Gagliano del Capo (Lecce)
On the occasion of the LANDS END Contemporary Art Festival,
Ramdom presents
"Extreme states of impossibility"
Andrew Friend, Giorgio Garippa & Oliver Palmer, Brett Swenson, Matthew C. Wilson
Curated by Heba Amin and Francesca Girelli
29 July - 27 August 2017 (Opening hours: 19.00 - 23.00 / Free admission)
Lastation (Piazzale Stazione 2, 1° floor Train Station Gagliano - Leuca)
Piazza Immacolata, house without street number
Antonio De Luca - "Sonàrie. Giardino d’attesa." Itineraries and places to listen. Permanent public art installation.
Curated by Ramdom
From 29 July 2017
Via della Libertà (behind Lastation / Train Station Gagliano - Leuca)
www.ramdom.net - www.lastation.it / www.laends.net
On the occasion of the LANDS END Contemporary Art Festival, in Gagliano del Capo from 29th July to 27th August 2017, Ramdom presents the exhibition “Extreme states of impossibility” and the permanent public art installation “Sonàrie. Giardino d’attesa” by the artist Antonio De Luca.
The group exhibition “Extreme states of impossibility” (“Stati estremi di impossibilità”), curated by Heba Amin and Francesca Girelli, involves five artists of two last edition of the Ramdom international residency DEFAULT: Andrew Friend, Giorgio Garippa & Oliver Palmer, Brett Swenson and Matthew C. Wilson.
The art works, in the Lastation exhibition space located on the first floor of the last train station on the south-east side of Italy and inside a house without street number in Piazza Immacolata, are the results of the biennially cross-disciplinary artists’ think-tank.
For centuries, the finis terrae has captured the imagination of dreamers and adventurers fascinated by reaching remote frontiers and mapping unchartered territories. The fantasy associated with the end of the earth has nurtured a multiplicity of creative visions expressed through narratives and images. With the belief that territorial endpoints and their suggestiveness can become culturally productive, the southernmost area of Salento in Italy has been functioning as an activator and enhancer for artists developing ideas through the international residency DEFAULT.
Exploring both collective and individual development, the residency invites artists to reflect on geographical imaginaries with speculative approaches to historical and contemporary fabrications. At the core of the research is an in-depth reflection on the notion of extreme lands and the ways in which it affects individuals on personal, psychological, and artistic levels.
The participants of DEFAULT confront challenges, particularly relating to climate and environmental conditions, as a means to explore diverse interpretations of human and natural landscapes. Traveling to the de finibus terrae and experiencing its remoteness produces various outcomes as artists interact with current geopolitics and social realities. Their analyses of the complex ties between frontiers and their historical shifts unearth the liminal spaces that reside within extreme lands. In attempt to broaden the discourse on the socio-anthropological characteristics embedded in such spaces, the research interrogates the fine line between official realities and perceived ones.
“Extreme states of impossibility” presents a selection of works from the outcomes of the past two editions of the residency program. The artists in the exhibition consider the constructs and intrinsic incongruities hidden behind man-made borders, constructed boundaries and perceived end points. While reflecting on conventional understandings of territory, the works displayed provoke, critique and push the bearings of geographies as containers for broader psycho-topographies. They address shifting sea borders that are in constant motion, geological clocks that generate different time stratifications, cross-national transactions of individuals and products, as well as parallel knowledge systems correlated to cross-species communication.
“Extreme states of impossibility” approaches “extremity” as a state of mind to confront a contemporary world with fluid national identities and national boundaries that are no longer static. The research and resulting works bring forward proposed impossibilities shaped by the characteristics of the extreme land.
On display at Lastation:
Andrew Friend (London, 1985) - Crossing Two Seas (2015): Crossing Two Seas by Andrew Friend shows interest in the uncertain situations, investigating the grey zone in the irregular imaginary boarder of the Ionian and Adriatic Sea. Officially the two seas divide in the Strait of Otranto, but their currents meet in Capo di Leuca. This way, the artist guides us to evaluate the boarders of the official realities and the ones perceived by the body.
