In Turin, in conjunction with Artissima, the fair that makes the city the center of the international art scene for a week, contemporary art events and exhibitions develop in a capillary way. Through three exhibitions visited on the occasion of the fair (Retinal Rivality by Cyprien Gaillard in the spaces of OGR, Titolo primo, Ho sognato, Clara e altre storie by Rossella Biscotti and the group show Mutual Aid at Castello di Rivoli) we will try to investigate the common elements and themes towards which contemporary art is moving.

Cyprien Gaillard, “Retinal Rivalry”, 2024, installation view at OGR Torino, ph. Andrea Rossetti for OGR Torino, courtesy OGR Torino, the artist, Sprüth Magers and Gladstone Gallery

Critics have long been divided between those championing committed, politically active art and those who are valuing the poetic independence of the artistic product from its political function. While the fair staged the art market’s competitive dynamics, neighboring institutions present exhibitions relevant to every polìtes of the city. However, this isn’t political art in the traditional sense, like that of the protest era: now the artists use current events as images. Of course, in some cases it’s obvious their will to bring out forgotten and controversial stories, but they are always used as images, like a complex systems of signs that they reinterpret through artistic language. For example, in Cyprien Gaillard’s “Retinal Rivalry”, we witness the transformation of the Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus’s statue in Munich, now covered with posters, photos and flowers in memory of Michael Jackson. This work, a video installation co-commissioned and co-produced by OGR Torino, Fondation Beyeler, Haus der Kunst München and others, is an exploration of stereoscopic cinema’s visual potential.

Cyprien Gaillard, “Retinal Rivalry”, 2024, 3D motion picture, DCI DCP, dual 4k projection at 120fps, 2 Channel Audio, 29:03 min, video still, © Cyprien Gaillard, courtesy the artist, Sprüth Magers and Gladstone Gallery

Through the immersive qualities of the 3d projection, the artist is able to incorporate the viewer into the forgotten monuments, full of history contradictions. So, the new virtual sculpture creates a relationship with the ancient statuary. Through a journey into the German urban environment, he propose pictures like Burger King inside housed in a former Nazi rally venue in Nuremberg, or abandoned monuments used as a background of daily life that goes without considering them.

Rossella Biscotti, “The Journey (Il viaggio)”, 2021, performance, Mediterranean Sea, 20-24 May, 2021. In collaboration with Blitz, Valletta, commission by Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Bruxelles, supported by Mondriaan Fonds, ph. Alexandra Pace courtesy the artist

The theme of visibility and invisibility extends to Rossella Biscotti’s solo exhibition at Castello di Rivoli, Titolo primo, Ho sognato, Clara e altre storie. In this anthological exhibition a journey through forgotten stories is proposed. Like Cyprien Gaillard, the Italian artist’s attempt is to bring the repressed history to the viewer’s mind, such as The Trial (2010-2016), an installation on the trial of 7 April, presided over in the “Bunker Hall” of the Foro Italico between 1982 and 1984, where members of Autonomia Operaia and Potere Operaio were accused. This event was the first real political trial in Italy. The work consists of an audio part of the live recording of the trial and the sculptural reconstruction of some parts of the bunker, symbol of the twenty years of fascism. Rossella Biscotti’s images are focused on voids of history, debated and controversial and often hidden moments. Her practice essentially works on emptiness, which can be both physical and memory.

Rossella Biscotti, “Crude Oil (Olio crudo)”, 2016, Murano glass, arsenic and metal bowls, variable dimensions. Installation view Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam, 2017, ph. Sander van Wettum, courtesy the artist

This is why the work, The Journey 2023, is formalized as an invisible monument. The work took place over ten years, inspired by the history of the Mediterranean Sea and ended with the sinking of an enormous block of marble, thus becoming a monument to the deep seabed, visible only to those who died at sea. In the recent interview collected in the book “Strata, Italian art since 2000. Le parole degli artisti” by Vincenzo de Bellis and Alessandro Rabottini, published by Lenz, Les presses du réel, Biscotti comments on this work thus: «With the Journey I was interested in investigating the politics of visibility and invisibility, and how the sea represents a space in which certain situations, for example the extraction of resources or the situation of discomfort in the waters experienced by migrants, are made invisible».^[1]

