Rea! Art Fair 2021 Catalogue
ReA! Art Fair draws inspiration from the original concept of the Biennale: a platform to celebrate emerging artists without a gallery or museum mediating the exchange between creators and their audience. Now in its second year, ReA! is pulling broadly from the current climate, attempting to showcase the “harmony” which can be created when cultural limitations are removed: an ergonomic society which is free of oppressive categorizations, one where a collection of narratives can emerge and exist together, without division. What separated the fair is the emphasis we place on Artists and individual creators, not only their selected works. . The reason why the exhibition spans so many types of artworks, ranging from oil paintings to performing arts, is because we aim to change society’s point of view about the value of art. It isn’t just about collecting or decorating your home, but rather about creating a connection with the world as a political being where one begins to own, sustain and encourage ideas.
ReA! Art Fair draws inspiration from the original concept of the Biennale: a platform to celebrate emerging artists without a gallery or museum mediating the exchange between creators and their audience. Now in its second year, ReA! is pulling broadly from the current climate, attempting to showcase the “harmony” which can be created when cultural limitations are removed: an ergonomic society which is free of oppressive categorizations, one where a collection of narratives can emerge and exist together, without division. What separated the fair is the emphasis we place on Artists and individual creators, not only their selected works. . The reason why the exhibition spans so many types of artworks, ranging from oil paintings to performing arts, is because we aim to change society’s point of view about the value of art. It isn’t just about collecting or decorating your home, but rather about creating a connection with the world as a political being where one begins to own, sustain and encourage ideas.
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ReA!
Art Fair
REA ART FAIR! 2021
3
ReA! Art Fair 2021 Catalogue
Published by REA ARTE Associazione culturale
www.reafair.com
info@reafair.com
Copyright: ©REA ARTE
Brand design: Davide Marcianesi
Graphic design: Ilaria Castelli
ISBN: 9788894571417
CATALOGUE INTRODUCTION 4
REA ART FAIR! 2021 5
Our mission is bringing art closer to the
general public and doing it in a way that supports
the emerging talents. But what is art, actually? Ever
since the 1900s we have learned to accept that
anything can become art. There is no practice,
object or situation that can not be recognized
as relevant to art. As humans existing within the
economy, technology, in the everyday - we live
in the concept of modernity with its progress
and principle of constant obsolescence and
abandonment. The thing that sets art apart - is
our collective expectation that it will outlive its
own, and consequently, our own time - allowing
us to explore the concept of eternity. The Fil
rouge turns blue - the signature colour of ReA!,
accompanying the entire exhibition flow, which
mimics an architectural structure of a “piazza”,
a place of democratic gathering - welcoming
anyone who decides to join the conversation.
We believe that good art can not only
be created, seen and appreciated outside of
galleries and museums, but we also think that its
price does not define its aesthetic or intellectual
value. We see art ownership as a way to engage
in a form of political and reasoned existence,
connecting with an unexplored space of ideas.
Own art, empower artists, explore ideas.
CATALOGUE TABLE OF CONTENTS 6
AMADEI ANDREA
ANTONELLO ENRICO
BATTISTELLO FRANCESCO
BERAGNOLI ROBERTO
BERTOLDO ELIAS
BERZAGHI ILARIA
BIOLO MARTINA
BOCHKOVA ANNA
BRUGOLA FRANCESCA
BURATTINI FRANCESCO
CACCIUTTOLO GIULIA
CAENEN JOEP
CASALI MATTEO
CASELLATO CATERINA
CECCONI MELONI EDVIGE
CELLINI GIORGIO
CHERNAKOVA NATALIYA
COLÒ ELISABETTA
COLTEANU MATEI VLADIMIR
CONFORTI LORENZO
CONTI STEFANO
CURATELA PLACEBO
CZIKA KRISZTINA
DAVIDE SARA
DEL FABRO CAMILLA
DELIGIO ELEONORA
DI FERDINANDO NICCOLÒ
N.01
N.02
N.03
N.04
N.05
N.06
N.07
N.08
N.09
N.10
N.11
N.12
N.13
N.14
N.15
N.16
N.17
N.18
N.19
N.20
N.21
N.22
N.23
N.24
N.25
N.26
N.27
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BE
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IT
RU
IT
IT
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NL
IT
IT
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IT
RU
IT
RO
IT
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HU
IT
IT
IT
IT
REA ART FAIR! 2021 7
DI MASSIMO ALESSANDRO
DONAGGIO GIANMARCO
DOUGLAS FERGUSON FREYA
DUFOOR ARTHUR
DVORSCAK PATRIK
ESPOSITO MANUEL
EYEROD ART COLLECTIVE
FASOLI ILARIA
FEDOROVA VITALIIA
FIKOS
FIORAMONTI SOFIA
FISCHER JORINDE
FLORIO LORENA
FRACASSO DAVIDE GIUSEPPE
GIACCIO DARIAS CARLA
GIOACCHINI FRANCESCO
GIORDANI SILVIA
GODINO ERIKA
GÓMEZ LÓPEZ ROMEO
GROOT TOBIAS
GUARNERI DUCCIO
GUKUN ALEXANDER
GURGONE CAMILLA
HARLACHER LUCA
HAUGE LAUREL
HOLST SEVANA
IKUM BASIL
N.28
N.29
N.30
N.31
N.32
N.33
N.34
N.35
N.36
N.37
N.38
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N.42
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N.48
N.49
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N.51
N.52
N.53
N.54
IT
IT
UK
BE
SL
IT
IT
IT
UA
GR
IT
DE
IT
IT
IT
IT
IT
IT
MEX
DE
IT
RU
IT
CH
USA
FR
CH
CATALOGUE TABLE OF CONTENTS 8
INCULTE REJETON
ITALIANO ANGELA
KING SAM
LENNON OLIVIA CONCETTA
LOCATELLI GIULIO
LONGA MARTA
LUZI ANDREA
MACHADO LUAN
MARQUES FABIEN
MATTIA GIORGIO
MINELLI ILARIA
MIOTTO ILARIA
MIRATA NOEMI
MONTI BENEDETTA
MONZALI ERICA
MUSSI FRANCESCA
NARDULLI DOMINGO
NUVOLA CAMERA
PACE ARIANNA
PACUCCI SARA
PARK CHANBYUL
PASSANTINO PAOLA
PAVAN PAOLO
PIGNOTTI GIADA
PILUSI ALICE
PIRAS YARNO
POLLONI FEDERICO
N.55
N.56
N.57
N.58
N.59
N.60
N.61
N.62
N.63
N.64
N.65
N.66
N.67
N.68
N.69
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N.73
N.74
N.75
N.76
N.77
N.78
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N.80
N.81
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AUS
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BR, ES
FR
IT
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KR
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REA ART FAIR! 2021 9
POZZATO FRANCESCO
RAMUNNO MARIKA
RAPOSO PIRES RAFAEL
REGUZZONI EVA
RESSETTA CHIARA
RINALDI ELEONORA
RUOFF AIMEE
SALZGEBER LUCIA
SERI GIULIA
SIMEONI ILARIA
SOARDI THOMAS
STRATTON PATRICK
VALERIO CLAUDIO
VELDHUIS STEF
VITALI PIETRO
VOLONTERIO MATTEO
VULLO FRANCESCO
WILSON STUART MEL
ZHENG XU
N.82
N.83
N.84
N.85
N.86
N.87
N.88
N.89
N.90
N.91
N.92
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GUEST ARTISTS:
ARANI FEDERICO
SCHIAVONE MARCO
N.101
N.102
IT
IT
ARTIST N°01 FROM ITALY 10
AMADEI ANDREA
Andrea Amadei studied Theoretical Philosophy with prof. Carlo Sini. He
has worked for several years in the documentary world, writing and producing
several films, documentaries and series in collaboration with major international
broadcasters. Then he started to get into commercial communication. After he quit
his job, he created YAY.RED.
“Art has become a narrative, while in reality, it is a ritual. Art is sacred. It is a
dark and humid cave where a frightening miracle happens. It is a world that opens
up and presents itself, the world in the figure of a man who makes the world into the
figure of a thing through figures, symbols, rhythm and dances. Art “is a protest against
a world that already existed, but without which the protest could not have taken
shape” (G. Bataille, Lascaux. The birth of art, Mimesis, 2007). Art that communicates
is not a negation of art but a negation of humanity; and becomes, at best, interior
decoration. YAY.RED is opening a marketplace on Amazon. To regain possession of
the current public space. Just as the town square was born to host the market, the
trade, and then became an arena for discussion, debate, politics - “scendiamo in
piazza” -, so YAY.RED wants to occupy the private but now public space of Amazon:
a gallery of products, with videos and works for sale, which uses digital tools, born
for commerce, for propaganda, now sensible, of the discussion of commerce, of its
absence of meaning.” YAY.RED is an honest company; the company is an artwork. YAY.
