Pennacchio Argentato at Acappella

Artist: Pennacchio Argentato

Exhibition title: #BURN BURN BURN

Venue: Acappella, Naples, Italy

Date: March 31 – May 10, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Acappella, Naples

Pennacchio Argentato’s second solo show at the gallery Acappella focus on the actual production and extraction of economic value in today’s digital capitalism and computation technology.

The show is a “liquid journey” through different spaces and states of matter:

crude oil, that streams from the deep, dark, underground bowels of the Earth; human sweat, which is triggered by stress, anxiety, fluctuating hormones, and physical activity that make the body temperature rise; golden mirror, which is the ultimate celebratory altar of the self.

The wall sculptures have all the same abstract shape, which is produced by an authentication code on a screen touch display of a digital screen – drag, hold, pinch and rotating movement of the hand. This authentication code accesses personal information and authorises its use.

The same abstract shape repeats in all the sculptures to sign in the access to different images of crude oil taken from Adobe Stock Images. The title of this sculpture series is “The New Oil”, it refers to the collection of information data as the new power and valuable asset of computation technology.

The password that gives shapes to the sculptures repeats in the golden mirror metal series titled “It’s all about me”. Self-absorption becomes symptomatic in a neoliberal society where individual self-promotion is the norm to success. Every day broadcast of digital identity and private experiences is the only capital everyone can sell to attract public attention. After all, we all need an audience, we all want to be a celebrity, we all need consent, and we all want to be loved.

“Swim in your sweat” is the free-standing, methacrylate series of sculptures with the images of a transparent liquid that have a slightly claustrophobic dimension because it seems to encapsulate the human body of the viewer. The turbulent liquid forms waves and air bubbles bringing to the surface a reflection on the immateriality and the dispersion of digital labour.

“Extraction” and “Exhaustion” are the two moving forces of the show, flowing liquids with different density and viscosity converging through the same channels.

Those sculptures force us to stop for a moment in front of the images flowing on the screen, to extract a still image like a flashback from the visual memory, a digital display screenshot without light. We know which part of the screen we are facing.

The question is: who is controlling the other side of the screen?

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Marisa Argentato, 1977, Naples Italy and Pasquale Pennacchio, 1979, Caserta, Italy. Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Stadelschule, Frankfurt a.M; Accademia delle Belle Arti, Naples.