Lo spavento della terra at Clima

Artist: Andrea Kvas, Jonatah Manno, Isao M’onma

Exhibition title: Lo spavento della terra

Curated by: Andrea Kvas

Venue: Clima, Milan, Italy

Date: September 18 – November 8, 2018

Photography: Marco Davolio / images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Clima, Milan

The title of the exhibition recalls a sentence by William Shakespeare’s King Lear from the 1843 Giulio Carcano’s translation: “I will do such things,– What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be The terrors of the earth” Beside describing the generating thought the exhibition, “Lo Spavento della Terra” reminds to the gut emotion amplifying the sensory perception of what happens around us in a moment of apparent risk, making us more alert and receptive.

As in the words of the curator Andrea Kvas “the matter of the movement, of creating objects forcing the perception’s dynamic, undermining the passive contemplation, is still fundamental. All this origins from a desire for exploring, diving in the unknown: the desire of being scared.

The artworks on display all have multiple possibilities of going in deep dimensions, where the images’ neat outlines leave room for grey areas of doubt, introspection and solitary journeys. From the scare arise gestures that, in their recurrence, generate, as mantras, infinite paths to follow.”

Jonatah Manno (1976) lives and works in Lecce. Jonatah Manno’s research develops around the study of esotericism and theosophy’s traditional symbolisms and on anthropology as an holistic system of interaction between human being and surrounding environment. In such sense the use of materials in his installations always had a multiple and symbolic value, subjecting his works to multiple meanings. After years in Berlin, Manno comes back to his hometown Lecce. Among the main shows the solo exhibition at Museo Apparente in Naples in 2013 an at Cripta 747 in 2016.

M’onma (s.d.) lives and works in Japan. Artist active since forty years, M’onma doesn’t talk much about his work, but it seems like an important part of it is based on the loss of intellectual control. As he himself explains, one day, while set to draw his usual subject, a still life, he felt an entity taking his hand while he was falling in an hypnagogic state. From that time on all of his production develops in that altered state of mind. His works have been showed for the first time at Cavin-Morris gallery in New York, in 2016 at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and in 2018 at the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne.

Andrea Kvas (1986) lives and works in Milan. Andrea Kvas’ work combines a playful and instinctive approach to painting with an analysis and a reconsideration of this bailiwick. His painting research requires multiple patterns of fruition which led him to find many intersections with sculptural, relational and curatorial practices. In 2014 he curates the first “parasite” group exhibition Dopapine at San Giovanni Valdarno. Among the main shows the solo exhibition at Marino Marini Museum in Florence (2012) and the solo exhibition at Ermes-Ermes Gallery in Vienna (2015).