Valentina Furian at UNA

Artist: Valentina Furian

Exhibition title: cari cani

Curated by: UNA

Venue: UNA, Piacenza, Italy

Date: October 17 – December 31, 2020

Photography: Marco fava / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and UNA, Piacenza

UNA is pleased to present cari cani, a solo show by Valentina Furian (*1989; Venice).

Surrounded by half darkness and illuminated by a suffused red light, the space of the gallery is inhabited by dogs. These animals reveal themselves in their ancestral form of wolves, converting themselves from “man’s best friends” to fearsome beasts.

The dog figures, whether reproduced through window-glass drawings, photographs or videos, appear tense and aggressive, far from their usual domesticated form.

An alarming cave canem awaits us at the doorstep, it almost seems to invite us not to cross it.
Inside, we stand in front of 55 (cane), a video that shows the figure of a dog, surrounded by the darkness, barking at something that is on fire.

It is not clear what the object of his anguish is but, in some way, that same anguish becomes ours.
We recognise the same dog in two photographs in which the glow of the fire shows his teeth gritted in a hostile growl.

Following the artist’s research on the relationship between reality and fiction, between man, nature and the animal world, cari cani focuses on the state of domestication as a form of control. Although man is apparently absent from the installation, he is completely involved in it.

In fact, through the light, a key in Furian’s work, human presence is evoked and the access to knowledge is given: the red light of the fire, the element that defines the gap between human technique and animal instinct, allows us to witness what happens and to be possible protagonists in the darkness of the night.

Valentina Furian (*1989; Venice) attended the Visual Arts course at the Iuav University of Venice (2015-2018) and at the ESBA in Nantes (2013). In 2018 she graduated with a thesis on the role of the domesticated animal in the visual arts. In 2020 she participates in the group show Resisting The Trouble – Moving Images in Times of Crisis, curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Manifattura Tabacchi, Florence; and presented Nautilus, an installation at Trento Science Museum Muse. In 2019 she was artist-in-residence in Mumbai with ArtOxygen in collaboration with The Blank Contemporary Art, she presented a screening in Sunaparanta Center of Contemporary Art in Panjib, Goa. In the same year her work was presented in the collective exhibition Immersione Libera, a project by Galleria Continua with Marina Nissim and at MAXXI Museum in Rome in the frame of the video contest Kizart curated by Nomas Foundation. In the same year she was selected by Lorenzo Balbi for That’s IT!, the generational exhibition of artists born in the 80s, at the Mambo Museum in Bologna and collaborated with Case Chiusa for the Straight-up video review project.
She worked in institutional and experimental spaces such as: Sunaparanta Center for Contemporary Art (Goa, IN), Method Gallery, ArtOxygen (Mumbai, IN), BACO, The Blank Contemporary Art (Bergamo, IT), Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa (IT), CareOf, ViaFarini, Dimora Artica, Pelagica Gallery (Milan, IT), Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation (Venice, IT), GalerieSAM83 (CZ).