Giorgio Garippa (Oristano, 1968) & Oliver Palmer (Harold Wood, 1982) - Untitled (2015): Giorgio Garippa and Oliver Palmer are concentrated on arguments as travelling and immigration, such as the forgotten stories of the refugees who travel through dangerous routs in order to get to the foreign coasts, in particular the coasts in Salento. The easiness how commercial products travel through boarders and continents is contrasted with the prohibitions, which regulate the flows of human mobility.
Brett Swenson (Chicago, 1987) - La/vora (2015): The artistic research of Brett Swenson follows experimental paths between action and re-action, intention and occasion, La/vora manifests as a modern metamorphosis. In Punta Meliso, the fossil remains of ancient corals, eroded and perilous walls of the Second World War and the debris accumulated after the influx of migrants merge in a single framework. Each of the three sections of the video represents a timepiece, a reflection on the millenarian stratification of the territory.
On display inside a house without street number in Piazza Immacolata:
Matthew C. Wilson (North Carolina, 1982) - La Grotta del Diavolo (2015): Wilson recalls the past of Grotta del Diavolo (the “Devils Cave”), which is located in Punta Ristora, Santa Maria di Leuca. It can be reached by the sea and the land from two entrances, one frontal and one from the back. The remains of bones, shells, weapons and utensils suggests that it was inhabited since the Neolithic. Inspired by a metalogue of Gregory Bateson, where the author raises the question if the animals think the same way as human’s dream. Wilson explores the possibility of communication between different species making the animals living in the cave interact with the pages of the book.
Furthermore, Lastation hosts the artworks of the artists, who participated DEFAULT17: Nayari Castillo explores the strategies of survival of the species, which inhabit in the extreme lands; Valentina Bonifacio and Lucia Veronesi the elements of intrusion and contrast with the local, human and natural landscape; Ruben Brulat the relationship between micro and macro scale and spirituality; Devin Kovach the different levels of observation and interaction with the territory through optical devices and reproduction.
Ramdom inaugurates the permanent public art installation “Sonàrie. Giardino d’attesa” by the artist Antonio De Luca. The artwork is part of a requalification project of the area started since several years by the association of Gagliano del Capo.
A place for waiting marked and routed by the sound, where the body listens to design its extension and crosses its invisible border. It’s the resonant expansion, which tailors the inside and outside. The resonant scenery and the silent time of waiting: here, the listening is for making an emptiness and to live in it. The intervention of Antonio De Luca unravels behind Lastation, next to the Railway track, among pathways and corners third landscape, which invite you to experience and to stay, to live those places by listening.
Nests and sound devices, which capturing the wind make sounds, which weave together melancholic details, a resonant flow becoming mutable. The installation resumes, aesthetically and conceptually, the traditional element of the “luminaria” (previously reinterpreted by Carlos Casas for Ramdom), but not the light is the main element, rather the sound. The lights are switching on only in the presence of power, the Sonàrie are celebrating the wind, in ways and directions more than ever unpredictable. The place for listening is the listening of the place.
LANDS END Contemporary Art Festival, in Gagliano del Capo from 29th July to 27th August 2017, is organized by the associations Capo d’Arte, Ramdom and NOON.
Credits:
Exhibition view, “Extreme states of impossibility”, Andrew Friend, Crossing Two Seas, Lastation, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Exhibition view, "Extreme states of impossibility", Brett Swenson, La/vora, Lastation, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Exhibition view, "Extreme states of impossibility", Giorgio Garippa & Oliver Palmer, Untitled, Lastation, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Exhibition view, "Extreme states of impossibility", Matthew C. Wilson, La Grotta del Diavolo, Lastation, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Installation view, Antonio De Luca, Sonàrie. Giardino d’attesa, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Gagliano del Capo (Lecce)
On the occasion of the LANDS END Contemporary Art Festival,
Ramdom presents
"Extreme states of impossibility"
Andrew Friend, Giorgio Garippa & Oliver Palmer, Brett Swenson, Matthew C. Wilson
Curated by Heba Amin and Francesca Girelli
29 July - 27 August 2017 (Opening hours: 19.00 - 23.00 / Free admission)
Lastation (Piazzale Stazione 2, 1° floor Train Station Gagliano - Leuca)
Piazza Immacolata, house without street number
Antonio De Luca - "Sonàrie. Giardino d’attesa." Itineraries and places to listen. Permanent public art installation.
Curated by Ramdom
From 29 July 2017
Via della Libertà (behind Lastation / Train Station Gagliano - Leuca)
www.ramdom.net - www.lastation.it / www.laends.net
On the occasion of the LANDS END Contemporary Art Festival, in Gagliano del Capo from 29th July to 27th August 2017, Ramdom presents the exhibition “Extreme states of impossibility” and the permanent public art installation “Sonàrie. Giardino d’attesa” by the artist Antonio De Luca.
The group exhibition “Extreme states of impossibility” (“Stati estremi di impossibilità”), curated by Heba Amin and Francesca Girelli, involves five artists of two last edition of the Ramdom international residency DEFAULT: Andrew Friend, Giorgio Garippa & Oliver Palmer, Brett Swenson and Matthew C. Wilson.
The art works, in the Lastation exhibition space located on the first floor of the last train station on the south-east side of Italy and inside a house without street number in Piazza Immacolata, are the results of the biennially cross-disciplinary artists’ think-tank.
For centuries, the finis terrae has captured the imagination of dreamers and adventurers fascinated by reaching remote frontiers and mapping unchartered territories. The fantasy associated with the end of the earth has nurtured a multiplicity of creative visions expressed through narratives and images. With the belief that territorial endpoints and their suggestiveness can become culturally productive, the southernmost area of Salento in Italy has been functioning as an activator and enhancer for artists developing ideas through the international residency DEFAULT.
Exploring both collective and individual development, the residency invites artists to reflect on geographical imaginaries with speculative approaches to historical and contemporary fabrications. At the core of the research is an in-depth reflection on the notion of extreme lands and the ways in which it affects individuals on personal, psychological, and artistic levels.
The participants of DEFAULT confront challenges, particularly relating to climate and environmental conditions, as a means to explore diverse interpretations of human and natural landscapes. Traveling to the de finibus terrae and experiencing its remoteness produces various outcomes as artists interact with current geopolitics and social realities. Their analyses of the complex ties between frontiers and their historical shifts unearth the liminal spaces that reside within extreme lands. In attempt to broaden the discourse on the socio-anthropological characteristics embedded in such spaces, the research interrogates the fine line between official realities and perceived ones.
“Extreme states of impossibility” presents a selection of works from the outcomes of the past two editions of the residency program. The artists in the exhibition consider the constructs and intrinsic incongruities hidden behind man-made borders, constructed boundaries and perceived end points. While reflecting on conventional understandings of territory, the works displayed provoke, critique and push the bearings of geographies as containers for broader psycho-topographies. They address shifting sea borders that are in constant motion, geological clocks that generate different time stratifications, cross-national transactions of individuals and products, as well as parallel knowledge systems correlated to cross-species communication.
“Extreme states of impossibility” approaches “extremity” as a state of mind to confront a contemporary world with fluid national identities and national boundaries that are no longer static. The research and resulting works bring forward proposed impossibilities shaped by the characteristics of the extreme land.
On display at Lastation:
Andrew Friend (London, 1985) - Crossing Two Seas (2015): Crossing Two Seas by Andrew Friend shows interest in the uncertain situations, investigating the grey zone in the irregular imaginary boarder of the Ionian and Adriatic Sea. Officially the two seas divide in the Strait of Otranto, but their currents meet in Capo di Leuca. This way, the artist guides us to evaluate the boarders of the official realities and the ones perceived by the body.
