relief Homo homini lupus (2021) occupies the Gypsothèque, resembling the casts of the Trajan column usually kept in this space.

With the support of Galerie Magazzino.

Images: © Daniele Molajoli