Lucia Leuci at TEMPESTA gallery

Artist: Lucia Leuci

Exhibition title: La ragazza di città

Venue: TEMPESTA gallery, Milan, Italy

Date: September 25 – December 19, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Rotten European, you believe that you love the desert, nature, the countryside, but then, as soon as the signs of the detested civilisation resurface, you say “At last”.
Luciano Bianciardi, Viaggio in Barberia, 1968

City dwellers don’t just live on smog.
Artemio, Il ragazzo di campagna, 1984

I want to go and live in the country,
Feel the dew upon me,
But I live here, in the city, and I don’t like it anymore,
in this beastly traffic
solitude assails you and gets you down.
Toto Cutugno, Voglio andare a vivere in campagna, 1995

I keep to a tight rhythm
In twenty square metres
I have death in my eyes
My days are numbered
Fabri Fibra, Bugiardo, 2007

Every day
In the city
You live and die
In the city
There’s a framework
That gets you down
There is no religion
Left to save us

Marracash/Gué Pequeno, Nulla accade, 2016

On Thursday, 24th September 2020, TEMPESTA gallery will be opening Lucia Leuci’s solo show, La ragazza di città (The city girl).

The newly inaugurated space in foro Buonaparte 68, Milan, will be hosting the artist’s recent sculptural works that reconstruct a domestic environment with anthropomorphic figures that relate with the space. A visual story about the history of the city, the totality of the emotions of its people and the human vicissitudes that take place there.

The works on show represent the continuation of Lucia Leuci’s research into contrasting elements, synthetic and natural materials, which are applied as a tool for urban investigation. Through the exploration of constants from everyday experiences, Lucia intimate photography features a collectivity that feels alienated from nature, in an avid search for the more rural world of the past. Today, city dwellers seek a more individual reality within the rural setting, with its agriculture and values of sustainability and respect for the environment.

In fact, in recent years, there is growing attention on the use of genuine raw materials and fresh produce, which has led to the creation of eco-sustainable food production chains that have low environmental impact. The desire to live in more open spaces in contact with nature has driven city inhabitants to re-evaluate the benefits of agricultural life, moving to more agreeable localities, like tiny hamlets and pastoral towns, where personal wellbeing is the cornerstone of a tranquil, more human-scale existence.

In recent times, this rejection of the city, where living spaces have become increasingly smaller and expensive, has led people to question the quality of life of those who live and work there – and those who long to live in them.

The title of the exhibition is a play on the name of the famous Eighties cult film, Il ragazzo di campagna (Country Boy), in which Renato Pozzetto plays a genuine and humble young man from a (still) rural Italy, who aspires to a life in the modern and consumerist world of the city.

Today, many humans live in a continuous city, that no longer has a beginning or end, dreaming of a more natural dimension; the lost verdant undergrowth of our psyches.

In an attempt to creating an ideal linguistic dialogue and a connection extending over different time horizons, a selection of historical works by Carol Rama (Turin, 1918-2015) will be presented in the viewing room of the gallery.

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, Piccola dea ingenua, 2020, Iron, fabric, pigment, epoxy resin, synthetic hair, 96x82x28 cm

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, Realismo magico, 2020, Iron, glass, print on paper, 168x98x16 cm

Lucia Leuci, Padre, 2020, Iron, bread, 124x40x78 cm

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, Prosperino, 2020, Iron, alabaster powder, watercolor on paper, epoxy resin, pigment, 25x10x28 cm

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, UòvoteKa, 2020, Iron, eggs, temporary tattoos, plaster, 43x46x8 cm

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, La luce gialla della lampadina ad incandescenza (Lampadario anacronistico), 2020, Iron, plexiglass, watercolours, 257x46x18 cm

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, Tavolo della digestione, 2020, Iron, 81x99x70 cm

Lucia Leuci, La butteratura amara della mela, 2020, Copper, tin, verdigris, 60×52 Ø cm; Lucia Leuci, Pera da ramo potato in sintonia con i cicli cosmici, 2020, Copper, tin, 73×52 Ø cm

Lucia Leuci, Ritorno a casa, 2020, Iron, silk, 91x37x25 cm

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, Paesaggio contemporaneo con figura che indica il sole (lavello), 2020, Iron, marble, soil, steel, epoxy resin, pigment, ceramic, glass, wine, silver, plastic, watercolor on paper, 59x100x14 cm

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, Focolare sospeso, 2020, Iron, steel, 204x70x20 cm

Lucia Leuci, La ragazza di città, 2020, exhibition view, TEMPESTA gallery, Milan

Lucia Leuci, Partoriente, 2020, Iron, 155x38x74 cm; Lucia Leuci, Raccoglitore di carote, 2020, Iron, fabric, pigment, epoxy resin, soil, 142x50x40 cm