Vittorio Brodmann at Sant’Andrea de Scaphis

Artist: Vittorio Brodmann

Exhibition title: Calamity

Venue: Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome, Italy

Date: February 8 – March 16, 2019

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise

The show consists of six paintings in the same format (160 x 120 cm) and a video of 2 minutes 8 seconds.

Calamity is the title of the show and of the video. In the video, ants run in and out of something that first appears to be an architecture of sorts, but turns out to be a trap upon closer inspection. Calamity also refers to the idea of failure and success in painting. Well executed versus something gone wrong or just poorly done.

In the paintings, I wanted to link the act of painting, specifically abstract expressionism, with slapstick comedy by using effects of pareidolia to find figures in marks of paint. The characters that are brought forward function as personifications of painterly problems while also pushing their own agenda.

Sympathy is an important factor that defines how willing the viewer is to care for the character. This can be achieved by making the architecture of the figure transparent and comprehensible for example.

This is done in a language similar to what can be found in comics and cartoons. Bringing to memory snippets and bits of things we’ve seen before. But never referring to something directly.

The titles are always done last. I understand them as a mediator between a visual language and a language based on words.

-Vittorio Brodmann

Vittorio Brodmann was born in 1987 in Basel, Switzerland. Recent exhibitions include those at Kunthaus Baselland, Muttenz; Kunsthalle Bern, Bern; Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg; Truth & Consequences, Geneva; Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; the Swiss Institute, New York; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich; Stuart Shave / Modern Art, London; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; SPACE, London and the Belvedere Museum, Vienna. This is Brodmann’s second solo exhibition at Gavin Brown’s enterprise. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany.