NP-ArtLab presents, in collaboration with Martelli Fine Art, a selection of works by artists Mirella Bentivoglio and Serena Gamba in dialogue with each other. The exhibition aims to relate two artists of different generations but who use verbal-visual practice as a medium.

The work of Mirella Bentivoglio (Klagenfurt, 1922) takes place in a totally poetic sphere: between language and image, language and material, language and object, language and environment. In particular, her works in the exhibition are closely linked to the representation of the egg, linked to the letter O, which, according to the artist, is a symbol of the Universe, of nothingness and everything, of emptiness and fullness, but also of creation and motherhood, a fundamental concept for the artist, which she has repeatedly identified as an experience that has profoundly influenced and guided her in her artistic career. The egg returns frequently in the artist's works, often linked to books, a specific sign of the intellectual dimension, a symbol of culture. 
A veritable continuum with the works of Bentivoglio and the poets of the Nuova Scrittura in general is represented by Serena Gamba (Moncalieri, 1982). Her research revolves around the meaning of painting and its declinations in relation to the visual and applied arts. The images of Art History are emptied of their original meaning to be reworked in order to bring out their essential nature far from imperfect and preconceived forms. The genres and materials of painting, the bases of written and spoken language, the constituent elements of drawing are condensed into new structures and primary signs, activating a process of reconstruction of a new image. It is these structural elements that go on to define an architecture, a visual alphabet, leaving complete freedom of interpretation and re-elaboration. The works on display perfectly reflect the artist's poetics where the concepts of memory and oblivion coexist. The act of writing and describing the original painting is a reflection and testimony of memory: it is an attempt to create an intimate encounter between the individual and his or her own act of remembering and memorising all of Art History. The hand-stitched letters become a vivid testimony of something that was present and is now disappearing or will soon disappear. It is writing that becomes the means and the way to slow down the process and welcome oblivion. An archive is created, an instrument for memory.


Serena Gamba, visual artist, she works on the theme of memory and oblivion through word, sign and form. Her research moves around the meaning of Painting and its declinations in relation to other visual and applied arts.
The images of the History of Art, emptied of their original meaning, are reworked to bring out their essential nature, far removed from flawed and pre-constituted forms. The genres and materials of painting, the foundations of spoken and written language, the constituent elements of drawing and geometry are condensed into new structures and primary signs, at the same time activating a process of negation and reconstruction of a new image. These structural elements, be they sculptural or pictorial, define an architecture, a visual alphabet, address and leave full freedom of interpretation and reworking. Thus, he draws on the things of the world, be they classical works or primordial forms, to redefine a personal imagery, to generate an aesthetic and formal sensitivity towards the inexplicable mystery of Painting. He has exhibited in the group shows "Sollazzo Ottico" (Roccatre Gallery, Turin), "Appunti di sociologia urbana" (Alessio Moitre Gallery, Turin), "Dell'origine e delle sue variazioni - Serena Gamba/Alessandro Gioiello" (Isolo17 Gallery, Verona), "Serena Gamba, Autos - Eleonora Manca, Catessi" (Alessio Moitre Gallery, Turin), exhibits in the circuit "Art Site Fest" (Castello di Govone / Govone (CN)), at the exhibition "Lacerto" (Galleria Alessio Moitre), "Esercizi di scrittura" (BI-BOx Art Space / Biella), "La Camera delle Meraviglie" (Isolo17 Gallery, Verona), "Visione d'Interno" (Galleria Alessio Moitre - Burning Giraffe, Turin), "IncontrArTi - Simboli e riflessi verso l'Oltre" (Vercelli). She exhibited in solo shows 'Datum - Dida' (Van Der Gallery, Bolzano), 'Monologue' (Galleria Alessio Moitre, Turin), 'Opera al Nero' (Isolo17 Gallery, Verona).
Winner in 2021 of the "A Collection" Prize (Art Verona), in 2019 she wins the Artkeys Prize in the painting section and is a finalist in the Nocivelli Prize and the Yicca Contest. Finalist in 2018 at the Combat Prize, in 2017 he wins the Tina Prize Beijing edition, participates in 2016 at the Lissone Prize. In 2021 he founded Spazio PPP, a space for confrontation and real exchange aimed at creating new relationships between visual artists, curators and poets within a reality uncontaminated by typical city times and dynamics together with artist Alessandro Gioiello.

Mirella Bentivoglio, a poet and verbo-visual artist, was born in Klagenfurt (Austria) on 28 March 1922, to Italian parents, Margherita Cavalli and the scientist Ernesto Bertarelli. She received a multilingual education, studying in German-speaking Switzerland and England. In 1949 she married university lecturer in International Law Ludovico Matteo Bentivoglio, whose surname she adopted. In her early youth, she was the author of both oil paintings and books of poetry in Italian and English (published by Scheiwiller and Vallecchi, and reviewed by critics such as Giorgio Caproni, Italo Defeo and Mario Praz). Later on, she expressed her interest in the combined use of verbal language and images, linking up with the verbovisual movements of the international artistic neo-avant-gardes of the second half of the 20th century, becoming one of its leading figures. In 1968 he was awarded the qualification to teach Aesthetics and History of Art in the Italian Academies. He received scholarships and research grants from the Salzburg Seminar for American Studies (1958) and the Getty Institute in Los Angeles (1997). From the practice of Concrete Poetry, Visual Poetry and Visual Writing, which marked his entry into the sphere of new experimentation, he moved on to a personal form of object-poetry from the 1960s onwards. Gradually, in the 1970s and beyond, he explored the languages of performance, action-poetry and poetry-environment, setting up large symbolic structures of linguistic matrix on public land (including the famous Ovo di Gubbio). Central and long-standing has been her work on object books. She also played a decisive and enlightening role in the field of contemporary art as animator and curator of exhibitions dedicated to women's art. In particular, she curated and realised, for the 38th Venice Biennale (1978), the exhibition Materialisation of Language at the Magazzini del Sale, which exclusively featured works by female artists, and which still today represents an emblematic unicum of the work of women artists of those years, intent on claiming their own well-defined "female" creative space in the second half of the 20th century.
Mirella Bentivoglio has been awarded numerous prizes both for her poetic and artistic activity and for her critical and organisational work.
In 2011, she donated her rich collection-archive of female art, collected over years of strong commitment also as exhibition curator, to the MART (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto).
She died in Rome in spring 2017. One year after her death, a day of commemoration was held in her honour at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele in Rome, which presented the fund named after her (donated to the library by her three daughters, Marina, Leonetta and Ilaria). It contains volumes, exhibition catalogues and various materials from her vast library-archive. In 2019, the Mirella Bentivoglio Archive was set up online, with the aim of promoting and enhancing her work. In the same year, on 14 May, a new exhibition space for Mirella Bentivoglio was inaugurated as part of the Spazi900 itinerary, created within the National Library in Rome. The space named after Bentivoglio, which houses the permanent exhibition of some of her works, is next to spaces dedicated to authors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Elsa Morante and Italo Calvino.

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ARTISTS


Mirella Bentivoglio
Serena Gamba 

                           

               

NP-ArtLab presents the exhibition CHANGING SHAPES with works by Leonardo Dalla Torre, Giulio Paolini and Frédérique Nalbandian.

Three artists of different generations, united by a strong interest in the classical world but proposed with different eyes. Fragments and busts of statues alternate with images belonging to the History of Art and the Masters of painting of the past.
The three sculptures by Giulio Paolini (Genoa, 1940), made of plaster, are named 'Proteus', 'Proteus (II)' and 'Proteus (III)', referring to the mutable Greek god who had the ability to transform himself into any form he wished. Quotation, duplication and fragmentation are the three themes that emerge in this series and summarise the intellectual themes dear to the artist himself. Like the multiform Proteus, this sculptural group can be admired from different angles, creating a poetic meditation on the metaphysical nature of artistic practice.
A pictorial vision of classicism is offered to us by Leonardo Dalla Torre (Venice, 1995). In the space he paints, bodies, faces and gazes take shape, evoked by the forms of past painting outlined by the Masters of Art History. They are used as a pretext for an unexpected intervention. Form is often compromised, subtracted and distorted.
The dialogue continues with the French artist Frédérique Nalbandian (Menton, 1967). Three imposing busts, made by working and handling Marseille soap, are named 'Panacée I', 'Panacée II' and 'Panacée III' and represent the Greek goddess of universal healing. The long drapes covering the goddess' bodies recall the expressiveness of the classical period. If the visitor were able to touch the works after wetting his or her hands, a process of change of the material itself would be triggered, making the sculpture constantly becoming and changing. As a result, a further dialogue with contemporaneity is created, involving the viewer in the creative process of the work itself.

