Giulio Delvè at ADA

Artist: Giulio Delvè

Exhibition title: Pastocaldo

Venue: ADA, Rome, Italy

Date: May 31 – July 27, 2019

Photography: Roberto Apa / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and ADA, Rome

The social inevitability of art.

In the historical period in which we live, so fragile and precarious, tiring and intense, the subversive power of art manifests itself in indicating alternative ways, different visions, new attitudes.

The artistic practice thus becomes a filter, an essential tool through which to analyse the surrounding reality, which becomes the subject and topic of an objective investigation of social practices.

The recent artistic research of Giulio Delvè focuses on the analysis of practices of self-organization and collective self-management: survival strategies and alternative economies developed from below, in response to the social dynamics that govern gentrified contexts, and to phenomena of marginality, which manifest themselves within the social nuclei most marked by difficulties.

In Pastocaldo the FEAD aid, made available by the European Community for destitute families, is reread and reorganised, thus opening up to further functions and new semantic possibilities. The different pasta shapes are cooked and assembled, until they become jewels, later reproduced with brass casting and worn by jesmonite mannequins. Similarly, the packaging and the graphics used to identify the FEAD are transformed into textual elements, developed on PVC vestments.

The artistic practice of Delvè originates from the direct involvement and the profound observation of the surrounding reality, through which the evidence of “sought objects” is reworked by developing its evocative qualities. Delvè’s manipulative approach accompanies the viewer beyond the level of superficial observation, stimulating the understanding of new meanings associated with the object and suggesting an alternative thinking system. Delvè draws on a personal symbolic universe that, by overcoming the reflections connected to the identity of the work, re-contextualises the object, triggering art’s capacity for subversion.

Giulio Delvè (b. 1984, Naples, IT), lives and works in Naples. He graduated from Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples and completed his studies at Weißensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin, DE.

Among his solo shows: 2017 – Condominium, Mendes Wood, Brussels, BE; Muixeranga, curated by Paolo Masi Base progetti per l’arte, Florence. 2016 – Conspire means to breathe togheter, Supportico Lopez, Berlin.

Among his group shows: 2019 – Mare Mare, Hypemaremma, Palazzo Collacchioni, Capalbio, IT. 2018 – That’s IT, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, Museo Mambo, Bologna; If I was your Girlfriend, Belmacz, London. 2017 – Neither, curated by Fernanda Brenner, Mendes Wood, Brussels; IN MOSTRA, corpo.gesto.postura, curated by Simone Menegoi, Artissima, Turin; Mycorial Theatre, curated by Paulina Olowska and Milovan Farronato with AVAF, Pivô, São Paulo; I Will Go Where I Don’t Belong, curated by Camille Henrot, Fiorucci Art Trust, Stromboli; Para tibi, Roma, nihil, a cura curated by Raffaella Frascarelli, Colle Palatino Foro Romano, Rome. 2015 – Wholetrain, Fondazione per l’Arte, curated by Daniela Bigi, Rome. 2014 – Per formare una collezione#3, curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Eugenio Viola, Museo Madre, Naples.

Delvè was awarded the Contemporary Generation International Prize I in 2019, the Moroso Prize in 2015, the Talent Prize in 2011 and he received the Gallery Committee Special Award at Terna Prize 02 in 2009.