Giovanni Sartori Braido and Vito Stassi
Sixteen Shades of Grey
29 November 2014–16 January 2015
Opening: Friday, 28 November, 7pm
Galleria Massimodeluca
Via Torino 105/q
30170 Venezia Mestre
Italy
Hours: Monday–Friday 10–17h,
Saturday by appointment
M +338 7370628 / +366 6875619
info [at] massimodeluca.it
www.massimodeluca.it
Galleria Massimodeluca presents its latest exhibition Sixteen Shades of Grey, a two-person exhibition by Giovanni Sartori Braido (b. 1989, Venezia Mestre) and Vito Stassi (b. 1980, Palermo), curated by Eva Comuzzi.
The title, an ironic allusion to the erotic best seller by Erika Leonard James that is currently the most sold book ever, came instinctively and with a hint of fun thinking about what, at first glance, unites the work of the two artists, while the number indicates all the shades of grey that the human eye can perceive.
“The title came not only spontaneously and with a touch of irony,” states the curator, “but I liked the idea that it would make a contrast to the two regal and refined titles used for the previous two exhibitions, Regio and Reginae, being on the one hand recognisable and banal like most things that attract society today, and on the other disorientating, just like the works of the two artists. So, my reflection on the canvases and the dialogue to be established between Stassi and Sartori Braido continued with the book in mind: the coldness of certain settings and embraces, the artificiality or surrealism of the dialogues and especially the sense of control and obsessive-fetishist attention of the protagonist. Attention which I find both in the quest for variation of colour and in the interest for the object/detail. Given that the sad, silent and often funereal side of their production has been highlighted more than once, I would now like to look into the innermost layers of the surface, into all those deposits that have formed the skin over the white canvas and among all those elements that give life to a quiet but teeming archaeology of experience.“