CHANGING SHAPES is closely linked to the concept of change and fragmentation of the material and the perception of the work itself. A continuous becoming that allows the observer to meditate and reflect on the metaphysical nature of the artistic practice of the three different artists in dialogue with each other.


Leonardo Dalla Torre was born in Venice in 1995. He grew up in the city's historic centre and graduated from the Liceo Artistico Statale in Venice in 2013, continuing his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, graduating in Painting in 2017 and in Graphic Art-Design in 2019. As a painter, he deepens his research by investigating figuration and portraiture as his main themes.
The models used draw both from the images of the History of Art and the Masters of painting of the past, and from his own contemporaneity, alienating contextual differences, accumulating the expressive characters of the body and the flesh, detecting their symptoms and openness in a painting that seeks the imminence of a calamity, suspending the images in a perpetual deflagration.

Giulio Paolini born on 5 November 1940 in Genoa, Giulio Paolini lives in Turin Since his first participation in a group show in 1961 and his first solo exhibition in 1964, he has exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world. Major retrospectives have been held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1980), Nouveau Musée, Villeurbanne (1984), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart (1986), Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome (1988), Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz (1998) and Fondazione Prada, Milan (2003). Recent anthological exhibitions include those at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2014), Fondazione Carriero, Milan (2018) and Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin (2020).
He has participated in several Arte Povera exhibitions and has been invited several times to the Kassel Documenta (1972, 1977, 1982, 1992) and the Venice Biennale (1970, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2013).
In 2022, he was awarded the Imperial Prize for Painting, the most important award in the field of art. His work can be found in renowned public and private collections both nationally and internationally.From the very beginning, Paolini has accompanied his artistic research with reflections collected in books he has edited himself: from Idem, with an introduction by Italo Calvino (Einaudi, Turin 1975), to Quattro passi. Nel museo senza muse (Einaudi, Turin 2006) and L'autore che credeva di esistere (Johan & Levi, Milan 2012). He has also created sets and costumes for theatrical productions, among which the projects created with Carlo Quartucci in the 1980s and the sets for two operas by Richard Wagner directed by Federico Tiezzi (2005, 2007) stand out.

Frédérique Nalbandian is a French multidisciplinary artist born on 3 April 1967 in Menton. A sculptor, she also creates drawings, installations and performances. Most of her in situ soap sculptures evolve both internally and externally, changing over time. Sometimes interactive, they require the visitor's participation. After taking her first drawing courses during her studies at Davis High School (en) in California, Frédérique Nalbandian entered the Ecole Nationale d'Art Décoratif d'Aubusson in 1988, where she spent a year, before entering the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art in Villa Arson in 1989 to devote herself to artistic creation.
In 1994, she obtained an artistic residency dedicated to drawing at the Fondazione Ratti in Como under the direction of Anish Kapoor and Karel Appel. In 1996, she obtained the Diplôme National Supérieur d'Expression Plastique (DNSEP).
She sculpts soap, carving it or modelling it. Its different states: solid, liquid, foam, effervescence, dripping, stalactitisation derive from the action of water.
In her works she also uses poor materials such as plaster (in the mouldings and plastered roses), water, fabric, wool threads, glass and terracotta.
She moulds soap, shapes it and creates forms that she stops or lets evolve, transforming time into a medium. Her vocabulary of plastic forms is constantly expanding: precipitates, collapses, rolls, fragments, columns, partitions, walls, ropes or directly related to the anatomy of the human body: ears, brains, skins, skulls, hands, phalluses. Some were imposed by the material itself. Her forms, in their composition and the process they undergo, become poetic, charged with a metaphysics of matter that evokes the passage of time, erosion, transformation and metamorphosis. The allusion to Francis Ponge's text “Le Savon” was decisive from the outset and took shape during a series of talks in Cerisy during the Contemporary Writer's Workshops in 2015, where she met Pascal Quignard.

