We are pleased to present a relevant institutional exhibition to be held at the Museo Archeologico e d’Arte Sacra della Maremma and Polo Culturale Le Clarisse in Grosseto – curated by architect Stefania Sagliocco. Galleria La Linea is an exhibition’s partner.
The exhibition will be inaugurated on Friday 14 May at 18.30.
The focus is on the cycle of works realized by Michele Guerrini and Michele Guidarini – together with collages by Stefania Sagliocco. This project starts from the ancient archaeological element, using it as a support, with a rewriting technique focused on form.
Taking into account that every work of art represents the stratification of cultural experiences and aesthetic data of the civilization that preceded it – every archaeological detail has been intentionally “covered” by the contemporary gesture of the authors. In this way the ancient support has been transformed in an empty effigy, a ‘simulacra’.
The explicit intent of this provocation consists in leading the visitor in re-reading the relationship between ancient and contemporary, abandoning the sterile dichotomy between sterile conservation of past and the irresponsible neglect of a millenary cultural heritage.
For this purpose, the itinerary proposed to visitors is divided into two spaces.
We believe that for this type of critical re-elaboration of the past, it’s crucial to learn to re-read all the cultural layers that have led us to the contemporary aesthetic language.
The target of this project consists in the construction of a sort of “palimpsest” composed of different temporal contributions, a sort of simplified reading of history, which instead of being told as a “continuum” of events, has been represented through a slow stratification of human and cultural interventions.
The itinerary thus begins in the conference room of the Museo Archeologico e d’Arte Sacra della Maremma, where all the works of the site-specific project are found: shots, sketches, collages.
The second phase, separated from the previous one, essentially consists of a “return to the past” inside the archaeological museum, which has been literally “transfigured” by the definitive works of the artists, in which the photographic backdrops of Michele Guerrini – printed on pvc sheets – act as supports for the pictorial works of Michele Guidarini.
Guerrini has managed – to “isolate” and redefine the human expressions of the statues, through a wise photographic use of “darkness”, taking them from the hieratic and icy perfection of ancient silence, towards a more human and fragile emotional dimension.
Guidarini – later – rewrote and “dirtied” those same expressions through his well-known urban and metropolitan language, stressing through violence a contrast between past and present that we must learn with maturity and new awareness.
In our opinion art must not have the presumption of offering answers or solutions. On the opposite art has the precise responsibility of suggesting new questions in its observers.
The exhibition is completed by two site-specific works set up inside the Le Clarisse Cultural Center.
Stefania Sagliocco Architect
