Mutazioni, by Giuseppe Varone, Palazzo dei Capitani, Ascoli Piceno

Francesco Calia, Elmerindo Fiore, Antonio Patrino and Gaetano Zampogna

“Mutazioni”

Ascoli Piceno, Palazzo dei Capitani, from March 19 to April 11, 2009

On Thursday, March 19, 2009, at 6:00 p.m., the exhibition Mutazioni by Francesco Calia, Elmerindo Fiore, Antonio Patrino and Gaetano Zampogna will open at the Palazzo dei Capitani in Ascoli Piceno.

The four artists were the founders of the Artmedia group in 1989.

From that experience, which serves as a prologue to the exhibition, they present the evolution of their artistic languages through works that range across modes of expression that differ greatly in their poetics and techniques. “Mutazioni,” then, both in relation to the group’s theoretical principles and in relation to each artist’s personal and, in some respects, labyrinthine path.

The exhibition will open with a performance by Emerindo Fiore entitled IO E’ LA REGINA GIOVANE, a work in air.

Palazzo dei Capitani

Piazza del Popolo, Ascoli Piceno

Opening hours:

Every day 9:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. / 3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Ascoli Piceno, Department of Culture

P.za Simonetti 36 – 63100

Tel. 0736-2771

The four artists were among the founders of the Artmedia group in 1989. From that experience, which serves as a prologue to the exhibition, they present the evolution of their artistic languages through works that range across modes of expression that differ greatly in their poetics and techniques. “Mutazioni,” then, both in relation to the group’s theoretical principles and in relation to each artist’s personal and, in some respects, labyrinthine path.

MUTAZIONI

    Ascoli Piceno is a fantastic city; if you are lucky enough to see it on a surprising spring day of rain and snow, then you understand perfectly why.

And it must have seemed phantasmagorical to those who were in Piazza del Popolo on Saturday, March 19, 2009, shortly before dark.

A model in black tights, her face hidden behind a golden mask, released an enormous balloon bearing an image of Queen Elizabeth.

The balloon, in its ascent (and Ascensione is the name of the mountain visible from the city’s alleys), forced the witnesses’ eyes toward the remaining blue of the sky, giving the sunset its black moon.

    Thus began the work in air “Io è la Regina giovane” by the artist Elmerindo Fiore, which opened Mutazioni. The title contains the declaration of intent of the four artists who were among the founders of the Artmedia group in 1989.

“From that experience, which serves as a prologue to the exhibition, they present the evolution of their artistic languages through works that range across modes of expression that differ greatly in their poetics and techniques”…(E. Fiore)

    Passing through a cloud of smoke, the model led the guests into the Palazzo dei Capitani, foreshadowing their route up to the upper floor, where, in a room wedged between two columns, the balloon reappeared, this time reddened by friction, relieved of the weight of the monarchy, which looked at us upside down from an oval mirror, a self-portrait of the artist.

Following the invisible thread of AriannaFiore, the exhibition’s corridors opened up. As the rooms unfolded, one could see an overview of the works, mostly large-scale, by the four artists.

    Francesco Calìa, with his monochromatic photographic images (Schermi sensibili 2005 and Memoria random 2008), intervenes in the strict geometry of color to create window graphics that force the viewer into a ruthless biography of loss.

    In addition to the performance, Elmerindo Fiore presents his tableaux vivants, in which he continues to enact his disappearance through identification with the Self. 

    Antonio Patrino, in his layering of languages, instead chooses the monochromatism of acrylic, oil, graphite and gunpowder, ready to make it explode with the fuse of “Deja vu?”, granting us the mitigating circumstance of the question mark.

    Gaetano Zampogna mingles his figurative painting with media mythologies; he succeeds, through “an ironic and tragic analysis of reality” (G. Varone), in staging the silent butchery of the absurd and, in self-referential display cases, the cool portrait of Humanism.

The constant presence of nonsense writing on the canvases seeks to destabilize the clichés of history, as one of his scratch cards reads: “a barking dog cannot swim.”

Sergio Zuccaro (poet)