La Nuvola Contemporary Gallery in Via Margutta is pleased to host an exclusive performance by Filippo Riniolo (Milan, 1986), on Friday 21st of February from 6 pm.
Riniolo is a visual artist, publicly known for his shows at MAXXI, MACRO and Fondazione Sandretto, whose research touches upon philosophical and social themes, for a new relationship between artistic identity and European history. The creative action, entitled Archival Icons, curated by Alice Falsaperla and realised in collaboration with Francesco Cascino, is a homage to and analysis of the Gallery’s historical archive. It is a contemporary reworking of the space’s legacy, from its foundation in 1999 by Fabio Falsaperla to its most emblematic exhibitions curated by Professor Maurizio Calvesi. Notable among these are the internationally resonant group exhibitions dedicated to the 1960s and 1970s, hosted in the courtyard of Wyler’s movie Roman Holidays.
Icons of such exhibitions were Mario Schifano, Franco Angeli, Tano Festa, Mario Ceroli, Achille Perilli, up to the triad of the Second Roman School (Sergio Lombardo, Renato Mambor and Cesare Tacchi), for whom Falsaperla was ‘a hero’, quoting Lombardo. «I do not remember exactly when I met Fabio Falsaperla, but I do remember that we met several times and he was always very interested in my work. He bought some of my paintings, which was almost unheard of at the time», the artist continues. A whole universe revolved around the School and that Piazza, facing a horizon of expectations. One breathed new ways of saying and doing, mixed with dreams and desires, while “the sky of Piazza del Popolo was tinged with sulphur and red, and the warm dampness of the Roman winter flowed through the air” (Quesada).
Riniolo’s creative action at La Nuvola is characterised by precisely this atmosphere, with the intention of restoring, through an eclectic and technologically innervated approach, the importance of a historical archive in contemporary art. There is a distinction in two parts: the performance and the exhibition. In the first case, through a lecture performance, the artist personifies the authors who have moved the Gallery’s ranks. An open-air testimony, revealing the details of intuitions and aesthetic debates of unrepeatable years. In the second case, it is a selection of works created ad hoc, that will be open until the 7th of March. Gilded icons interpret Byzantine sacredness from a contemporary perspective, reflecting a feminine essence that is both artistic and intellectual. We find here Giosetta Fioroni, Carla Accardi, in addition to Carla Lonzi and Judith Butler, participating in an exhibition activity that dialogues with the Gallery’s versatile approach, interweaving new researches with historicised art.
The icon, understood as the “intersection of the figurative and the abstract”, represents a focal point of Riniolo’s investigation. «The faces of the icons are missing, since icons are recognised by symbols and objects, by posture and not by features. The image is read, not looked at. It makes us realise that reality is a stimulus for the education of the eye; a theory composed of signs to be decoded», the artist concludes.
curated by Alice Falsaperla