RED is anarcho-capitalism happening.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 YAY.RED. MEGA UNIONE SUPREMA
2021
Video Installation
REA ART FAIR! 2021 11
1
ARTIST N°02 FROM ITALY 12
ANTONELLO ENRICO
In Castelfranco Veneto in 1995, Antonello Enrico attended the Art School of
Treviso and graduated with honours in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice
in 2019. In 2017 he was one of the founders of the Default collective, committed to
exhibiting his works in unconventional places (San Servolo, Monfumo, Venice, Trento,
Novara). On these projects, he begins to focus his research on three aspects between
their correlates: sound, light and movement. In 2019 he participated in the international
Artstays festival in Slovenia. The same year it was selected as a finalist at the XIV
edition of the National Prize of the Arts of the Italian Academies and the Salvi Prize
in Sassoferrato (Ancona). In 2020 he presented in Treviso the work “Decomposition”
in the “Orli” exhibition and “Sound Machine” in the “ZOONOSI” exhibition at Cavallino-
Treporti (Ve). At the end of 2020 in Agropoli, in the province of Salerno, he won the prize
in the sculpture-installation section with the work “Work day for 2” in the international
competition “ArtKeys02”.
His work presents three preponderant aspects that always relate to each
other: sound, light and movement. Every two seconds, two lights light up until they all
light up. The scheme is as follows: 2-4-6-8-10-12-14-18-14-12-10-8-6-4-2.
The route is in a loop. This rhythm has been set up expressly to describe the
stereotypical way of working inside a factory, where we see that the repetition of an
action in a sounded and constantly repetitive way, everything is repeated non-stop in
a loop; that is, it starts all over again always from scratch. An endless circle, always the
same that leads to nothing but made only to pass the time in an aseptic way without
any logic. The eight bars represent the eight working hours, and being sixteen indicate
two working days.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 Work day for 2
2020
Multisensory installation
Variable width from 4.50 to 5 meters
Height 1.80 meters
REA ART FAIR! 2021 13
1
ARTIST N°03 FROM BELGIUM 14
BATTISTELLO FRANCESCO
Francesco Battistello (b. 1994) is an Italian artist currently based in Belgium. His
passion for Fine Art began while he was still at school, where instead of listening to the
lessons, he invented stories and illustrated them. During his high school years, he got
acquainted with Street Art, his interest in painting continued to grow, and after graduating
from a technological high school, he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Venice. In 2020, he obtained an MA in Painting, followed by participation in a group
exhibition at an A+a Gallery.
For Battistello, the development of painting translates into constant questioning
of the techniques he uses and his discoveries within the canvas space. The pictorial
elements he develops are constantly reworked as he rebuilds the ongoing works.
Francesco’s canvases follow two different storylines: one consists of narration of the
represented images, while the other is a combination of all the elements that make the
artworks - the mistakes and the choices made, thus forming a pictorial surface rich in
events made of colour and shapes. In his work, substantial tension is present, generated
by the reworking of images and historical painting techniques, which combines with a
constant dialogue which is achieved through contemporary painting using the colours
and the treatment of the pictorial surface. When talking about the paintings entitled
Uomo Nero and The Flying Dutchman, the artist underlines - I develop my pictorial
research through families of works, that is, works with common characteristics; these
two works both have as their subject representations of boats, which is a recurring
theme in my research. The subject of the ship acted as a starting point for Uomo nero
painting; however, it ended up fading, giving way to the central black figure.
The painting can be described as a collage, and the step towards materiality
was a valuable one, as it led to the surface becoming more varied and the image itself
rhythmic. The title refers to the Black Man poem by Sergei Yesenin, a 19th-century Russian
lyric poet, that Francesco was reading while developing the painting - he found the same
feeling of an enigmatic, sinister figure that connected his paintings to the poem:
[...]
My friend, my friend,
How sick I am. Nor do I know
Whence came this sickness.
[...]
Black man
Sits by me on the bed all night,
Won’t let me sleep.
[...]
