Broken Fall (Organic)
Opening:
19 February 2011, 7 pm
19 February–28 May 2011
Galleria Enrico Astuni
Via Iacopo Barozzi, 3
40126 Bologna (I)
info [at] galleriaastuni.it
www.galleriaastuni.com
William Anastasi, Paolo Chiasera, Simon Faithfull, Mathilde ter Heijne, Hannu Karjalainen, Cristiano Mangione, Andrea Melloni, Paolo Parisi, Luca Pozzi, Richard Rigg, Jens Risch, Arcangelo Sassolino, Bill Urmenyi, Roman Signer, Annika Ström, Luca Vitone, Robin Watkins/Torben Tilly
curated by Giovanni Iovane and Alessandra Pace for ASTUNIpublicSTUDIO
The fear of falling is as old as mankind. Falling is the symmetrical opposite of flying and has been pictured according to different conceptions of weight—of the body which falls to the ground. Falling is also linked to walking badly, staggering, jumping, getting lost, and also to failing.In modern and contemporary art, falling has become an intentional action. An action that involves the artist’s body and often the fate of the image of the work of art.
Acrobats, tumblers, clowns, Charlie Chaplin’s or Buster Keaton’s gags, people clinging onto cornices or windowsills in Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Philip Petit the tightrope walker suspended between the Twin Towers in New York, through to the trajectories tried out by Bruce Nauman or Bas Jan Ader: these are all examples of figures of artistic experience linked to the action of falling. At the same time, falling also has to do with the practice of painting and the processes that were introduced in the twentieth century. Starting with Jackson Pollock’s drippings, it moved through to works made by splashing colour on surfaces placed on the ground rather than being fixed to a wall. Giovanni Iovane and Alessandra Pace’s Broken Fall (Organic) reflects on this condition of falling in works of art. A fall that, ever since the early twentieth century, has proved to be a distressing and yet brilliant strategy for failure.
The exhibition will take place at Galleria Enrico Astuni in Bologna, Italy (19 February-28 May 2011), and follows Broken Fall (Geometric)—also at Galleria Enrico Astuni in Bologna (April-September 2010)—and the book Broken Fall Ascesa e caduta nell’arte – Rise and Fall of Pictures, recently published by Silvana Editoriale, Milan (160 pages, Italian & English).
opening hours:
tuesday – saturday 10am – 1 pm / 3 – 7 pm
sunday/ monday by appointment (+39 051 4211132)