The Italian word tensione, from the Latin tensio derives from tensus, past participle of tendere. The etymology of this word is applied in many fields of knowledge, from physics to chemistry, from psychology to sociology, with different declinations that come to one and the same meaning: an attention stretched towards something else. Exciting, vibrant, sinking, tension is the creation of events, of objects, of personalities, of collectivities. Art is also tension: for something else, for people, for oneself, for history.

AA.VV., Tensione Continua, exhibition view (Ai Weiwei, Kader Attia, Adel Abdessemed), Galleria Continua San Gimignano, 2023, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of the artists and GALLERIA CONTINUA

In the art world, placing a tense focus on something else is the prime condition for every single artist, and the tension created in the aesthetic representation always finds a space for sharing and confrontation. This time, Galleria Continua is the container for this kind of reflection, bringing together twenty-nine artists in a single exhibition: Adel Abdessemed, Ai Weiwei, Juan Araujo, Kader Attia, Massimo Bartolini, Hans Bellmer, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Alberto Burri, Marcelo Cidade, Jonathas De Andrade, Cai Guo-Qiang, Chen Zhen, Luigi Ghirri, Shilpa Gupta, Renato Guttuso, Zhanna Kadyrova, Anish Kapoor, Alicja Kwade, Quinto Martini, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Giorgio Morandi, Gina Pane, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pontormo, Arcangelo Sassolino, Ettore Spalletti, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Francesco Vezzoli.

AA.VV., Tensione Continua, exhibition view (Cai Guo-Qiang, Alicja Kwade, Arcangelo Sassolino, Giuseppe Penone), Galleria Continua San Gimignano, 2023, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of the artists and GALLERIA CONTINUA

Under Carlo Falciani’s curatorial direction, the group show is called Tensione Continua. The title is not only a play on words with the host location (ndr) but indicates the continuation in history – not only the art history – of a tension that each individual artist expresses. Indeed, the dialogue of the 20th century with the past (and vice versa) is evident in the choice of works on display. Curator Falciani also identifies and differentiates four types of tension – Natural, Erotic, Social and Contemplative – placing them in groups and in space in stylistic dialectics that are both conflictual and peaceful.

AA.VV., Tensione Continua, exhibition view (Chen Zhen, Ettore Spalletti), Galleria Continua San Gimignano, 2023, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of the artists and GALLERIA CONTINUA

In the former cinema and theatre building in San Gimignano, works from the Galleria Continua archive dialogue with the entrance rooms and the huge stalls below. The exhibition begins with the nucleus reserved for Natural Tension, in which the physical and chemical forces that govern existence take centre stage. Alicja Kwade‘s mirrors and reflective boulders are contrasted by Arcangelo Sassolino‘s pressing force. The woody growth of Giuseppe Penone‘s sculpture is extinguished in Cai Guo-Qiang‘s pictorial combustions. If nature is both generative and destructive, eros is its propulsive engine. Erotic Tension focuses on bodily obsession, a symbol of pleasure and dissidence, with sculptures by Jonatas De Andrade and photographs by Hans Berlinde. Carlo Falciani’s curatorial choice is peculiar: the erotic core is located in the labyrinthine part of the gallery, with works placed in small meanders and corridors, an allusion to the carnal and visceral part belonging to the human race, whether repressed or expressed.

AA.VV., Tensione Continua, exhibition view (Gina Pane, Zhanna Kadyrova, Shilpa Gupta) Galleria Continua San Gimignano, 2023, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of the artists and GALLERIA CONTINUA

If eroticism is an ambiguous social expression, glaringly so is what the core of Social Tension expresses. On the wooden floor that once housed the theatre seats, Kader Attia‘s multitude of mirror fragments shatter utopian visions of an advertised, liberal and perfect society. Mirrored in them we see Adel Abdessemed‘s general statues, which with their acrid smell of burning allude, in communion with Ai Weiwei‘s candelabra, to the funereal declassification of globalisation.

AA.VV., Tensione Continua, exhibition view (Renato Guttuso, Jacopo Da Pontormo, Alberto Burri) Galleria Continua San Gimignano, 2023, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of the artists and GALLERIA CONTINUA

These tensions recall a closer contemporaneity, but not unlike past references such as Renato Guttuso‘s partisan or Michelangelo Pistoletto‘s military cage. From a macroscopic, social and collective analysis, one arrives at intimate visions of existence with the last core of research. The works belonging to Contemplative Tension transcend earthly physicality, aiming straight at the everyday, existentialist spirit. From the pure white by Ettore Spalletti, we move on to transparency in the sculptural organs by Chen Zhen, which, arranged on a crystal shelf, seem to ideally merge with the objects/muse reproduced by Giorgio Morandi.

AA.VV., Tensione Continua, exhibition view, Galleria Continua San Gimignano, 2023, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of the artists and GALLERIA CONTINUA

The entire exhibition, with the different media inflections of art, stretches attention towards knowledge and consciousness inextricable from reality. This is a dialogical tension: aesthetic languages do not only yield to rational logic, indeed, they are relational, organoleptic, sensitive, in continuous contingency between what can and cannot be.

Info:

AA.VV. Tensione Continua
curated by Carlo Falciani
Galleria Continua
Via del Castello 11, San Gimignano (SI)
23/09 – 14/01 2023/24
www.galleriacontinua.com

Massimiliano Bastardo

Art Curator and Art Advisor, graduated in Visual Arts and Cultural Mediation, with Master in Curatorial Practices, born in 1995, lives in Naples. He collaborates with Galleries and Independent Spaces, his research is mainly focused on Emerging Painting, with a careful and inclined gaze also on other forms of aesthetic language.