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Uomo Nero [The Black Man]
2020
Acrylic paint and collage on canvas
25,5 x 20 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 15
1
ARTIST N°04 FROM ITALY 16
BERAGNOLI ROBERTO
Roberto Beragnoli was born in Florence in 1990. From a very young age, he
has been involved in illustration and painting through personal research focused on
satire and figurative art. In his early years, he was influenced in his creative growth by
a direct relationship with various artists, such as his uncle Sergio Beragnoli and the
cartoonist Lele Vianello, historical collaborator of Hugo Pratt. The latter provided him
with the theoretical foundations of drawing and colouring.
Artificial intelligence and algorithms are the primary tools with which
Roberto Beragnoli realizes his ideas, maintaining solid contact with the art created
by manipulating materials and spaces through traditional techniques. His works
connect physical mediums, sculpted or painted, with the digital world. Although
rich in technological elements, his works often aim to dialogue with previous artists
and the history of art in general, highlighting the continuity and, where possible, the
fractures.
Materials are works that aim to investigate simulations of digital forms
and materials subjected to various forces and manipulated in their internal
characteristics. This work is then transformed into a physical object, in this case,
a polystyrene sculpture. One could not ignore the hardness of the marble, the
malleability of the wax, the friability of the plaster, and the fibrousness of the wood.
With all these elements, one could only collaborate to drag them to the point sought
by the author or to the intrinsic breaking point of the objects themselves (Archangel
Sassolino).
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 Materials
NFT+PRINT
SCHERMO 72’, stampa 30*50cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 17
ARTIST N°05 FROM ITALY 18
BERTOLDO ELIAS
Elias Bertoldo (b. 1994) is an Italian artist currently based in Modena, holding
an MA in Painting from the Brera Academy. His interests lie in the dynamics of colour,
and so his research started with completing a series of works that evoke virtual
devices animated by light pulses. In 2018 Bertoldo was featured in a book by Ignazio
Gadaleta entitled Points and Filaments of Colour in Italian Painting From Divisionism
to Today, which focused on exploring theoretical and formal affinities, specifically in
terms of language microstructures, among the protagonists of Italian painting from
Giuseppe Pellizza to the present day. His works are reflections on the essence of
painting through the experience of light. Elias conducts in-depth research on the logic
of seeing, explicitly concerning the current habits of image virtualisation. While looking
at his artworks, it is essential to search for current chromo-luminist arrangements,
which can only be conceived artificially because of the electroluminescence of
monitor LEDs and photoluminescence phenomena.
The reflection on the complexity of the act of perception remains of
continuous interest to the artist as well as the consequent implications on the
emotional sphere. With that in mind, he develops consistently elaborated pictorial
planes and constructs colour very rationally. Lately, Bertoldo has joined both painting
methodologies and current imaging processes by manipulating colour as either
pigment or digital data, resulting in virtual paintings. He explains: I try to evoke through
the mere use of colour visions of icons, computer graphics and monitors’ LED
backlighting. At the same time, I aim to make the form of light itself visible through the
presence of “the simultaneous”, “the dissemination”, “the intermittent”, “the mobility”,
and “the radiating”. The close relationship we have with multimedia and self-luminous
digital devices conditions our way of feeling, interpreting and experiencing reality,
so my work wants to explore and reinterpret those visual stimuli through the point
of view of light, to possibly renew painting. The pictorial plane of the Dispersione di
Luminescenza is scattered with flashes of light, triggering gravitational masses and
making a reference to stellar phenomenology. The artwork’s space is fragmented,
modulated to give maximum breadth, going towards virtual dimensional infinity.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Dispersione di Luminescenza
2021
Pencil on paper
50 x 65 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 19
1
ARTIST N°06 FROM ITALY 20
BERZAGHI ILARIA
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 21
Ilaria Berzaghi (b. 1999) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Milan. She is
currently completing her BA in Fine Art (Painting) at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.
Berzaghi’s artworks are based on the intimate aspects, often melancholic, that
are dear to her - she’s interested in capturing those delicate everyday moments and
transferring them onto the pictorial surface: I decide what to depict with selectivity, as
my eyes, attentive and solicited, memorize details, objects and subjects and then my
hands concretize everything onto the canvas through veils of light colour. Through her
works, Ilaria is searching for an ideal imaginary place, going with the steady flow of time,
which becomes stratified, much like her paintings.
