text by Francesca Comisso
A few weeks after the bombings in Palestine that have reawakened the attention of the media, the film that Emily Jacir presents in Turin - together with photographs and film stills in her third solo show at the Peola Simondi Gallery - transports us beyond the most recent violence.
Produced in 2019, letter to a friend, is a journey through time and space, which begins and ends with the artist's footsteps as they traverse the present, the future and the past, at all times being physically as well as symbolically anchored in the ground - of a house, a garden and a street.
More informationPeola Simondi Gallery is pleased to present Emotional scenarios, the second solo exhibition of Paolo Bini (Battipaglia, 1984), curated by Beatrice Audrito.
On display are a dozen new works, the result of his latest phase of research, designed specifically for the spaces of the Turin gallery, where Bini offers his new insights into the modes of contemporary representation of the landscape. Expanding the narrative horizon of his investigation, he now views the landscape not solely as a physical place, but also an interior, more intimate and hidden space, with which to establish profound connections.
More information“It’s a sensitive issue” – a nice idiom used to describe a topic or subject that needs to be handled with care, caution, awareness. No definition is perhaps more apt for art, a sensitive issue indeed, to be approached without haste and superficiality, but rather with love and care, even circumspection, since it can, and sometimes must, be dangerous. The definition is possibly even more appropriate in the case of Gregorio Botta, as he is an artist who, in an increasingly dematerialized and digitalized culture, brings us back to physicality, retrieves the importance of the body (ours as well as of any other thing).
More informationINSIDE - title and thread of the exhibition - brings together works of six artists who investigate real and imaginary places through their photographies.
The images explore the delicate relationships that are established between those spaces and life around them. Closed and crowded spaces. Labyrinths. Intimate places where time seems suspended. At one time inhabited environments. Places of daily life. Images of objects and memories that attempt to restore meaning to a lost or indefinite place.
The Alberto Peola Gallery is pleased to present Sleep Well Childhood, the first solo exhibition of artist Giuseppe Mulas (Alghero, 1995).
Memories and fragments of life interweave in dense and layered paintings which, starting from childhood, tell a story of memories hidden between past and present. Like the indelible marks that children scribble on the wall, the gesture the artist impresses on the canvas does not allow for any changes and creates a symbol-ridden story. Recollections of an innocent puberty blend into dream and play, thus altering and extending the body in new projections. In the work Remember me when I die, a still life – a metaphor of a phallocentric domain – stands out towards infinity reflecting itself in the vastity of the universe. The room and the sky blur the boundaries between the inside and the outside, and, likewise, the gallery turns into a suspended space in which the past unfolds in a transition from dark to light.
More informationThe Alberto Peola Gallery is pleased to present ‘o databàs, Perino & Vele’s fourth solo exhibition.
Archiving means organizing, collecting, and then storing. When it comes to cultural institutions, museums, libraries and archives store objects, documents and artworks, and preserve their semiotic value, so as to pass it down to the future generations. However, in today’s society, archiving has become common practice. We all file away personal documents in virtual archives every day. Databases, clouds and servers – they all collect private files as once did photo albums and dusty paper folders. A database is not only a collection of data, but also of personal life experiences, a repository that we sometimes would like to conceal, close, and make no longer accessible. Instead, in multiple cases privacy is infringed, and confidential data are publicly disclosed without the user’s permission.
This exhibition will inaugurate the thirtieth season of the Alberto Peola Gallery, which opened in Turin in 1989. It is a multi-voiced tale - one out of many possible - rather than the celebration of an anniversary, which takes place in September, when, after the summer break, the ritual of new beginnings is performed and a new fresh impetus attends new enterprises, as in the tradition of this gallery. In the rapid progress of art trends and expressive languages - from the medial painting of the early years to the recent interest in research-based art practice – this gallery has constantly been keen on and supportive of young artists, long before the artworks of the new generations became cult objects, like in the late 1990s, or, even worse, commodities ruled by an exploitative market-driven logic.
More informationThe Alberto Peola gallery is pleased to host and present The invisibility of winter, Laura Pugno’s solo exhibition.
White Memory
by Manuela Pacella
For the final truth about snowflakes is that they become more individual as they fall—that, buffeted by wind and time, they are translated, as if by magic, into ever more strange and complex patterns, until, at last, like us, they touch earth. Then, like us, they melt.
Adam Gopnick1
The familiar, iconic image of a snowflake was born at the end of the nineteenth century thanks to the photographic repertoire of over 5000 snow crystals captured by American photographer Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley. Just as the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, captured the real motion of a running horse in 1878, the discovery of "reality" thanks to photography no longer allowed false steps in the representation of the world. But if Muybridge corrected errors in representation – horses no longer appear to have all four legs raised in unison except, perhaps, in children’s rocking horses – Bentley contributed, instead, to a further imaginative projection towards that natural phenomenon thanks to which the world silences itself to preserve intact the bud of future genesis. Bentley selected only the most complex and perfect snow crystals and established not only a specific narrative of snow – whether associated with Christmas or not – he also fostered the idea that the exclusivity of snowflakes was a reflection of the human soul. A century later, experiential uniqueness was added to genetic uniqueness when, in 1988, cloud scientist Nancy Knight discovered that «while it’s true that snowflakes often start out alike, it is their descent from the clouds into the world that makes them alter»2.
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