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ARTISTS


Leonardo Dalla Torre
Giulio Paolini 
Frédérique Nalbandian

ALIGHIERO E BOETTI

VOLI PINDARICI
Genesi di un'opera

Curated by Guido Fuga
From an idea of  Diego Fuga

Opening 12/04/2023 h 17:00 > 20:00
12/04 > 31/05/2023*

Martelli Fine Art in collaboration with NP-ArtLab
Corso Monforte 23
Milan

*Private exhibition space
Tuesday-Thursday, 12.00 - 19.00
Or by appointment
For more information:
info@npartlab.com
francesca@martellifineart.com


"[...] Blue skies where hundreds of aeroplanes hover [...],  bring a wave of brilliant madness. There is no title and the authors are doubled, or rather tripled; Alighiero, Boetti and Fuga" wrote Maurizio di Puolo in the article Alighiero Boetti & Guido Fuga that appeared in "Il Messaggero" on 2 December 1977.
Alighiero Boetti began a large series of papers representing aeroplanes in that year, executed in different versions using pencil, watercolour and biro on paper.
As for other works, Boetti collaborates this time with the designer and architect Guido Fuga, a valuable and close collaborator of the famous cartoonist Hugo Pratt.
In this series conceived and executed with Fuga, Boetti gives us access to fundamental aspects of his poetics such as the perception between mobility and stability, between the finite and infinite worlds, which find space within a composition of figurative elements drawn in negative over a monochromatically coloured sky.
The observer is invited to enter this universe poised between the real and the imaginary with lightness, taking us back in time to a playful dimension that is closed to the imagination of childhood until we reach a depth of meaning based on the union-contrast between order and disorder.
The exhibition allows us to go back in time and rediscover the creative process and collaboration between Boetti and Fuga:  indeed, the designer gives us access to his personal archive, which consists of sketches on paper, preparatory materials for the creation of the Aerei series, posters, paper invitations and photographs from that period.
These works are presented in a totally new way and have never been collected in an exhibition since now. Among the works, there is Aereo su biro nera from 1977, one of the very first, if not the first, produced by the Boetti-Fuga collaboration.
Confirming Boetti's spirit of openness to collaborations in the exhibition there are some works made in relations with Alitalia, Twinings and Austrian Airlines (the project Cieli ad Alta Quota, a set of 6 puzzles designed in collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist).
"Voli Pindarici" is closely linked to a concept of travel, both real and imaginary, which replaces physical mobility with that of the imagination: first of all Arei, but also the postal works on display, like the American conceptual mail art. The idea of departure, but also of return, emerges within these stamped envelopes that expand the sense of time and space. On the handwritten envelopes addresses linked to the Boetti family create a connection with another artwork in the exhibition with a deep sentimental connection, which presents a play of numbers linked to the family's birth dates, 15 and 16, and in the background a series of aeroplanes wandering in the blue.


Biography
Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) – or Alighiero and Boetti as signed in 1971 – was born in Turin where he made his debut in the Arte Povera in January 1967.
In 1972 he moved to Rome, a context closer to his predilection for the South of the world. Already in the previous year he discovered Afghanistan and started the artistic work he entrusted to the Afghan embroiderers, including the Maps, the colored planispheres that he will propose over the years, as a register of political changes in the world.
A conceptual artist, versatile and kaleidoscopic, he multiplies the types of works whose execution – in some cases – is delegated with precise rules to other subjects and other hands, following the principle of ‘necessity and chance’: so the Biro (blue , blacks, reds, greens) in which the dotted pattern depicts language; thus the embroideries of letters, small or large, and multicolored; or the Tutto, dense puzzles in which heterogeneous silhouettes are found, including shapes of objects and animals, images taken from magazines and printed paper, and much more, really ‘everything’ (Tutto in Italian).
There are also postal works played on the mathematical permutation of the stamps, the haphazard adventure of the postal journey and the secret beauty of the sheets contained in the envelopes.
Another sector of Boetti’s work, unmistakably his own, offers in the early ’70s many’ exercises’ on squared paper, based on musical or mathematical rhythms; then on paper, light compositions in which ranks of animals recalling the Etruscan and Pompeian decoration fow. Time, its fascinating and ineluctable fow, is perhaps the unifying theme of Boetti’s typological and iconographic plurality.
Alighiero Boetti has exhibited in the most emblematic exhibitions of his generation, from When attitudes become form (1969) to Contemporanea (1973), from Identité italienne (1981) to The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968 (1994). He is several times present at the Venice Biennale, with a personal room in the 1990 edition, a posthume tribute in 2001 and a large exhibition at the Cini Foundation in the recent edition of 2017.
Among the most signifcant exhibitions of the last few years the great Game Plan retrospective has been realized in three prestigious locations (MOMA in New York, Tate in London, Reina Sofa in Madrid).
Of the ample corpus of works, many Italian and international museums are kept, including the Center Pompidou in Paris, Stedelijk Museum, the MOCA in Los Angeles, etc.).e permanent collections of leading Italian and international museums and many private collections.