Senza Titolo 1 is a rigorous composition made of angles and shadows created
by those angles, and it is them that set and direct the viewer’s perception. The multiple
squares that dominate the composition immediately make us wonder what we’re
looking at - is it an artwork inside the artwork? Is it some box, and if yes, what’s inside
of it? Or perhaps it’s an empty photo frame, so where is the photo? The muted colour
palette ensures that the squares visually interact in a subtle way, instead of clashing,
creating a calm, nostalgic feeling. This painting is a perfect example of the moments
that become captured by the artist - the image is, in fact, something that she sees every
day when she raises her gaze; it’s a ceiling lamp, a simple, even to some extent, trivial
object, fixed, almost permanently to another flat surface, yet depicted like that it turns
into an intriguing, mysterious, intimate item. Here, Berzaghi choses to reappropriate this
household object that resides in our homes and turn it into a symbol of domesticity
by turning it off - extrapolating it from its original function, and inserting it into a new
dimension through painting.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Senza titolo 1
2021
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 cm
ARTIST N°07 FROM ITALY 22
BIOLO MARTINA
Martina Biolo (b. 1996) is an Italian artist currently based in Padua; she has
completed her MA in Fine Art at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts in 2021. Biolo has
participated in numerous collective exhibitions in Venice, a city that undoubtedly
influences her works.
The artist’s research investigated everyday objects intending to extrapolate,
through the artworks, the stories that reside within them, focusing on symbolic,
cultural, and tradition-related aspects. As Biolo describes it - My artistic practice
revolves around the communicative needs of the artworks themselves, oscillating
between sculpture and painting. The goal is to make the materials that she uses
speak, to give them a voice that the viewer can hear and comprehend, but also to
bring to life the speech itself - as between all of us and everything that surrounds us
exists a cultural link, which is manifested through sharing stories, experiences and
symbols. The object, therefore, becomes a witness of said link, and from that springs
the possibility of building a place of confrontation that acts as a liberation tool for
ethnography - the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and
cultures. The artwork is here to describe people, their experiences - it is a certain
cultural manifestation revealed through its materiality. Botte da Orbi is a diptych
made with acrylic paint on latex; latex itself is an incredibly tactile material that
inevitably reminds us of skin. Even though its layers are pierced, they don’t seem to
trigger any violent or traumatic associations inside me; instead, it makes me think
of delicacy, tenderness, care. Clusters of mahogany and ruby reds, alongside the
darker, cooler shades of Sacramento green and eggplant purple, are perceived
as imprints of the passing soul, or perhaps it’s the imprint that we have on other
people’s lives. The diptych is certainly telling a story, and I’d like to hear it.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1a-1b
Botte da Orbi (diptych)
2021
Acrylic paint on latex
64 x 43 cm each
REA ART FAIR! 2021 23
1a
1b
ARTIST N°08 FROM RUSSIA 24
BOCHKOVA ANNA
Anna Bochkova was born in 1995 in Rostov-On-Don, Russia. She is a visual artist
who lives between Vienna and Hamburg. After studying set design and directing,
Anna Bochkova continued her education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and
the Hfbk in Hamburg. Her works have been exhibited on several occasions around
Europe, including Erste Foundation and Exile Gallery in Vienna and Spazio SERRA
in Milan. She is collaborating with the Latvian Academy of art and occasionally
curates exhibitions. Her next upcoming show entitled ‘the Room’ will take place in
an industrial art space in Brno, CZ.
Bochkova’s approach is primarily sensory and aims to incorporate thought
through the performative practice of material production. For the artist, it is essential
to decode the conceptual elements and present them to the viewer through her
sculptures. Anna Bochkova works with various materials and techniques, such as
metal, ceramics, plaster, papier-mache, stone, textiles, painting and drawing. All
these different expression strategies help the artist develop a visual statement that
becomes the manifestation of her research.
Anna Bochkova’s interests lie in the field of space and its construction. By
creating different installation artworks, the artist creates heterotrophic and utopian
spaces in which themes such as care, mutual solidarity, and support are contained
and reflected in urban and private spaces. Her personal experience plays a vital role
in interpreting such themes that often reflect parts of her culture.
Venera6 is a visual vocabulary based on scenic space. As she builds up
the dramaturgy, where the characters are her sculptures, the artist proposes an
architectural narrative that reflects on the themes of memory and migration. The
installation creates a parallel universe: the artist’s personal world, in which we
can also reflect on ourselves through a small mirror placed at the bottom of the
sculpture. It is not accidental that a mirror is placed inside the work since it is used
as a device through which the external reality can get in contact with the inside of
the structure but nonetheless exists only as an image of it. We are all immigrants to
some extent, just like the artist, and so we can really experience the work - its utopia,
its frontiers, its potential and its limitations. Heterotopic spaces become a space for
reflection and criticism of existing hierarchies.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Venera6
2021
Metal chains, plaster, aluminium pipes,
paper mache, wire, aluminium leaf
140 x 55 x 46 cm 1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 25
ARTIST N°09 FROM ITALY 26
BRUGOLA FRANCESCA
Francesca Brugola (1996, Carate Brianza, MB) graduated in Painting at the
Academy of Brera in Milan, in 2019. She spends an Erasmus period at the ENSA Dijon,
FR, where she is invited by Bruno Rousselot to participate in the group exhibition
Rivières sans retour at the Galerie Interface, Dijon, in 2019. In 2020 she is accepted at
the Manchester School of Art where she is currently attending an MFA in Fine Art. Upon
her return to Italy later in 2020, she will attend a course in ancient ceramic techniques
at Atelier Pucci in Urbino. During this period, she realises in situ and land art works,
including installations, videos and performances. At the moment, Brugola is developing
a research project related to you’re getting warmer. how to cohabit with the Otherness
in a regenerative way?, supervised by researchers and artists at the MMU, Manchester.
The artist’s research follows the theories of intersectional feminism and New
Materialism, she is interested in environmentalist politics and more generally in posthumanist
philosophies and the fight against species discrimination.
For Way out the artist took inspiration from an Etruscan figure found on a vase
of that time. The figure represents a ritual, probably called Truia. This ritual is still shrouded
in shadow, but it is possible that it was a rite of passage for young men to become
knights. The original figure shows two riders with the figure of the stork or the partridge
on the shield; these animals are both connected to sacred dances. Brugola removes
the human figure from the drawing. What appears is the figure of a stork or partridge
set in a horse. Almost a symbol of a fusion or of an absolute collaboration. These two
animals, which become a single creature, drag a maze. The labyrinth is the symbol
of a critical and cryptic present, from which you can find the way out only relying on
unexpected collaborations. Francesca relies on ancient languages and proposes them
to a contemporary audience. In this action there is no attempt to appropriate a certain
language, but the awareness of the evocative force of these images and therefore, the
desire to create a contemporary discourse and a collective imagination around these.
1 Way out
2020
Pottery
23 x 29,5 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 27
Francesca relies on
ancient languages and
proposes them to a
contemporary audience.
In this action there is no
attempt to appropriate a
certain language, but the
awareness of the evocative
force of these images
and therefore, the desire
to create a contemporary
discourse and a collective
imagination around these.
1
ARTIST N°10 FROM ITALY 28
BURATTINI FRANCESCO
Francesco Burattini was born in Ancona in 1994. After obtaining a BA in
Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, he decided to continue studying at
the same academy. Following a series of group exhibitions held in different Italian cities
in June 2020, he inaugurated his first solo show, Everyone needs a first time at PXL MAD
in Hassel, Belgium. In 2021 he graduated in Contemporary Art Management, presenting
as his final project a research thesis focused on the concept of “artist as the curator”
accompanied by an interview with Darren Bader.
Burattini has a strong interest in the analysis of the dynamics of the space
and how the different elements can interact and appear, which is expressed in his
works with the special attention paid to the functional properties and aesthetic of the
objects that he selects for the realisation of the final pieces – my process is rooted
in the pop culture of the ‘90s, my childhood, and vaguely recalls nostalgic aspects of
that decade. Attentive to all those aspects of everyday life that often go unnoticed,
Francesco reinterprets individual factors that exert particular fascination, creating new
imagery that can be seen from various points of view. The artist analyses domesticity
and explores more complex relational dynamics, such as those of the urban periphery,
giving life to pictorial and installation art compositions as actual celebrations of stories
that the objects themselves have to tell. The suburbs are the protagonist of the work 841
DWI, and the place of interest here is the construction site: “the painting maintains the
cornerstones of my pictorial practice – it’s a composition that draws inspiration from
graphic layout, focusing on the balance of complementary colours, the use of broken
elements and is consequently composed of multiple planes’’. In each of his works,
the artist inserts a detail that subtly reveals the origin of the compositional idea, which
in this case is the title. 841 DWI was written on a sign hanging at the construction site
entrance that attested to 841 days without injuries - the number of days spent without
having suffered accidents at work.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 841 DWI
2021
Mixed media
135 x 92 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 29
1
ARTIST N°11
FROM ITALY
CACCIUTTOLO GIULIA
30
Giulia Cacciuttolo (1991) was born in Rome and began her artistic career
at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome before moving to London and continuing her
education in Painting at Wimbledon College of Art, later obtaining an MA in Visual
and Performing Arts at Central Saint Martins (London). She has received several
recognitions - such as the Mona Hatoum Bursary, the MiAL&METRO Mentorship and
the DLA Piper Mural Commission – and has participated in exhibitions, both collective
and solo, in several European countries. She currently lives and works in London.
