Giulia Cenci at SpazioA

Artist: Giulia Cenci

Exhibition title: ground-ground

Venue: SpazioA, Pistoia, Italy

Date: November 18, 2017 – January 13, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and SpazioA, Pistoia

SpazioA is proud to present, Saturday November 18, 2017, 6pm, ground-ground, the second solo show of the artist Giulia Cenci (1988, Cortona, IT), in Via Amati 13, Pistoia.

…Nothing must stand
Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.
[Mark Strand, The Monument]

ground-ground

defines a territory to which parts of the gallery cling and form a habitat of rules and dynamics of its own: a chaotic landscape from which patches of material and things emerge. At times formless, elsewhere replicated to the point of constituing excrescences of modules, these fragments are the consequence of a practice that has accurately hybridized and modified objects and materials of organic, synthetic and industrial nature to obtain characteristics that are uncertain and complex in which the sources and the resources that constitute the work are treated unconditioned by their nature and value.

The result is a view inhabited by deeply impure elements that are soiled from any point of view: formal, material, and ideal. The volumes, the residue stuck to this view, are the consequences of an exasoeration of sculptural actions (manual and mechanical) and the gesture and things that represent our imaginary: they are technique and technology, repetition, accumulation, resemblance, nature, representation, and the idea of reproduction… they are made of clay, soil, yet stricken by a liquid magma that covers them and make them similar on the surface, a skin that carries inside it obsolete fillers that, like the fragments of technology, are capable of drawing the route and the movement on the visible surface.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
April is the cruelest month, breeding,
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
[T.S. ELIOT, The Waste Land]

[…] The best spot to observe the Dying City is from the square parking lot of one of the saddest towns in Italy, Lubriano. From here Civita is visible in a silhouette, with a good view of the concrete bridge built when the last street that connected Civita collapsed. The bridge is souspended brutally over the landscape, too big for this crumbling little town, but I always like to imagine how it will be when the city is even more eroded and the bridge will still be standing there, going nowhere. At this point, I start crawling over the bridge myself to finally approach this jumble of materials that keeps moving from a place to another. The bridge is meaningful in understanding what Civita represents: from 300 meters my body is souspended over a formless expanse of land, the remains of collapse, vegetation that grows inconstant above fragmentary layers of ground. From the bridge, I look at the chaos below me until I identify myself with it. I look closer at the city and recognize the ancient cuts dug into the hillsides and the crumbling ledges of the land. I perceive that what is missing from The Dying City now lies in the chaos below me, where everything begins resembling everything else.

Giulia Cenci (Cortona IT, 1988) graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna (2007-2012), received a Master of Fine Arts at St.Joost Academy, Den Bosch-Breda, NL (2013-2015) and she took part in deAteliers residency (2015-2017). Selected solo shows: Carreras Mugica (Hall), Bilbao ES (upcoming); Deep State, Offspring, deAteliers, curated by Lara Almarcegui and Martijn Hendriks, Amsterdam NL; Mai, Tile projectspace, Milano IT; La Terra Bassa, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT. Group exhibitions include: Hybrids, curated by Chris Driessen & David Jablonowski, Lustwarande, Platform for Contemporary Sculpture, park De Oude Warande, Tilburg NL (upcoming); Deposito d’Arte Italiana Presente, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Vittoria Martini, Artissima 2017, Torino, IT; Public Hybrids, curated by David Jablonoski, Markus Luttgen at Art Cologne, Cologne DE; Bearable Lightness of Being, GRIMM, Amsterdam NL; Concretizing the Uninhabitable, Club Gamec Prize, curated by Domenico De Chirico, Magus, Bergamo IT; Sessile, curated by Josh Minkus, Clifford Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY USA; Disappointement Island, curated by Galeria Stereo, Griffin Art Space, Warsaw PL; The Lasting. L’intervallo e la durata, curated by Saretto Cincinelli, National Gallery of Modern Art, Roma IT; Le leggi dell’ospitalità, curated by Antonio Grulli, P420 Gallery, Bologna IT; Moroso Concept for Contemporary Art, curated by Andrea Bruciati, Villa Manin, Codroipo IT; Still Light curated by Taru Elfving, Augusta Gallery, Hiap, Helsinki FIN. The artist lives and works in Amsterdam.

Giulia Cenci, ground-ground, 2017-2018, exhibition view, SpazioA, Pistoia

Giulia Cenci, Aprile 5075, 2017, epoxy resin, urethan foam, marble dust, black bones, rubber pipe, metal bar, cm 22 x 91 x 60, dimensions variable, detail

Giulia Cenci, Aprile 5076, 2017, fragments of mechanical components, tree branch, rubber, vulcanic ash, clay, metal bar, cm 13 x 60 x 8, detail

Giulia Cenci, Arto #02, 2017, fragments of mechanical components, clay, plaster, epoxy resin, metal bar, cm 15 x 15 x 155

Giulia Cenci, Arto #02, 2017, fragments of mechanical components, clay, plaster, epoxy resin, metal bar, cm 15 x 15 x 155, detail

Giulia Cenci, Aprile 5077, 2017, urethan foam, rubber, fragments of tree branches and mechanical components, vulcanics ash, beeswax, metal bar, cm 15 x 205 x 135, dimensions variable

Giulia Cenci, Aprile 5077, 2017, urethan foam, rubber, fragments of tree branches and mechanical components, vulcanics ash, beeswax, metal bar, cm 15 x 205 x 135, dimensions variable, detail

Giulia Cenci, Mosca, 2017, urethan foam, fragments of mechanical components, rubber, vulcanic ash, black bones, metal bar, cm 40 x 55 x 10

Giulia Cenci, ground-ground, 2017-2018, exhibition view, SpazioA, Pistoia

Giulia Cenci, Aprile 5079, 2017, rubber, fragments of mechanical components, vulcanic ash, metal bar, cm 15 x 190 x 30, dimensions variable

Giulia Cenci, Aprile 5079, 2017, rubber, fragments of mechanical components, vulcanic ash, metal bar, cm 15 x 190 x 30, dimensions variable, detail

Giulia Cenci, k005, 2017, fragments of mechanical components, rubber, vulcanic ash, clay, metal bar, cm 30 x 35 x 40

Giulia Cenci, k055, 2017, fragments of mechanical components, rubber, vulcanic ash, clay, metal bar, cm 30 x 35 x 40, detail

Giulia Cenci, Bianco sudato #06, 2017, plaster, ash bones, natural asphalt, clay powder, graphite powder, black bones, fragments, cm 15 x 330 x 330 (dimensions variable), detail

Giulia Cenci, Aprile 5007, 2017, clay, epoxy resin, marble dust, sand, fragments of mechanical components, black bones, metal bar, cm 177 x 60 x 23

Giulia Cenci, Aprile 5006, 2017, clay, epoxy resin, marble dust, sand, fragments of mechanical components, black bones, metal bar, cm 151 x 127 x 36

Giulia Cenci, ground-ground, 2017-2018, exhibition view, SpazioA, Pistoia

Giulia Cenci, Bianco sudato #07, 2017, ash bones, plaster, rubber, silicon rubber, natural asphalt, polyester resin, fragments of mechanical components, black bones, cm 19 x 90 x 140 (dimensions variable)

Giulia Cenci, Habitat #04, 2017, rubber, marble dust, beeswax, asphalt, pipes fragments, metal bar, cm 30 x 232 x 120 (dimensions variable)

Giulia Cenci, Habitat #03, 2017, rubber, vulcanic ash, pipes fragments, metal bar, cm 15 x 65 x 48