I  SOTTERRANEI  DELL’ARTE

ANTICO MONASTERO DELLE AGOSTINIANE  -  MONTE CARASSO

Involucro

Fabrizio Giannini
Julia Kälin
Jean-Luc Verna

Opening saturday september 10 at 6:00 p.m
11 september - 9 october 2005


Glorified, twisted, perfected and marketed, the human body has nowadays become a flexible and a malleable horizon. Considered for centuries and in various cultures as the simple biological shell capable of hosting living identities, the body can be optimized or corrupted. Although the present philosophical and scientific evolution, it  will remain, in the collective imaginary, as the perishable element of the pair, soul and body. From the anatomical studies performed in the Renaissance to the heroic deformations of the mannerism and the baroque up to the radical performance of the seventies, the artists have known how to explore the body beyond taboos and preconceptions.
Nowadays the advertising production and the Hollywood cinema praise the body without the obligation to return it the honour multiplying, at the same time, the references according to the trade rules. In this maze of portrayals Involucro explores three horizons of performance of the body trough the art works of two Swiss artists and a French one.
 
Fabrizio Giannini (Lugano, 1964) known for his works on the logotypes of some  important  commercial companies, logotypes that he has recomposed by making use of the critical texts against the companies themselves, more recently is interested in  the hackers phenomenon and computer viruses. Through his pictures, he compares two distinct realities: the reality of the poor countries where viruses and wars  act pitilessly on the human body and the western reality where computer viruses and the war among rival hackers seem to be rather the whims of a privileged class, which however hold the power to affect the economical and social destiny of the world.
 
Julia Kälin (Aarau, 1977)  with her videos and oozing installations presents an exploded and tortured body in constant strength relation with  the nature, the food, the town and the others. A real permeable membrane, the body described by Kälin acts as a filter between the interior and the exterior, the individual and the world. The artist builds her works predominantly with organic perishable substance to evoke the roughness and temporariness of a body on which the spectator can show his or her own  personal experiences.
 
On the contrary, the body invented by Jean-Luc Verna (Nice, 1966) is more eclectic and dreamy. It  introduces ourselves in a universe in  constant opposition to the conventional models. Inspired at the same time by Ingres, Marguerite Duras and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Verna connects in an elegant way the traditional and the underground culture, the popular and the elitist ones. His drawings, highlighted with powder and other cosmetic products,  are liven up by hybrid creatures, icons and vanity which reveal our drives, our fear and our dreams.