L'abbaglio

In the research of the exhibited artists, the presence of daily imageries is a constant element. They can be declined in a practice which – through a neutralizing type of irony – makes what real merge into the surreal (Calori&Maillard); or they can recall mythological and  unsettling allusions placed in sterile settings (Furian) or, furthermore, they can be narrated through a tongue-in-cheek melancholy, materializing in precarious forms (Sgambaro). 

Therefore L’abbaglio is a dichotomic suggestion which silently becomes clear throughout the exhibit. 

It’s the blinding radiance of allusions to dancing constellations, of materials and sounds that create a space-time bewilderment.

But L’abbaglio is also the misunderstanding, the paradox, the error, the disillusion of a doomed expectation, a party that ended, an interrupted narration, a manipulation which transforms reality. 

L’abbaglio is falling in love and contemporarily its end, it’s infatuation and disillusion, it’s irony and melancholy that become the two faces of a double-sided Gianus. 

Artists

Letizia Calori and Violette Maillard, a.k.a. Calori&Maillard, started working as an artistic duo in 2009. Their collaboration unites Calori’s architectural formation to Maillard’s cinematographic one, in a practice where real and surreal converge. Between the various prizes and honors: in 2013 they won the Ernst&Young and the fellowship for artists by Staedelschule Portikus e.V. In 2014 they were resident artists at Osterreichische Skulpturenpark organized by Joanneum Museum (Graz, Austria). In 2015 they collaborated with the Heinz und Gisela Friedrichs Foundation for the realization of the project L’Oiseau de Feu, a dance for tower cranes. In that same year they were selected by the artist Julie Mehretu for a residency at the Botin Foundation, Santander. In 2016 they were awarded the XIII New York Prize by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and called as resident artists at ISCP. In 2017 they won the Panorami contemporanei – Residenze di fotografia in Italia call, promoted by the MiBACT and GAI and they took part in the Festival of European Photography with the Energia Potenziale project. Calori&Maillard exhibited their work internationally in institutional and experimental spaces like the MAMbo (Bologna), ISCP and the Institute of Italian Culture (New York), MMK and Deutsche Filmmuseum (Frankfurt), Villa Iris – Botin Foundation (Santander), Osterreische Skulpturenpark (Graz) and Moderna Museet (Stockholm).

Valentina Furian (Venice, 1989). She studied Visual Arts at Iuav University in Venice and at ESBA in Nantes. In 2019 she was resident artist at ArtOxygen (Mumbai), with a curatorship Leandre Dsouza in partnership with the Institute of Italian Culture of Mumbai