Vera Lutter @ Alfonso Artiaco, Naples - Between Then and Now

Vera Lutter: Between Then and Now

Alfonso Artiaco, Naples

May 9 - June 25, 2022

For her third solo show at the Alfonso Artiaco gallery, VERA LUTTER has developed a path from her most iconic photographic series to her latest projects.

Her photographs are made using the antiquated camera obscura process in which a large room, a shipping container, or even a small wooden box replaces the photographic device we normally think of as a camera. Each image requires long exposure times and is imprinted directly on photo sensitive paper, causing the image to be not only a negative of its subject but also a unique piece that testifies to the permanence of time passed and the slow passage of light across its subjects.

The exhibition includes 17 black and white works: not a retrospective but, as the title suggests, an extensive journey through the most significant works realized "between yesterday and today." It is no coincidence that some works from the New York series are included, with strong, recognizable subjects from the architecture of the Big Apple and its unique metropolitan landscapes to the impressive view of the MOMA sculpture garden as well as the Chrysler and Grace buildings.

In the gallery’s largest room are five pieces from the artist’s body of work created at LACMA in Los Angeles on the occasion of her solo exhibition Museum in the Camera (2021). In this series, Lutter shifts her focus from architecture to the artworks in the LACMA collection, photographing them over her two-year residency at the museum. Vera Lutter made photographs of paintings by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Georges de la Tour, as well as artifacts ranging from African statues to the Hindu God Vishnu, these already remarkable artworks are then recontextualized through Vera Lutter’s process in ethereal and timeless black and white tones.

And Vera Lutter has also given much attention to Italy: “It feels – says the artist - as though Italy were ingrained into my DNA. Early childhood memories take me to Rome and Sienna, to the Duomo of Milano and the Amphitheater in Verona. Italy remained a place I returned to all my life. The ancient sites, be they Greek, Roman, Byzantine or Etruscan resonate with my heart and speak to me of that Europe thousands of years old. A place of fluctuating boarders, cultures and peoples. What captures me most is what I eventually wish to preserve in an image. This exhibition presents some of my attempts to render, revisit and capture such sites”.

On display the first works made during her stay in Naples, unusual views of the city and the archaeological sites of Pozzuoli.

Two rooms are dedicated to Rome.The artist, with her camera obscura, photographed a suggestive view of Piazza del Popolo and then turned her lens-less camera onto the unique architecture of the Pantheon, photographing outside and, with three different views and exposures, inside.

The exhibition is completed by a work from Vera Lutter’s most recent series, taken at the Acropolis in Athens. This project continues to demonstrate the artist's versatility and her ability to make universally recognized subjects feel unique.

VERA LUTTER was born in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 1960. She lives and works in New York. Her work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions at recognized institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dia:Beacon, Beacon; Kunsthalle, Basel; MoMA, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Her photographs are part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others.

ALFONSO ARTIACO

Piazzetta Nilo n.7 - 80134 Napoli

www.alfonsoartiaco.com

________________

Robert Barry @ Alfonso Artiaco, Naples - Early Works

Robert Barry: Early Works

Alfonso Artiaco, Naples

March 12 - April 30, 2022

Among the protagonists of American Conceptual Art, ROBERT BARRY (b. 1936), since the ‘60s has been involved in the critique of the work of art, renouncing to all expressive, narrative and representative functions, utilizing language as the main medium of his work.

The concept that the idea of a work is as important as the actual piece of art accompanies his experimentation over the years, creating connections between the absence and presence of the shape and a continuous dialogue between the viewer and empty spaces.

Since 1967 this approach has constantly pushed his research towards the limits of immateriality and invisibility.

Although Robert Barry’s research begun with painting, the media used have not always been orthodox or tangible: among those the use of magnetism and thoughts, ultrasonic sounds and inert gases.

However, 'words' have always been part of his aesthetic, they have been seen as evocation of a mental state, as continuous stream of thoughts and as contemplation and as a way to declare to the viewer a temporal and psychic intangibility.

The terms used by the artist are usually drawing from different sources. They have no semantic value, they do not hide any hidden meaning. Each of them is chosen accordingly to the situations or places where the artist is exhibiting.

