Remember to Remember

Dal Monday 08 June 2009
al Saturday 13 June 2009

Curated by Lorenzo Bruni

A project for Volta5 Basel, June 8-13th 2009 Booth G3

Roberto Ago, Einat Amir, Kuba Bakowski, Vanessa Billy, José Davila, Carla Edwards

The project Remember to Remember brings together a selection of artists who have created works to stimulate the viewers' perception and recollection of a collective memory. Personal vs. common, real vs. imaginary, the atmosphere is set by the contradictions between what is initially perceived in common objects (text, posters, boxes of fruit, etc.) and what is later revealed as the viewer experiences the works presented. As viewers are led to focus on the experience of the objects, they are stimulated to reflect on a collective memory; if one exists, what shape does it take and what function does it serve? The artists revise and reflect on the modalities that people communally utilize to interact with the world on a daily basis.

Roberto Ago (1972, Rome, Italy; lives and works in Milan). With the installation The Kings of the Beach, Ago asks us to consider the difference between painting and sculpture and that which distinguishes a work of art from a common everyday object. His installation, Suballs, employing piles of balls of compact sand, makes the space appear as if it was just submerged by the tide.

Einat Amir (1979, Jerusalem, Israel; lives and works in New York, USA). Amir's seemingly amateur 'home' videos are fragments stolen from life, as seen through a 'live' camera feed. In John, Please, a surreal situation is presented, with a man expressing out loud his provocative opinions on art and life, inside a gallery on the occasion of an opening.

Kuba Bakowski (1971, Poznan, Poland; lives and works in Warsaw). Bakowski's series of lightboxes entitled, Ursa Major, Bobrek-centrum bytom coal mine, displays coal miners in their daily working environment, enveloped in a strange blue light. The lights affixed to their helmets oddly create the form of the Big Dipper constellation. In this case, Bakowski works on various levels, mixing the documentary element of the photographs of the miners, who work in a dark space with no view of the stars, with the more abstract forms created by lights to suggest the constellations and the grandeur of the night sky.

Vanessa Billy (1978, Geneva, Switzerland; lives and works in London, UK and Geneva). Billy’s collages create a space in which the modernist tradition of the figurative and the abstract can coexist. Her sculpture, Form Content, is essentially a concrete block imbedded with abandoned coins and change found along the street. This work underscores Billy's process of involving minimal interventions that heighten the viewers’ level of attention and awareness.

Jose' Davila (1974, Guadalajara, Mexico; lives and works in Guadalajara). The body of Davila's work reflects on the modernist heritage. His works create a direct dialogue between sculpture, architecture and painting. Davila's intervention for the Volta5 project functions to create a space that is both an image, such as a Mondrian painting, as well as a physical space, such as impenetrable hallway, bringing our attention to the difference between perception and experience.

Carla Edwards (1977, Chicago, USA; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY). Edwards’ works explore the stereotypes of power and how such stereotypes themselves can become stereotypes. In the work, Shades of Ambivalence, she uses large pieces of cloth that are cut and sewn together in a familiar quilt pattern and affixed to the wall. What is not immediately evident is that this 'quilt' is actually a series of American flags that have been dyed shades of black, transforming our perception of the flag, its associations and meaning.

Lorenzo Bruni writes for various publishing houses and is currently publishing a book with Silavana Editoriale on the relationship between art and architecture from the 70s to the present. His latest projects include a cycle of exhibitions entitled La distanza e’ una finzione at the gallery Via Nuova in Florence, the project Il Viaggio di Sarah for the Bulgarian Biennial in Varna, and the collective exhibition based on the idea of conceptual romanticism, entitled What is My Name? for the HISH space in Gent, Begium.

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www.scaramoucheart.com