Guido Fuga (Venice 1947) in ‘68, student of Architecture, meets Hugo Pratt, and starts a collaboration, the so-called special effects: bottoms, planes, junks, trains, armoured cars, which he continued until the last stories.
Between '70 and '73 he went twice in India in the legendary Volkswagen, the second trip lasting six months, when Afghanistan was ruled by the king and was the paradise of hippies.
In 1977, in the flat opposite his (it was destiny), as a guest of his friend Gianni Michelagnoli, he met the artist Alighiero Boetti, who was also in love with Afghanistan, he had gone there in '71 and had taken the "One Hotel" in Kabul, a tiny one-room hotel. In a night of smoke and stories, the idea of collaboration was born and they produced the work "Aerei", then in the 1980s the series of watercolours on the same theme "Cieli ad alta quota". He collaborated for a short period with the satirical weekly "IL Male", the best of youth. He curated Pratt's anthological exhibition at the Grand Palais and organised the set-up; after Paris, in Milan, Venice, Rome, Naples and Buenos Aires for "Italiana 86". He collaborated with Mario Schifano on a collection of carpets made in India, a country he continued to visit and where, in addition to carpets, he got marble inlay tables made by craftsmen in Udaipur.
After Hugo Pratt's death in 1997, with "Lele" Vianello, he produced "Corto Sconto", Corto Maltese's guide to Venice for the "Lizard" editions and in French for "Castermann", followed by "Navigar in laguna fra isole fiabe e ricordi" with "Mare di Carta" and "Marco Polo, testimonianze di un viaggio straordinario" with "Linea d'Acqua". In 1999, for a few months, he collaborates with the covers of the programme "Sgarbi quotidiani".
In 2003 for RAISAT Gamberorosso with his colleague Lele Vianello they edit ten episodes about the routes of their book "Navigar in Laguna", then they produce the comic book "Le Ali del leone" in collaboration with the Air Force magazine, again with Lele in 2010 he realized the story "Cubana", a comic inspired by the master Pratt.
In 2018 he made the "Merchant of Venice" diary with watercolours about the traveller in search of the most precious essences. The “Profumo illustrato” exhibition was presented at Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice.
In 2021 he participated with a project to Cleto Munari's "Essenza di marmo" collection of artist's tables.
In 2023, he created 30 tables on the fantastic journey of Nicolò Manucci, which will be presented at Palazzo Vendramin Grimani in the exhibition dedicated to the Venetian traveller from the 29th of April.

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ARTIST

Alighiero e Boetti

ALDO MONDINO

SOUK MONDANO

Opening 18/03/2023 h 12:00 > 19:00
18/03 > 27/05/2023*

NP-ArtLab
Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 1/C
35122 - Padova (PD)


*exhibition space
Thursday - Saturday, 12.00 - 19.00
More info: info@npartlab.com


NP-ArtLab in collaboration with Galleria Umberto Benappi (Turin) and Archivio Aldo Mondino, is pleased to present "Souk mondano" dedicated to the work of Aldo Mondino, with a focus on works influenced by his travels to the Middle East. An eclectic artist whose artistic practice has crossed different styles and influences, including 20th century European art, surrealism and pop art, without ever belonging to any group or movement.
Mondino has always refused to be framed in art-historical categories, preferring an approach full of experimentations in terms of materials, techniques and subjects. An endless research, a stubborn need to experiment, giving rise to an heterogeneous work in perpetual dialogue with the history of art.

The works on display refer to the impact that the artist's travels, in a metaphorical as well as a physical sense, have had on the development of his work. Mondino accompanied this flânerie with his curiosity and irony, translating into Mondinoan terms what he had seen during his wanderings. From the 1980s onwards, his travels intensified, confronting him with what he calls "an Orient that begins in Morocco and continues in Palestine, where I glimpse a fascinating parallelism between the prayer and the intensity of attention in conceptual painting."