Their meaning is also influenced by the viewer decision whether or not to read the language in the wider context of the entire work of the artist. The preference for the comprehension of these words within sentences quickly becomes clear when one encounters the fragmented but potentially contextual syntax in which they exist.

"In my work, language for itself is not art. I use language as a sign to indicate that there is art, the direction in which it exists, to prepare for it."

The artist uses words by painting them on walls or canvases, applying them, printing them or writing them on paper, projecting them on slides or sculpting them on various media.

This is Robert Barry’s fifth solo exhibition at the Alfonso Artiaco gallery, and includes a series of works on paper realized between the ‘60s and ‘70s and four large wall pieces, recalling some of the highlights of his early experimentation.

ROBERT BARRY (1936, New York), lives and works in New Jersey. His work has been exhibited in international events and exhibitions like: Paris Biennale; Documenta Kassel;  Venice Biennale; MOMA Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou Paris; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Robert Barry’s extensive exhibition history includes solo shows at Tate Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Nürnberg; Kustmuseum Luzern; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the upcoming exhibition in June at Lausanne Kunsthalle in Switzerland curated by Mathieu Copeland. His work is included in the permanent collections of the world's major museums and foundations as: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

ALFONSO ARTIACO

Piazzetta Nilo n.7 - 80134 Napoli

www.alfonsoartiaco.com

______________

Giovanni Anselmo @ Alfonso Artiaco, Naples

Giovanni Anselmo

Alfonso Artiaco, Naples

January 18 - March 5, 2022

GIOVANNI ANSELMO presents his third solo show at the Alfonso Artiaco gallery in piazzetta Nilo; previous ones were in 1991, in the spaces of Pozzuoli, and in 2005 at Palazzo Partanna in Piazza dei Martiri, Naples.

From the end of the 60’s Giovanni Anselmo drew inspiration from natural events and from the energy that arises from them, being one of the earliest founders of the Arte Povera movement.

His radical research combines materials of different nature in continuous dialogue or conflict, making the forces that animate the work of art almost tangible, manifesting themselves through the effects on the surrounding world.

This dualism translates into a continuous tension between visible and invisible, between power and act, between finite and infinite. Organic and inorganic, natural and technological, lightness and heaviness are just some of the dialectical couples in the work of the artist. In those couples the energy inherent in the material is blocked in that moment in which opposite phenomena collide and are zeroed out.

The exhibition presents a selection of representative works of the artist in a path dated from the end of the ‘60s to nowadays.

Direzione (1967-2002) is a sandstone block with a magnetic needle mounted on its upper side that makes the work capable of self-determining its orientation in the space. Magnetism has a fundamental role in the work of Anselmo, it is a theme he has proposed over the years using multiple materials: the work on view Verso Sud (1967-2009), in which the magnetic needle is drawn on paper and it is laid on the floor under a Plexiglas sheet, follows the same concept, however forcing the natural position of the needle to the north and orienting itself in the opposite direction.

Infinito (1970) is a photograph of infinity across the sky taken with the focus, in fact, on ∞. The artist use of the photographic medium aims to the presentation of an experience, rather than at its representation. Anselmo himself, commenting the work, explains this distinction: «Photography is in a certain way the equivalent of an "instant". If, from the point of view of time, photography is so extreme, the most consequent way to resort to it is to make an extreme use of it, bringing it to the maximum of its possibilities».

Also shown is the work Particolare del lato in alto della prima I d'Infinito (14.4.1975) in which a dense field of graphite tries to capture and crystallize the concept of infinity in a finite and visible form.

Invisibile (1971-75) is a parallelepiped of black African granite on which the inscription VISIBLE is engraved. The block is not complete but cut on one side, on which the suffix IN was assumed to be inscribed, it is, its invisible, infinite and immeasurable part, the one that would make the work finished but "invisible". With an essential gesture, Anselmo allude to the possibility of finding a conclusion in what we do not see, leading the sphere of the sensible to converge with the one of the intellect, matter with the imagination and the human microcosm with the universal macrocosm.

Particolare (1972-2013) is one of the most representative work of Giovanni Anselmo. The installation consists of one or more projectors that reproduce the word PARTICULAR on a specific point of the exhibition space. When visitors are between the projector and the wall, the beam of light hits a part of their body, the word "particular" is focused and thus becomes a caption describing the process triggered by the work itself.

