Artists in Residence: Open Studios at Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome
Carola Bonfili, Graham Hudson,
Luigi Presicce, Ishmael Randall Weeks
24 May–22 July 2012
Opening: 23 May 2012, 7pm
Via Nizza 138, Rome
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 11–7pm
Saturday, 11–10pm
Open studios marks the end of the first cycle of the Artists in Residence program established in January 2012. Site-specific works by Carola Bonfili, Graham Hudson, Luigi Presicce, and Ishmael Randall Weeks will be on show from 24 May to 22 July 2012. Along with new works, the studios will be open to the public to highlight the processes underlying the specific methods used by each artist.
Artists in Residence, at the core of MACRO’s new activities, focuses on national and international artists. It proposes the development of a new way to set up the relations between artist and Museum. The Artists in Residence program selects eight artists for two four-month sessions (August–November and February–May) that will allow them to create new site-specific projects. Each residency period will be followed by a two-month show integrated within the Museum’s exhibition program.
Studio #1 Carola Bonfili
Carola Bonfili uses video, photography, sculpture, drawing, and installations to create new and unexpected ways of seeing the world around us, often through transformation into alienating or surreal scenarios.
During her MACRO residency, the artist worked with Valerio Mannucci, editorial director of NERO, on a drawing-based project of four publications illustrating the work of Thomas Braida, Taylor McKimens, Paolo Merloni, and Misaki Kawai. Carola Bonfili selected a group of artists for whom drawing in its various guises is their primary mode of expression. The artist is also presenting the installation If, a work that generates an environmental, semantic and sensorial experience by creating two completely identical rooms, both of which are accessed and experienced differently.
Studio #2 Graham Hudson
Graham Hudson’s works are veritable environmental installations in terms of size and their set-inspired approach. By recycling raw materials and deploying a wealth of visual and auditory stimuli, his works serve as an open criticism of contemporary society.
Through ROCRO (Rubble Office of Contemporary Rome), the artist has turned his studio into a fake office that is, nevertheless, a real, operational location for finding out about and collecting information and materials that represent the urban landscape through the mapping of building sites in operation across Rome.
Studio #3 Luigi Presicce
Luigi Presicce is an artist whose interests extend to the independent fringes of Italy’s cultural and artistic panorama. Gestural flourishes and ritual underpin his work, which is constructed from scenes imbued with highly symbolic and esoteric content.
The work that the artist presents, created in collaboration with Jonatah Manno, is based on three episodes from the Le storie della vera croce cycle, for the purpose of creating three performances for an audience of just two spectators. These performances may subsequently be seen as part of a three-video installation shot by Francesco G. Raganato.
The artist’s studio also serves as a venue for Laboratorio, a method- and work-based platform where everyday participants can, within a shared space, discuss their own methodologies. Work and the process of work are the focal point of Laboratorio; indeed, they are valued at the same level as the finished work.
Studio #4 Ishmael Randall Weeks
The hallmark of Ishmael Randall Weeks’ work is his use of recycled materials and environmental detritus to create site-specific installations, sculpture, and paper-based artworks.
The artist creates works that take on the form of functional objects shorn of their practical aspects, offering a reflection on the concepts of manual labour and usefulness, while examining the expansion of cities, development, travel, and trade in our globalized world.
The project Parquet developed through the arrangement of sculptural pieces and environmental installations pursues the artistic interest in the concept of quotidian space, landscape, architecture, roof design, and erosion, triggering a formal, conceptual, and visual dialogue with the museum and the city of Rome.
Image above: MACRO, © Valentina Larussa.
