Artissima 2013 – From stumbling bankers to floating factory

Jimmy De Sana, Cigarette, 1979. Wilkinson Gallery, London

Final post about Artissima, Turin’s contemporary art fair. Once again, i’m merely going to format and paste as many photos as i can stomach and add sporadic comment.

I’m leaving aside the purely decorative artworks (well… kind of as the limber lady above these lines will attest) and focus on art that has bite and a story to tell.

I approach fairs in the most disorderly, most inept way. I hop from one booth to another, zoom in on a work i think i can recognize from afar, pay too little attention to the names of the artists (that’s when the gallerists actually bother to add a label next to the works) and end up missing art pieces that would otherwise have been among my favourite. That’s how i walked passed Danilo Correale‘s The Warp and the Weft hanging tartans.

I think Correale is one of the most exciting artists right now. For a number of years, the artist has been investigating the rites, gestures and codes of the global financial system.

Each of the tartans he was showing in Turin was woven using the colours of the logos of the 5 most powerful financial institutions in geographical areas where they exert the most powerful influence: North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. The higher the assets of a financial corporation in an area, the stronger its chromatic presence in the fabric.

Danilo Correale, The Warp and the Weft, 2012. Supportico Lopez, Berlin. Photo art agenda

Danilo Correale, The Stumble N.1, 2012. Courtesy Raucci/Santamaria Gallery Naples

Danilo Correale, The Stumble N.2, 2012. Courtesy Raucci/Santamaria Gallery Naples

I actually discovered the artist through his photography-based work such as The Stumble which attempts to give a glimpse of the human beings hiding behind the stern facade of financial capitalism.

On their way to physical downfall, they appear as fragile and faulty as the economical system. I almost feel sorry for them.

Adrian Paci, The Column, 2013

Adrian Paci‘s video and photos were showing the transformation of a block piece of marble from the moment of its extraction in a Chinese quarry to a classical column. The process doesn’t take place in a workshop but on a cargo ship. To ensure that the column will arrive as fast as possible to its final destination (Paci’s gallery in Paris), sculptors carved and worked along the way, during the long weeks of transport by sea, to give the piece of rock its final form.

The Column is an extraordinary demonstration of the extent to which today’s capitalistic laws of profit will go: merging manufacturing time with transport time.

Film.

Ron Amir, Nashaat, 2010. Hezi Cohen Gallery

Ron Amir, Nashaat, Mhamad and Nunu, 2011

In his series Invisible Presence, Israeli artist Ron Amir photographed the sleeping quarters in which Arab workers are living during the night. These are located on the very construction sites where the men work during the day.

Slaven Tolj, Volim Zagreb (I love Zagreb), video still, 2008