Oltremare (1979-2022) is the hues used for a site-specific pictorial intervention at the gallery that refers to the mineral used to produce this blue pigment formerly imported in Europe from distant lands, “beyond the sea”. The Work underlines the importance that has his relationship with the outside, not the work itself, to be part of a universe. The overseas is «a spatial indication of an elsewhere that, around us, is found in all directions. On Earth, in fact, whatever direction you choose to go, sooner or later an overseas will always appear. Placing this colour on a wall means for me to choose and indicate that direction, towards the overseas on the wall and towards the overseas in the outer space».

The work Senza Titolo (1990) is composed by a canvas and a granite slab tied together by a steel cable with a slipknot and installed on the wall. Anselmo, in a characteristic gesture of Arte Povera, abandons the traditional categories of art, almost hiding the white canvas behind the stone. With an almost unnatural balance, this suspension from the ground gives a certain lightness, suggesting a decrease in the gravity, while the juxtaposition of the rock with the canvas highlights a dialogue between the sculpture and the space of the painting.

Also on display are two granite sheets, both titled Il Colore e la pietra sono peso vivo (2018). The two vertically inclined works surrender to the force of gravity while remaining laid on the ground and, through an edge, laid against the wall.

Dove le stelle si avvicinano di una spanna in più (2001-2017): three granite blocks raw cut on two sides and split on the other two, laying on the floor create a walkable short path. An invite from the artist to follow the projection that names the work and to walk on the stones to be one step closer to the stars.

GIOVANNI ANSELMO (1934, Borgofranco d’Ivrea, Turin) lives and works in Turin. The first personal exhibition in 1968 was followed by numerous exhibitions in Italian and international museums and institutions, among them the most recent are: Accademia di San Luca, Rome (2019); Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2017); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2016); Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Etienne, France (2015); Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2013); MAMbo, Bologna (2006); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2005); Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany (2004). In 2016 he was awarded the prestigious Presidente della Repubblica award of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca; in 1990 he received the Golden Lion. He took part to the Venice Biennale in 1972, 1978, 1980, 1986, 1990 and 2007 and to the Documenta Kassel in 1972 and 1982.

ALFONSO ARTIACO

Piazzetta Nilo n.7 - 80134 Napoli

www.alfonsoartiaco.com

_________________

Bob Law @ Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples - In association with Richard Saltoun

Bob Law

in association with Richard Saltoun

Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples

Through 18 December, 2021

“I have, or I think I have, my perfect work in my mind’s eye. To bring that work into reality or existence is another matter - there is always some small flaw. Some improvement to be made. And it is this seeking after quality that most interests me... The work becomes a very serious trial and examination process in which the artist is solely responsible to himself for the quality and conviction of the work. The justification of the work is in the endeavour of the artist to seek out the quality and skill within his own mind and correlate his inner spirit with the art he can touch and make.” - Bob Law, July 1977

"We met [Bob Law] in, I think, 1974. Most of his paintings were painted in dark ink: blue, dark rust, or violet. A single colour covered the whole surface ... These were very allusive paintings, severe but not sad. Here was a strange limitless night, two contradictory aspects since one should have excluded the other. The sense of emptiness seemed to cohabit with tranquil serenity." from Giuseppe Panza: Memories of a Collector, 2007.

For the first time in Naples, Thomas Dane Gallery presents a solo exhibition of the pioneering artist BOB LAW (1934-2004). Comprising works from 1950s – 2000s, this survey show a critical overview of Bob Law’s expansive career, and features key examples from his major bodies of work, including Field Drawings, Chairs, Castles, and the Black Paintings.

Considered amongst the founders of British Minimalism, Bob Law's work defies easy categorisation and ranges across drawing, painting and sculpture and retains a firm yet always uneasy embrace of pure abstraction. As opposed to the New York-based minimalist artists, Bob Law's practice drew on his engagement with the English landscape and his esoteric range of interests.