Rossella Biscotti, “The Trial (Il processo)”, 2010-2020, sound piece, 6 hours loop, 8 reinforced concrete casts, variable dimensions. Reenactment of the 7 April Trial (1983-84) with live typists and interpreters. Audio piece, metal platforms, electronic typewriter, original courtroom benches and a set of keys collected from the Aula Bunker at the Foro Italico. Installation and performance views Documenta 13, Kassel, 2012. Photo Ela Bialkowska, Okno Studio, courtesy the artist

Precisely for this concept of invisibility and memory, both Rossella Biscotti and Cyprien Gaillard reserve an important role for the audio and sound aspect. In the French artist’s work, the sense of estrangement of the images matchs with the soundtrack reworked from various sources: javanese music, field recordings from the UNESCO archives and an organ found in the streets of Weimar to commemorate Johan Sebastian Bach. Rossella Biscotti, on the other hand, often uses archive finds or audio testimonies, as in The Trial. «Sound – explains the artist – is a privileged access to memory: it can put us in contact with events and traumas that, in some way, we have forgotten, leaving more space for the imagination than images do».^[2] But the void that Rossella Biscotti investigates can also be physical, so in the same room where the audio installation of The Jouney is located, there is Drafiting (2022-2023), composed of glass sculptures inspired by marine creatures, microscopic organisms that float on the seabed and are the major producers of oxygen for our planet. So, invisible workers.

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Tomás Saraceno, “Hybrid Dark solitary semi-social Cluster Kepler-20 b built by: a solo Lyniphiidae sp. and a solo Cyrtophora citricola”, 2016, detail, spidersilk, carbon fibre, ink, glass, metal, 43,6 x 24,1 x 24,1 cm, ph. Studio Tomás Saraceno, courtesy the artist and Pinksummer Gallery © Tomás Saraceno

This latest work introduces another aspect on which the artists are working: if on one side, the social aspect is highlighted in the interest in history and the monument, on the other, the great theme is the relationship that man maintains with nature, which is also explored at the Rivoli castle through the exhibition Mutual Aid. Art collabs with nature, curated by Francesco Manacorda and Marianna Vecellio. The path develops by including artists from the sixties to today. If we follow Rossella Biscotti’s warning in the work Crude oil, whom warns us about man’s pollution on nature caused by oil extraction and the consequent oil spills into the sea, the Mutual Aid exhibition proposes a solution through collaboration, and not with the artist’s exploitation on nature. The natural element often creates the artistic product, making the “long sleeve” of the castle an organism composed of small living and intelligent cells.

Hubert Duprat, “Trichoptera larva with its case”, 1980-1994, gold, opal, pearls, length 2,5 cm, exhibition view, ph. H. Del Olmo © Hubert Duprat, ADAGP, 2024, courtesy the artist and Art : Concept, Paris

This mutual support is specified in the practice of Tomás Saraceno. In fact, the Argentine artist explores interspecies collaboration, using the webs of the spiders, co-inhabitants of his studio, sprinkled with graphite powder, giving visibility to the light and perfect textures created by the arachnids. Hubert Duprat, a French artist, supplies the caddis with precious stones, such as pearls and gold, with which they build their own shelters or cases to protect themselves. The result of this collaboration with the world of insects is formalized as small jewels made by microscopic blacksmiths who imaginatively build their baroque homes. Thus, the entire exhibition explores the creative potential of the collaboration between artist and nature, proposing a silent rescue for this one world. Forgotten or changing monuments, invisible memorials, natural jewels, are some of the images that characterize this path that art is tracing. The past and history brought to mind, create the new and future relationship of man within nature.

Pietro Giovanni Coppi

^[1] Vincenzo de Bellis, Alessandro Rabottini, “Strata. Arte italiana dal 2000. Le parole degli artisti”, 2023, edito da Lenz. Les presses du réel. p. 139.
^[2] ivi, p. 141.

Info:

Rossella Biscotti. Titolo primo, Ho sognato, Clara e altre storie
curated by Marianna Vecellio
21/04 – 24/11/2024
Castello di Rivoli, Terzo piano

AA.VV. Mutual Aid – Arte in collaborazione con la natura
curated by Francesco Manacorda and Marianna Vecellio
31/10/2024 – 23/03/2025
Castello di Rivoli
Piazzale Mafalda di Savoia, 2 – Rivoli (TO)
www.castellodirivoli.org

Cyprien Gaillard. Retinal Rivalry
curated by Samuele Piazza
30/10/2024 – 02/02/2025
Binario 1, OGR Torino
Corso Castelfidardo, 22 – Torino
www.ogrtorino.it

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