↳ Exhibitions

Alfredo Aceto at Istituto Svizzero

February 13, 2019

Artist: Alfredo Aceto

Exhibition title: Sequoia 07

Curated by: Samuel Gross

Venue: Instituto Svizzero, Milan, Italy

Date: February 7 – March 16, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Instituto Svizzero, Milan

Istituto Svizzero is pleased to present “Sequoia 07”, the first solo presentation by Alfredo Aceto in Milan. Art, for the artist, is a pop game, and each work is thought of as a generic object, equivalent a priori, to any other. Bearing this in mind, the exhibition is thought of as a collage which connects these objects temporarily, transforming them into a game of memory and desire.

The exhibition’s title itself toys with this collage concept. Aceto combines the recollection of a memory from his childhood, that of his grandmother telling him a story of some teenagers escorted by a woman riding a white horse through a tunnel of trees with Sequoia: his favourite 2007 Toyota car model.

The automobile is the artist’s (Turin born) frequent dream and a pop pattern par excellence. Its control panel is a recurring subject of his drawings; the many mechanical features of these objects are source of inspiration for his sculptures. The elements are fragments of a living contemporary dream, in which all already belongs to history. Time and space transform these objects into ones with decorative value.

What may appear as an obsessive game, is rather Aceto’s desire to seek the lowest common denominator for an object to be a sculpture. On the one hand, he carefully picks the objects he is interested in and treats them with care and reproduces them, on the other, he deletes and suppresses their qualities by stripping them of all meaning. Anti-heroic by definition, these objects remind us of the evanescence of details, loving them while saddened of their transient state. Each sculpture resembles what can be glimpsed quickly from the window of a train: extremely fast moving but very accurate.

If it is indeed a matter of creating a collage effect, there is nothing better than finding a common starting point, which “Sequoia 07” seemingly does with the purposefully identical diameters of all the objects, thus making them relatively associable. Losing their original appearance as gargoyles, mufflers or enlarged jewellery, they are now fragments of distant but fascinating glances: a bright coloured postcard of a huge American car driving under a redwood tree.

Alfredo Aceto, Sequoia 07, 2019, exhibition view, Instituto Svizzero, Milan

Alfredo Aceto, Untitled (Watercolors), 2019, 38 x 41.5 x 6 cm each, Watercolor on paper, wood frame

Alfredo Aceto, CENTAURE, 2019, 43 x 31.5 x 8 cm, Horn, formal blye shirts

Alfredo Aceto, Grass snake digesting Bertrand Lavier (transitional sculpture), 2019, 160 x 15 x 30 cm, Polystyrene, Fiberglass, acrylic resin, paint