Championed by the critic Lawrence Alloway, whom he met while in Cornwall, Bob Law exhibited with Peter Hobbs in Two Young British Painters at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1960). There followed one-man shows at some of the most prestigious galleries across Europe, including Konrad Fischer, Dusseldorf, Germany (1970) and the increasingly influential Lisson Gallery, London, UK (1971). Major institutional solo exhibitions include 10 Black Paintings 1965-70, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK (1974); Bob Law: Paintings and Drawings 1959-1978, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, curated by Nicholas Serota (1978); and Bob Law: Drawings, Sculpture and Paintings, Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall, UK, which travelled to Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, UK (1999). Recent group exhibitions include Assorted Paper, The Sunday Painter, London, UK (2017); Artists and Poets, Secession, Vienna, Austria (2015); Abstract Drawing, curated by Richard Deacon, Drawing Room, London, UK (2014); A House of Leaves, curated by Vincent Honoré, at DRAF, London, UK (2013). His work is included in numerous private and public collections throughout the world, including Tate, London, UK; the British Museum, London, UK; The Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Museum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland; and the Panza Collection, Varese, Italy, amongst others.

THOMAS DANE GALLERY

Via Francesco Crispi, 69, 80122 Napoli

www.thomasdanegallery.com

______________

Alexandre da Cunha @ Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples - Arena : Curated in dialogue with Jenni Lomax

Alexandre da Cunha: Arena
Curated in dialogue with Jenni Lomax
Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples
29 September - 12 December 2020

Alexandre da Cunha challenges the implicit value systems of objects. In his careful arrangement of material and things—whether domestic, utilitarian or disposable—da Cunha re-evaluates hierarchies of attention and perception by scrutinising the play of shape, form and colour.

For Arena, his first exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples, Alexandre da Cunha presents certain aspects of his observations of how objects sit in the world around us. Through conversation with Jenni Lomax, with whom he worked for his 2009 show Laissez-faire at Camden Art Centre, an emphasis is placed on the spatial relationship of progression between rooms in the gallery; shifting perspectives of wall, floor and ceiling. 

Elements from the Camden Arts Centre show, such as assembled mop heads and coconut casts, are newly articulated in Arena, where Alexandre da Cunha’s sensitivity to material is enhanced by Lomax’s treatment of space and installation. Doorways are deliberately closed to organise movement through the gallery; uniformity reinforcing ‘the arena’ as the enclosed site of activity or conflict.

One of a series of floor works Quilt (Sahara), (2011), weaves leather between paving slabs, while for Kentucky (Napoli), (2020), dyed cotton mop heads are constructed to form a hanging textile that suspends diagonally from the ceiling. Elsewhere, discarded wheelbarrows and metal benches are recalibrated as lighting arrangements, activating both floor and wall. A sociological dimension is never far from view—concrete mixers, their surfaces rusted and worn, are displayed for their aesthetic qualities while reinstating the social economies of labour in which these objects circulate.

Through Alexandre da Cunha’s eyes banal objects are readdressed to overcome material contractions and to articulate a weightier sense of ambivalence. Marble, (2020), features an inflatable rubber ring draped with fabric which gathers over the floor in this subtle and intuitive positioning of material, challenging the perception of what may be hard or soft: Alexandre da Cunha lures the subtext of sensation to the foreground in a humorous undoing of conventional meaning.

The works in Arena possess harmony in their hybridity, and are testament to Alexandre da Cunha’s continued desire to edit form without diminishing meaning. The exposure and endurance of his handling of material generates a more sympathetic reading of the readymade, one that warms to the lived reality of objects and the communities or individuals who used them.

JENNI LOMAX was the Director of Camden Art Centre, London, from 1990 to 2017, where she established an influential and forward-thinking programme of international exhibitions, residencies and education projects. Previously, she established and ran the Whitechapel Gallery’s pioneering Community Education Programme. She is currently working independently on a range of curatorial, writing and archival projects whilst also acting in an advisory capacity for a number of charitable arts organisations and grant giving foundations. 

ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA was born in Rio de Janeiro and lives and works in London and São Paulo. He has exhibited widely throughout the world and his work is included in major private and institutional collections including the Tate, England; ICA Boston, Boston MA; and Inhotim, Brazil. Selected solo exhibitions include: Duologue with Phillip King, Royal Society of Sculptors, London, England (2018); Boom, Pivô, São Paulo, Brazil (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago IL (2015); and Dublê, Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2011). Forthcoming commissions include Alexandre da Cunha: Figurehead II, The Box, Plymouth, England (2020); and a new permanent artwork at Battersea Power Station, commissioned by Transport for London, Art on the Underground (2021). 

