In this autumn season NUB Project Space, the creature and place of Federico Fiori and Francesca Lenzi who since 2010 has been proposing events linked to experimental music and sound research with an interdisciplinary look, opens to contemporary art by hosting a collective exhibition of young artists, curated by Condylura contemporary arts research platform.
AA.VV., “Remote”, exhibition view. Courtesy the artists, Condylura, NUB Project Space. Ph Francesca Lenzi
The distance between the live events and concerts that usually animate this place are certainly given by the light and the void. The first, normally nuanced and welcoming, is now blinding, given the reverberation on the white walls dotted in a minimal way by the works. Just as the gradual entry of visitors into the bare room allows the presence of the individual to emerge more than that of an audience that becomes a mass. Yet, the center of the discussion, the continuity with the activity of the association, remains the attention to space, to the way in which we inhabit it and to how it has been distorted by the new monitoring and quantification mechanisms that determine our life and its possibility of representation.
Mattia Pajè, “Ragni”, 2020. Courtesy the artist, Condylura, NUB Project Space. Ph Francesca Lenzi
The schedule constructed by the young curatorial duo, formed by Paolo Gabriotti and Davide Visintainer, continuously combines presence and absence, vision and control as it is recalled by the title which plays in a pleased and irreverent way – like the entire exhibition layout – between the evocation of images remotely and the human and technological remote action (remote control) that influences the experience of everyday life. The many aspects of care and detail, as well as the exhibition choices, refer to an almost editorial attention to the exhibition space as well as to the event which, not surprisingly, was also launched thanks to the graphic and illustrative work of Marco Casella (part of Visivo in partnership with Mattia Pajè), who starting from the drawing of an exploded remote control, in reference to the film “Click” by Frank Coraci (2006), conceives an image with pop colors which becomes a real “itinerant work”.
Luciano Maggiore, “pino”, 2024. Courtesy the artist, Condylura, NUB Project Space. Ph Francesca Lenzi
Even the visitor is inserted, unbeknown to him/her, into a mechanism, forced into a state of perpetual waiting and discovery, latency and elusiveness, which increases with the passage of time rather than dissolving. The selected works dictate the pace of the visit, continually posing open questions: it is therefore not surprising that the images have a certain predominance in this analysis which places the experience of living and its representation and documentation at the centre. The first artwork that impacts the gaze is the one of Paolo Bufalini, in which the photograph of the mother taken from the family album is distorted and augmented thanks to artificial intelligence, creating a whole that reinvigorates the aspects of familiarity and distance, intimacy and impossibility of comprehension.
Irene Fenara, “Supervision”, 2023. Courtesy the artist, Condylura, NUB Project Space. Ph Francesca Lenzi
If Bufalini intersects the comparison with the art history by presenting his mother as a Rückenfigur (figure seen from behind), Irene Fenara continues the deconstruction of authorship and genres, opting for an action of appropriation that saves selected frames from oblivion by surveillance cameras, which stand out for their aesthetic and alienating qualities. The works of Luciano Maggiore and Mattia Pajè certainly awaken the visitor’s senses further. Maggiore has conceived a sound intervention for the space that is activated in a (non-linear) relation with the entrance to the exhibition which evokes presences and absences, while Pajé’s works have the task of reiterating the discussion on other possible worlds and visions. On the one hand Heaven’s Gate sculpture draws inspiration from news events and viral images by staging a possible eschatological event, on the other Ragni, an installation, composed of small silver spiders hidden in the nooks of the room, effectively reverses the role of the spectator who, at the very moment he/she notices their presence, also imagines himself/herself to be the subject of a gaze. Those small presences, in fact, which emerge from the walls little by little, and then appear everywhere like continuous germinations, suddenly uncover the perception of space, opening it up to infinite possibilities.
Info:
AA.VV. Remote
curated by Condylura
9.11.24 – 12.01.2025
Nub project Space, Pistoia
www.condylura.com
www.nubprojectspace.com
Serena Trinchero is a scholar and professor of contemporary art history at IPH – International Programme in Humanities of the Pisa University. Alongside her scientific research, she carries out curatorial, educational and residency projects between performing and visual art, collaborating with various institutions at a national level.
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