Fou Rire

In such a condition, (self-)irony is fundamental, capable of activating the “laughable” element of contemporaneity. Comic fantasy is properly human and already for Henri Bergson, it was fundamental to understand the processes that the imagination follows in her work. This social and collective imagination derives from real life and is related to art. Because, as Samuel Beckett suggests in one of his short poems from the mirlitonades series, it’s necessary to face the worst jusqu’à ce qu’il fosse rire.

By focusing his practice on those aspects of reality of restless vagueness, the work of Giulio Bensasson (Rome, 1990) is linked inseparably to a concept of temporality understood as the culminating moment of a slow and inexorable process which becomes the expressive material with which to compromise, leaving room for the randomness of its effects. In the triptych I don't know where, I don't know when (souvenir of an animal musculature), born from the processing of an archival slide immersed in a liquid populated by moulds, fungi and organic elements, the randomness with which external agents affect the decomposition of the image becomes the expedient to draw a time line of the sedimentation of the same image in the mind up to the complete evanescence of the recognition factors of it.

The large canvas by Cristiano Carotti (Terni, 1981) is intended as an altarpiece, flanked by two lustrous majolica wolves. In the depiction the rice is embodied in three ferocious shepherd dogs and the figure of the Fool moves from the light- hearted fool to the nameless Arcanum (The Death). The deadly aspect is emotionally linked to the archetype of the madman and leads to the representation of a “guardian of the threshold". Starting from an identity comparison with the figure of the Fool, the mysticism underlying the representation - the result of a passage of three different pictorial moments - marks the shot and the overcoming with respect to the fear of death, opening the threshold of the journey through the Arcana to rejoin the world and the whole.


Francesca Cornacchini (Rome, 1991) reflects on the concept of norm and social conditioning through three different types of intervention (performance, stitched canvas and photography). The works on display are thus substantiated in an analysis of the biopolitical conditions of our statements, contemplating the possibility of a redefinition of fixed categories. Opening up to space, the onset becomes plastic, maintaining a heroic and romantic dimension, given by the presence of the body as a trigger. Underground culture becomes the expressive code of a detonating, violent and fragile language. Camilla Gurgone (Lucca, 1997) presents three sculptural installations, in which rolls of thermal paper descend to the ground, held in tension by an aluminium control bar. Each work shows a sequence of images produced by the artist through artificial intelligence algorithms, in an attempt to recompose all the scenes belonging to a dream realized by her or told to her by others. The use of images fished on the web opens a reflection on the personal and collective imagination. Heat printing refers to the evanescence of the mind whose memories, with the passage of time, slowly tend to fade.

The three canvases by Andrea Martinucci (Rome, 1991) reflect on the need for a reconfiguration of pictorial language towards new definitions. They are configured as a union of three voices, a hymn to the life and death of the old world, branching out of the margin to emerge in the mists of our times. The three works, interrupting the eye distance with the surface, expand towards space through their vibrant power: a progressive waltz towards the places of the ephemeral, the unfulfilled and desire.

Niccolò Moronato (Padua, 1985) is present in the exhibition with a series of cut-outs from the Golf is a violent sport project and a headphone sound in which the lashing of the blows of the golf clubs creates a disturbing and unexpected sound carpet providing the point of view of the playing field. Using trade magazines and books for golfers, the artist's interest focuses on the pervasiveness of the lacquered perfection of glossy magazines revealing their most intrinsically disturbing aspect. Golf is a violent sport thus becomes an evident manifestation of the oxymoron that lies behind hyper- performativity: between strict rules impossible to disregard to be considered the best, ornamental palms and impeccable design to be revealed are multiple and discontinuous sequence plans from which our gaze ends up being sucked.

In his installation Jonathan Vivacqua (Erba, Como, 1986) uses, in a non-functional way, the electro-welded mesh for construction site. The element of the wire mesh, which usually remains hidden inside the concrete constructions, becomes the protagonist of the entire operation, also through the marked use of color. Although completely transfigured, the mesh maintains a consolidating aspect from a structural point of view. The central sculptural work, composed mainly of two bodies that come together, is directly confronted with a wall installation in which the same mesh is found as if exploded, mechanically decomposed into other identities.

Angelica Gatto and Simone Zacchini