Major outdoor sculptures by Alexandre da Cunha are on permanent view at the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MI; the Monsoon Building in London; the Rochaverá Tower in São Paulo; and at The Pierce Tower in Boston, MA. 

THOMAS DANE GALLERY
Via Francesco Crispi, 69 - Naples
thomasdanegallery.com

___________________

Caragh Thuring @ Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples

Caragh Thuring
Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples
22 January - 2 March 2019

On the first anniversary of Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples and the fourth exhibition in the space, the gallery presents a solo exhibition of new works by Caragh Thuring (b. 1972, Brussels). Utilising various fabrics as canvas, including sailcloth, Neapolitan tartan and woven images of her own previous works, Caragh Thuring constructs fragments of submarines, coins, plants, figures, textiles and volcanoes into compositions that explore the spatial depth and vocabulary of painting. The exhibition is accompanies by an artist's book focused purely on Caragh Thuring's depictions of volcanoes created over the last fifteen years.

In these new works Caragh Thuring has returned frequently to the motif of tartan, both as a woven fabric and as depicted in paint. The tartan geometry acts as a two-dimensional plane and referential grid on which the syntactical elements of the painting are arranged and through which they are all connected. Thuring has continued this exploration by stretching as her canvas, a registered Neapolitan tartan produced by local draper ISAIA, a fabric producer established in the 1920s and still in operation today as a renowned tailor and menswear label. The long tradition of tailoring and cloth making in Italy and Naples here linked directly with that of Scotland where Caragh Thuring grew up, close to another industrial port city: Glasgow, much alike in its energy and vibrancy to Naples.

The often idiosyncratic depictions of tartan act like a tousled veil or curtain across the work, through which we view the elements of the painting. Its hand-rendered imprecision is in stark contrast to the strict, flat surface of the canvas. This veil adds a strong spatial element to the works, with fragments of imagery appearing behind, on and in front of it. The sequence of components seems to stretch even beyond the bounds of the painting, with the un-primed canvas receding to an infinite depth while elements on the surface almost fall out of the painting and collide with the viewer. 

Alongside stretched and painted tartan Caragh Thuring will also utilise a unique method she has developed to produce her canvas, collaborating with English silk-weavers to make fabric from images of her own previous paintings. This process extends Caragh Thuring's interest in seriality and the interchange between digital and analogue processes in her work. By fabricating her own canvas, Thuring is able to start not from emptiness but from an already activated surface. In these over-painted woven and textile surfaces Caragh Thuring takes on responsibility for all aspects of the painting's physicality, rather than simply relying on an established or found surface material.

The publication that accompanies the show reproduces forty-four paintings made by the artist over the last fifteen years that include depictions of volcanoes alongside a text written by Gillian Darley, author of Vesuvius (published by Profile Books in 2011) and an in-conversation with artist Glenn Brown (b. 1966, Hexham). Caragh Thuring, since the beginning of her career, has been captivated by volcanoes, their mystery, phenomenal natural power and depiction in romantic paintings. This fascination goes back to the very first painting she made on beginning her studio practice after years working in a gallery: a cut-through cross section of an erupting volcano. The book is available on sale during the exhibition.

Caragh Thuring was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1972, but grew up in UK and has lived and worked in London since graduating from Nottingham Trent University in 1995. Recent solo exhibitions include: Anthony Meier, San Francisco, 2018; Thomas Dane Gallery, London 2016/17 and Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2014/15.

Recent group exhibitions include: Criminal Ornamentation, Hayward Touring exhibition curated by Yinka Shonibare; Virginia Woolf, an exhibition inspired by her writings, Tate St. Ives, St. Ives, Cornwall; Pallant House, Chichester, England; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Voyage, Galeria Bergamin & Gomide, Sao Paulo, Brazil and Call and Response at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York.

THOMAS DANE GALLERY
Via Francesco Crispi, 69, Napoli
www.thomasdanegallery.com