Artist: Alessio Bolzoni
Exhibition title: ACCUMULO
Venue: CIBRIÁN, San Sebastian, Spain
Date: June 2 – July 8, 2023
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and CIBRIÁN, San Sebastian
Cibrián is thrilled to present ACCUMULO, the first solo exhibition in Spain of Italian-born, London-based artist Alessio Bolzoni.
This exhibition arises from the conversation between the artist, Many of Them and the gallery. Bolzoni and Many of Them (an annual publication edited by Antonio Macarro and Pedro Canicoba, at the crossroads of art, film and fashion) are long-standing collaborators, and share a passion for image- making and printed matter. Cibrián is honoured to be part of this conversation and to exhibit ACCUMULO, an ongoing body of work which explores the disruption of attention through excess around artworks and publication.
ACCUMULO is an entity that stems from the investigation of the accumulation of things and images. However, in a world that produces everything in excess, including immaterial items, even images become the extension of this concept. Bolzoni operates a careful appropriation of existing images from various sources and the self-appropriation of photos previously taken by the artist. This element can be almost seen as self -inflicted criticism because even the artist is not immune to this hyper-production. Bolzoni, in other words, does not cast himself out of the universe that he coldly analyses and documents.
The appropriated images here are deliberately gritty fragments of bigger pictures, taken mainly from two sources: either newspapers or original 1950s and 60s photos bought by the artist from the most disparate sources. There is in these pictures a dominating subject: legs in the act of walking; many legs of different people symbolizing the act of relentlessly going forward. Here Bolzoni articulates them with an exact rhythm, pairing and comparing them, creating connections and identifying similarities between unrelated items and geographies; so to the metaphor of moving ahead, Bolzoni adds a new one: returning, moving forward and coming back in a similar shape. In ACCUMULO, the act of appropriating and self-appropriating means re-signifying.
The exhibition is punctuated by smaller printed works, abstract fragments of images with long-lost genealogies. This series entitled PAPERS, is an exercise of the gaze, a poetic view of the real. They are objects, charged with desire, interest and sexual sight. They represent the unseen and its intangible presence.
The installation in reflective plastic folders makes every piece hard to be seen, it forces the gaze, it makes the PAPERS need to be discovered; it puts the viewer in an uneasy and uncomfortable exercise of looking at something.
Bolzoni takes the grand fatigue related to the excess circulation of everything, especially images, as a starting point of his work, and reverses this process of dilution. This is a resilient gesture akin to helping someone whom you know will not help you back. The result is as much a mesmerizing visual exploration as it is a political and poetic statement.
