Opera Viva Barriera Di Milano

RAFFAELE FIORELLA Tassoeleonora 31st may – 30th june 2017 Piazza Bottesini, Turin

OPERA VIVA BARRIERA DI MILANO a project by Alessandro Bulgini curated by Christian Caliandro

Wednesday 31st of may at 9.30 p.m. opens Tassoeleonora by Raffaele Fiorella in piazza Bottesini, first work of the project “Opera Viva Barriera di Milano”, the first of many events leading up to the Flashback fair scheduled from 2 to 5 November 2017.

The outcome of an idea of Alessandro Bulgini, this artistic project curated by Christian Caliandro is backed by Flashback with the perspective suggested by its claim All Art Is Contemporary, it develops around the specific idea of the relationship between contemporary art and public space and the purpose of an artwork in an urban context and community; embracing the belief that Art should abandon institutional spaces and join reality in the streets. A billboard of 3 per 6 meters in Piazza Bottesini, at the heart of Barriera di Milano, one of the most interesting districts of Turin, rich in history, identity and future; six artists, different from each other for training and style, but united by an innovative approach to the artistic practice; and this year’s inspiration: the Operette morali (1827) by Giacomo Leopardi, the greatest book of our literary tradition precisely because of its indefinability, result of the meeting between satire, lyrical prose, social criticism, philosophy and autobiography. Quoting Pietro Citati: “In the Operette Morali we find every tone and form: the metaphysical, the vulgar with the metaphysical, the lucianesco, the fictional-ironic, the farce, the commedia dell’arte, the pathetic, the tragic, the nihilistic, the absurd, the ridicule, the contempt, the hilarious, the etherial, the lyrical, the sublime, the mathematical.” These themes inspire the artworks conceived and realized by the artists invited to the second edition of Opera Viva Barriera di Milano, which break free from their status as artworks: they become a billboard that denies the advertisement language while using it and which transforms the audience – residents, visitors, drivers, passersby – in explorers of a new, different dimension, a space that plays by its own rules and values of this unknown world.

The first artist is Raffaele Fiorella with the work Tassoeleonora, loosely based on the Dialogue between Torquato Tasso and his family Genie, one of the strangest and most fascinating of the “satirical writings” by Leopardi.

Tasso, locked in prison, talks to the Genie (imaginary and hallucinatory projection of himself) and fantasizes about Eleonora D’Este, his beloved and sister of the Duke of Ferrara Alfonso II, who becomes a projection to protect him against pain, suffering and the harshness of human reality. This delicate and bizarre story is reinterpreted by Fiorella through an image that is immediate and, on more than one level, evanescent, able to combine and bring together graphics, advertisement language, poetry and contemporary art. On the occasion of the inauguration - Wednesday 31st May at 9.30 p.m. - the billboard will be "animated" by the author during the evening through a videomapping.

The artistic practice of Raffaele Fiorella embraces many media - installation, video e sculpture – and creates these parallel worlds cleverly exploiting the potential of digital art. Balancing between lyrical and ordinary life, his work becomes a subtle and sophisticated game of contradictions. These hybridization processes are part of an aseptic and empty world, and appear as a concrete projection of the individual and at the same time a redefinition of the collective identity. His research speaks of the people, the streets and everyday life with its poetic complexity, recreating places for memories and illusions which translate in what the artist defines as “land-escapes”: fleeing reality and finding shelter in another world, filled with fantasy, evoked or simply made up.

Among his personal shows: Menzogna (Galleria Ninni Esposito arte contemporanea, Bari 2015); Duel, curated by Antonio Frugis (Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare 2014); Landscapes (Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Pechino 2012); Senso Plurimo, curated by Marinilde Giannandrea (Cantieri Teatrali Koreja, Lecce 2011). Among his main collective shows in which he took part: La prima notte di quiete, curated by Christian Caliandro (ArtVerona / MyHomeGallery, Verona 2016); Unodiuno (Spazio Nea, Napoli 2016); Syntesis, curated by Rosalba Branà (Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare); Home, my place in the world, curated by Lia De Venere (La Galleria Pall Mall, Londra 2012); III Moscow Biennial, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Mosca 2012).

OPERA VIVA BARRIERA DI MILANO a project by Alessandro BulginI curated by Christian Caliandro supported by FLASHBACK / All art is contemporary piazza Bottesini Barriera di Milano, Turin

Press Office Emanuela Bernascone 011 19714998 – 335256829 [email protected] www.emanuelabernascone.com