Giorgio Garippa (Oristano, 1968) & Oliver Palmer (Harold Wood, 1982) - Untitled (2015): Giorgio Garippa and Oliver Palmer are concentrated on arguments as travelling and immigration, such as the forgotten stories of the refugees who travel through dangerous routs in order to get to the foreign coasts, in particular the coasts in Salento. The easiness how commercial products travel through boarders and continents is contrasted with the prohibitions, which regulate the flows of human mobility.
Brett Swenson (Chicago, 1987) - La/vora (2015): The artistic research of Brett Swenson follows experimental paths between action and re-action, intention and occasion, La/vora manifests as a modern metamorphosis. In Punta Meliso, the fossil remains of ancient corals, eroded and perilous walls of the Second World War and the debris accumulated after the influx of migrants merge in a single framework. Each of the three sections of the video represents a timepiece, a reflection on the millenarian stratification of the territory.
On display inside a house without street number in Piazza Immacolata:
Matthew C. Wilson (North Carolina, 1982) - La Grotta del Diavolo (2015): Wilson recalls the past of Grotta del Diavolo (the “Devils Cave”), which is located in Punta Ristora, Santa Maria di Leuca. It can be reached by the sea and the land from two entrances, one frontal and one from the back. The remains of bones, shells, weapons and utensils suggests that it was inhabited since the Neolithic. Inspired by a metalogue of Gregory Bateson, where the author raises the question if the animals think the same way as human’s dream. Wilson explores the possibility of communication between different species making the animals living in the cave interact with the pages of the book.
Furthermore, Lastation hosts the artworks of the artists, who participated DEFAULT17: Nayari Castillo explores the strategies of survival of the species, which inhabit in the extreme lands; Valentina Bonifacio and Lucia Veronesi the elements of intrusion and contrast with the local, human and natural landscape; Ruben Brulat the relationship between micro and macro scale and spirituality; Devin Kovach the different levels of observation and interaction with the territory through optical devices and reproduction.
Ramdom inaugurates the permanent public art installation “Sonàrie. Giardino d’attesa” by the artist Antonio De Luca. The artwork is part of a requalification project of the area started since several years by the association of Gagliano del Capo.
A place for waiting marked and routed by the sound, where the body listens to design its extension and crosses its invisible border. It’s the resonant expansion, which tailors the inside and outside. The resonant scenery and the silent time of waiting: here, the listening is for making an emptiness and to live in it. The intervention of Antonio De Luca unravels behind Lastation, next to the Railway track, among pathways and corners third landscape, which invite you to experience and to stay, to live those places by listening.
Nests and sound devices, which capturing the wind make sounds, which weave together melancholic details, a resonant flow becoming mutable. The installation resumes, aesthetically and conceptually, the traditional element of the “luminaria” (previously reinterpreted by Carlos Casas for Ramdom), but not the light is the main element, rather the sound. The lights are switching on only in the presence of power, the Sonàrie are celebrating the wind, in ways and directions more than ever unpredictable. The place for listening is the listening of the place.
LANDS END Contemporary Art Festival, in Gagliano del Capo from 29th July to 27th August 2017, is organized by the associations Capo d’Arte, Ramdom and NOON.
Credits:
Exhibition view, “Extreme states of impossibility”, Andrew Friend, Crossing Two Seas, Lastation, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Exhibition view, "Extreme states of impossibility", Brett Swenson, La/vora, Lastation, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Exhibition view, "Extreme states of impossibility", Giorgio Garippa & Oliver Palmer, Untitled, Lastation, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Exhibition view, "Extreme states of impossibility", Matthew C. Wilson, La Grotta del Diavolo, Lastation, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis
Installation view, Antonio De Luca, Sonàrie. Giardino d’attesa, 2017, courtesy of Ramdom, photo by Sergio De Riccardis