Giulia’s practice starts from analogue photography that becomes integrated into her
installations through interaction with materials of different nature and various kinds of
supports. The photography, however, is never presented in its original and trivial form,
although it is central to the practice of Giulia Cacciuttolo, who does not define herself
as a photographer but delineates photography as her primary means of expression, a
starting point rather than the result. The final rendering of the work remains unknown
to the artist until its formalization since Cacciuttolo constantly experiments with
different materials and techniques. Working with the concept of memory, heritage,
past, both collective and intimate, the artist has always felt attracted by translucent and
semi-transparent materials, malleable and superimposed, which allow a transversal
reading of the different layers that the artist creates.
The work presented at the Fair is an exceptional piece, as Giulia usually
works with black and white photographs and analogue Matrix. In this case, the artist
wanted to experiment by taking a digital archive, created after travelling to Japan as a
base for the artwork, playing with colour modification in post-production. The piece is
also linked to the concept of landscape, and in some way, the artwork itself becomes
an archive of memories of the communities that experience them. The cast that pins
the printed image onto the ground is a fundamental element in the artist’s practice.
As well as photography, Cacciuttolo sees the possibility of collecting palpable traces
of organic objects as she gathers the visual material. The interpretation of the artwork
remains open to the public, projecting its experience and its legacy of the Memory
Archive. It lingers under the veil, material and conceptual, which never allows for a fixed
reading of the figures that the artist wanted to investigate, leaving the apprehension of
the artwork to the audience.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1-2 Conundrum
2020
Raw clay with root imprints on poly film
59 x 84 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021
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1
2
ARTIST N°12 FROM NETHERLANDS 32
CAENEN JOEP
Joep Caenen (b. 1991) is a Dutch artist who graduated from the Academy
of Fine Arts and Design in Maastricht with a BA in Fine Arts in 2019. Since 2018 he has
participated in a series of group exhibitions, and the year 2020 has been a flourishing one
for the artist, as he took part in many events including CineSud, Limburg Film Festival in
Venlo, Bijenkorf at Room on the Roof and Marres and Limburg Biënnalena in Maastricht.
His artistic practice shifts between painting and installation, with which he gives life to real
participatory moments of involvement and social sharing.
Often finding inspiration in everyday life, Caenen creates works in which he
combines moments derived from worldly experiences with childhood memories,
particularly those referring to the time he lived in Africa. In his artistic practice, the artist
observes objects, moments, people, and environments and goes beyond their form
and appearance. His installations - or as he likes to call them, social sculptures - explore
the various possibilities of exchange between people and the world, with the primary
objective being to involve the audience actively. Simple games and daily activities
present in our society often accompany these installations: through the ordinary and
the universally accessible, the public is invited to participate, dialogue and experience a
moment of sharing.
1 Wishing Well
2021
Site-specific installation
REA ART FAIR! 2021 33
The artwork entitled Wishing Well is an interactive installation that refers to the
tradition of throwing a coin in a fountain in exchange for a wish and good luck; inside
the fountain, there are pools with signs that read: Patience, Joy, Love and Blessing. These
categories are derived from autobiographical experiences that refer to the time the artist
has spent in Nigeria and, in particular, to the practice of naming one’s child to reflect
certain character traits later in life. Wishing Well invites the visitors to take a coin and then
choose a pond that attracts them the most: by simply throwing this coin into the pond,
they can invoke the corresponding trait for themselves or someone dear. The act of
participating in this simple ritual can be considered a broader gesture. As visitors engage
with the installation, the number of coins and wishes put towards the artwork grows.
The combined energy and concentration create a connection between every desire;
together, they represent a perspective, a wish for positivity and a better future.
— Text by Laura Pieri
ARTIST N°13
FROM ITALY
CASALI MATTEO
34
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021
35
Matteo Casali (b. 1994) is an Italian artist based in Venice, where he’s currently
completing his MA in Fine Art (Painting) at the Academy of Fine Arts. Casali has taken
part in various group exhibitions, solo shows and workshops, and completed an art
residency organised by the Magazzeno Art Gallery. His works are also featured in diverse
publications and catalogues.