His famous works of the "Dervishes", dancing subjects painted on linoleum, come from this analogy between spirituality and pictorial gesture. The Dervishes practice the ritual dance characteristic of Turkish tradition by performing fluid, circular movements. Indeed, the Dervishes series was exhibited in 1993 at the Venice Biennale curated by Achille Bonito Oliva: on that occasion Mondino presented a performance involving a group of rotating dancers from Turkey. The corpus of works the dervishes, also called le turcate, in homage to Giulio Turcato, highlight the harmonious blend of Western-style figurative painting and the decorative geometric syntax of Middle Eastern and Asian derivation.

To prove the influences from his encounters while traveling, Mondino depicts local merchants and souks, the true essence of the city, a market revealing the soul of a country: he captures the physiognomies of the subjects and the colours of the fruit together with geometric patterns. The choice of linoleum as a support in painting is quite unusual but confirms Mondino's relentless aptitude for experimentation. The use of this support synthesizes various aspects of Mondino's poetics, from the use of a highly worked surface reminiscent of Orientalism to the constant irony (the play on words that sees linen and oil as materials more commonly associated with the Western painting tradition).

A reappraisal of the material also applies to “Iznik”, the enamel-on-glass technique that is reminiscent of the terracotta artefacts of the Turkish city of Nicea: in this series of works, painting becomes ceramic, misleading the eye in this metamorphosis of painting that becomes something else.
The same trompe l'oeil of the “Tappeti stesi” hung on the walls like cloths hang to dry, transforming the exhibition space into a characteristic souk. This series of works were executed in bright colours on an industrial building material, eraclite. The texture of the media, although rough, reminds of a noble oriental carpet thanks to Mondino's elaboration of the painting-objects. The resulting illusion verges on perfection and with these works, the artist offers us a narrative composed of vivid colours and decorative motifs of a fascinating unknown universe.
Mondino's approach to the elsewhere cannot be traced solely to a fascination with exoticism but implies a veiled allusion to experiencing cultural otherness in opposition to mass tourism and Western global acceleration.

The exhibition ‘Souk mondano' will be accompanied by the publication of a catalogue.

A selection of the works part of the exhibition will also be presented by Galleria Umberto Benappi on the occasion of the 27th edition of Miart 2023 (Milan, 14-16 April) within the established section.


Aldo Mondino was born in 1938 in Turin, where he died in 2005.
In 1959 he moved to Paris where he attended the studio of William Heyter, the ‘Ecole du Louvre’, and the mosaic course at the Academy of Fine Arts with Severini and Licata.
In 1960 he returned to Italy, where he began to exhibit his work at the Galleria L'Immagine in Turin (1961) and the Galleria Alfa in Venice (1962). His meeting with Gian Enzo Sperone, director of the Galleria Il Punto, represented a turning-point in his artistic career and marked the beginning of a long collaboration that still continues today. He held a series of important solo exhibitions at the Galleria Stein in Turin, the Studio Marconi in Milan, the Galleria La Salita in Rome and the Galleria Paludetto in Turin.
Mondino’s major exhibitions include two participations in the Venice Biennale in 1976 and 1993 and solo exhibitions at the Museum für Moderne Kunst - Palais Liechtenstein in Vienna (1991), the Sultanahmet Topkapi Museum in Istanbul (1992, 1996), the Jewish Museum of Bologna (1995) and the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna in Trento (2000).
His works are part of the permanent collections of leading Italian and international museums and many private collections. 

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ARTIST

Aldo Mondino

NP-ArtLab is pleased to present the group show “Interferenze”, the title refers to the digital atmosphere melt with reality created by the works by Cinzia Campolese, Pietro Catarinella e Federico Polloni.

The works displayed are related to the concept of physics called interference: the combination of two or more electromagnetic waveforms to form a resultant wave in which the displacement is either reinforced or cancelled. The reference goes to every effect of superimposition of two phenomena of the same nature which implies the possibility of mutual disturbance.

Interference as relation in the work of Cinzia Campolese, as an overlap in Pietro Catarinella’s paintings up to Federico Polloni’s altered vision towards metaphysical worlds.
The exhibition is linked to digital but the human presence persists and mixes through distorted visions. Cinzia Campolese (Italy, 1987) presents the work “Could you take a picture?” which invites visitors to use their cameras to view visual compositions hidden from the naked eye.
Through the camera of our smartphones it is possible to see the interference patterns that create the final visual outcome. The piece’s title reveals the action to be taken to underline the constant need to record our everyday life with a camera.
A series of paintings  by Pietro Catarinella (Rome, 1983) is presented: oil painting mixed with digital through a superimposition of techniques and medias. The result is a distorted image that allows us to perceive the references to painting and its traditional subjects but also the virtual aspects that give us a completely new reading. To complete the exhibition’s path, Federico Polloni (Treviso, 1991) ’s installation give us access to his metaphysical world made up of volumes, neon and objects creating a suspended landscape. Some works on canvas complete the atmosphere that aims to tell the present time with a look to the future according to a concept of technological dystopia.


BIO

Cinzia Campolese (Lanciano (CH), 1987) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Montreal (CA). Her work includes installations, sculptures, videos and prints. Working on different scales, she question the concepts of perception and awareness of spaces,  both in digital and real in environments. After her studies in art and design in Florence, she moved to Paris, where she funded the collective “IF'" in 2012, working on architecture projects and digital art installations. Three years after she started developing her own productions and in 2016 she moved to Montreal where she developed her artistic career. Her works have been shown in institutions, galleries and cultural events, such us Goethe Institut (Montreal), B39 (Seoul), Wood Street Gallery (Pittsburgh), Chroniques Biennale (Marseille), Adiacenze (Bologna), Stereolux (Nantes), Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), Livart gallery, Eastern Bloc, Phi Center and Mutek (Montreal).
Her projects have been published on L'Œil, Vice, Aesthetica Magazine, Gallerytalk, Juliet Art Magazine, Archdaily, Fubiz and she has been included in the book by Exibart "222 artisti emergenti su cui investire”, 2019.

Pietro Catarinella (Roma, 1983) works and lives in Milan. After his studied in architecture, he completed a master in Photography at Central Saint Martins, London, in 2014. Here is when he defines his artistic practice: a research on digital genesis that questions the reality’s changes and the visual representation of the internet era, of social networks and new media. Between 2015 and 2018, his work has been exhibited in London (East London Photography Festival, Green Arcola Gallery and Ashurst Ermerging Artist Gallery), in China (Pingyao International Photography Festival), in Lithuania (AV17 Gallery), in Rome (Mattatoio / Macro Future and Temple Gallery), and in Madrid (Nadie, Nunca, Nada, No). In 2018, he was finalist at Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize. During his residency at Vir Viafarini-in-residence, his practice evolves into an investigation of the relationship between digital and physical space, and he is invited by Bruno Barsanti to The Others Art Fair (Turin). In 2019 he makes several site-specific installations including 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams' (Macro, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome) and 'Google's Decalogue' (Spazio Gamma, Milan). He won the Ora Prize in 2019, he was selected for the 'Lumen Prize' in London (2017 and 2019), and the Francesco Fabbri Prize (2019).
In May 2020, he was part of Studio Visit - 30 Artists for 30 Days, a virtual exhibition conceived by the Pini Foundation, later published in a volume by Studio Boite Edition. In October of the same year, he founded Armenia Studio, a hybrid space project including 7 shared studios and a Project Room. From March to June 2021, he took part in two bi-personal exhibitions, the first in Ida Pisani's PROMETEOGALLERY, accompanied by a critical text written by Mauro Zanchi, the second in the Concordia II space (Milan), a collaboration between PROMETEOGALLERY and Vir Viafarini-in-residence.

Federico Polloni (Treviso, 1991) lives and works in Venice.
He graduated in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in 2021 with prof. Aldo Grazzi and Carlo Di Raco. He participated to several international exhibitions, including the most recent: Wopart fair Switzerland; Venice Time Case project curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, Unlikely at Palazzo Mocenigo Venice. In 2020 he founded the cultural association Acromo based in Venice, dedicated to the promotion of contemporary art in the Venetian territory. In the same year he opened a shared Lab Space Casablanca_studio_ based in Venice. In 2021 he collaborated on the creation of the first independent open studio festival involving young emerging artists working in Venice (Venice Independent Art Scene).

IT

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Cinzia Campolese,Pietro Catarinella & Federico Polloni