Schifanoia N.O. Gallery

Schifanoia curated by Ilaria Bonacossa

Schifanoia is an ambulant exhibition of installations, paintings, video works and performances presented at N.O.Gallery and four private apartments in Milan.

The exhibition includes Schifanoia, a paper room installation and two multiple works produced with N.O. Gallery. 

The four apartments feature the work of A Constructed World, privately ‘consumed’, transforming the four Milanese hosts into cultural producers. Rather than interventions these partnerships are in search of what we already know, functioning as audience performances that aim to find a greater freedom to encounter contemporary art in a more direct and spontaneous manner.  Schifanoia (paper room) 2007 ink jet prints on paper 2.5x3x2m

This project was made possible with the support from N.O. Gallery Milano / Giovanna Giannattasio / Michela Moro and Alan Journo / Claudio Ades / Maurizia Vila / The Australian Consulate-General in Milan / The Melbourne City Council and was made possible by Nathalie King and Max Delany

La casa di Giovanna Giannattasio

 

The Social Contract  /  Il Contratto Sociale, 2007 

event with 91 participants 

At the via Matteo Bandello apartment Giovanna Giannattasio hosted The Social Contract, a work that requires the viewer to sign a legally binding confidentiality agreement to engage with the work, and in this case to enter the apartment. After leaving the viewer is bound not to discuss what they saw or experienced in the apartment.

The Social Contract asks an audience to make some awareness of their own production in the work of art. We are familiar with an art world that bases its confidence on authenticity, signature and spectatorship and yet the work of the audience is largely about showing how works of art function as distinct from what they depict. The audience, whether they are aware of it or not, must decide how Martin Creed’s turning the lights on and off in the Turner Prize is and art work and therefore different to what they do at home. 

Funding, science and technology has been directed towards the verification of the authenticity of historical and celebrated art works and some may still deceive us, which remains their fascination. Duchamp’s urinal, dripping abstract paint, Manzoni’s merde, Pop Art, all refer to what we already know in our ongoing lives. We could say that, in fact,  Everybody knows, and yet in some institutional settings we are still the idea that the audience will be shocked and will not understand the work of art. Often an artist will avow that they don’t know why they made a work or what it means. It’s clear that we are already sharing something that has not yet been decided. 

It is up to each member of the audience to decide and measure their own honesty and authenticity with regard to The Social Contract. The real work will continue on, often in indecision, and is performed by those who came to look.

La casa di Michela Moro e Alan Journo

Leviathan and the Mirror Man 2007
video installation and performance

Ecstatic Torino 2004
dvd 3'30"

Sincere (death dance) 2006
dvd loop

cakes by Alan Journo and Michela Moro

La casa di Claudio Ades

Car Fire 2005  burnt object  Il mondo II 2004  burnt object  Corporate Geography 2003  synthetic polymer paint on canvas 122x152cm Where there's smoke there's a smoker 2005  digital video transferred to dvd colour sound 14:00  Costracted World Plate 2006/7  melamine plastic glue pigment 21 cm diam  Itt that cannot be known 2005  alkyd resin on canvas Sex and death paintings 2005  alkyd resin on canvas two paintings 170x190cm and 170x194cm

La casa di Maurizia Vila

Pea and Shell 2006
dvd 6'40" with live sound performance for the event by Steve Piccolo and Gak Sato



paitings from the Fresh History Painting series 2000-2003
synthetic polymer paint on canvas, each 122x152cm




Ilaria Bonacossa & Jacqueline Riva

Biography

Jacqueline Riva + Geoff Lowe iniziano a lavorare come A Constructed World nel 1993. Il loro lavoro è stato esposto in numerose biennali tra cui quella di Tirana, di Saõ Paulo, di Gwangju e di Emergency Biennale, e in mostre quali Art all’Arte, San Gimignano, Art Music>rock pop techno, MCA Sydney e Transmission, Villa Arson Nice. Il Guggenheim Museum New York e Bilbao li hanno invitati a partecipare a forums, sono stati I primi artisti ad inaugurare l’ artists-in-residence alla Serpentine Gallery di London. Prossime mostre personali includono l’ Australian Centre for Contemporary Art Melbourne, il cneai= di Chatou e CAPC Musée Bordeaux.