Matteo’s research, which he calls The Synthetic Reality, is based on the study
of the human body inside of a non-place. The concept is of significant interest to the
artist and was introduced by Marc Auge - a contemporary French anthropologist, who
in his essay and book of the same title Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology
of Supermodernity coined the phrase non-place to refer to spaces where concerns
of relationships, history and identity are erased. Examples of a non-place would be a
motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket. Casali’s artworks focus on figures,
confined or perhaps simply residing within the surface of the canvas. In his Orrizonte
tra Quattro Mura we observe the figure, confined within the non-space, hopefully
looking towards the horizon. The space or rather a non-place in which the figures
from the artist’s paintings are placed is synthetic and almost virtual; they lose their
identities and are seeking a new one. Identifying with those figures comes naturally
to me, as we all feel lonely and suspended in a kind of void sometimes due to various
life circumstances; this feeling of loneliness and isolation acts as a basis for Matteo’s
paintings. When it comes to technical depiction, strong contrasts of colours, especially
between the abstract background and the preliminary figure, forces it to blend with the
entity it’s placed within and is, therefore, the visual manifestation of the concept that
interests the artist. The scenes depicted in Casali’s paintings derive from his everyday
life, with a prominent contrast between calmness and tension.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Orizzonte tra quattro mura
2020
Acrylic and oil on canvas
120 x 100 cm
ARTIST N°14 FROM ITALY 36
CASELLATO CATERINA
There is a gradual
alteration of normality,
which becomes
more insistent and
dominant, casting a
veil of restlessness.
Caterina Casellato (b. 1995) is
an Italian currently based in Venice.
She was involved in various shows,
including the exhibition of finalists of the
Nocivelli Prize in Brescia, the collective
exhibition entitled Extra Ordinario in
Venezia Marghera and a solo exhibition
Visual Mutations in Conegliano in 2020.
In 2021 she completed an MA in Fine
Art (Painting and Performing Arts) at
the Venice Academy of Fine Arts and
was the finalist of the Exibart Prize.
For Casellato, everyday objects become the protagonists and carriers of
mystery. The elements within her paintings are dynamic; they bond and attempt to
find their new identity within the reality they reside in. They are diverse, tarnished,
suspended on the surface of the canvas, waiting for something to happen. There’s a
gradual alternation of normality, which becomes increasingly more present, insistent
and dominant the longer I spend looking at the Il Prodogio; the feeling I can’t seem
to shake off is restlessness, hidden behind the veil of the familiar. Once the veil is
eliminated, I am forced to look at what’s in front of me from a different angle - the
painting is a manifestation of ardour, and as we all know, ardour is something that
sparks out of the blue, and when we least expect it, it passes, fades, vanishes. The
painting, however, is so intense that it’s open to endless interpretations and definitions,
the shapes that populate its surface are able to continuously convey new ideas and fit
into multiple dimensions.
All of its elements are interconnected and belong to the everyday, and
therefore to us - they are different in their nature and recall contrasting images under
different gazes, but they are nonetheless linked, connected by their pictorial qualities,
and the meanings that we attach to them. This sincere and inclusive interpretation
and representation of the forms thus possesses the capacity to detach itself from
whatever certainties, uncertainties and expectations Caterina gives us, allowing the
viewer to create their own narrative within her artwork, encouraged by the flexibility
of forms that inhabit the canvas. We discard what is familiar. We are free.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Il prodigio
2021
Oil on canvas
157 x 144 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 37
1
ARTIST N°15 FROM ITALY 38
CECCONI MELONI EDVIGE
Edvige attends the IUAV in Venice with a specialization in Visual Arts and
Theater. Graduated master’s degree in Visual Cultures and Curatorial Practices at
the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. Dedicates the path of the thesis to the epistolary
relationship that took place between the poetess Cristina Campo and the writer
Alessandro Spina, starting from the 1960s and published in Correspondence. Fortifying
the artistic and literary passion for the concept of the letter.
Astral and star maps find space and debate with unidentified life forms. It is an
overturning of axes and axioms to create an illustrated book during the work phase.
“Fin dall’infanzia percepivo lo scorrere delle ore indipendente da ogni
riferimento, da ogni atto e da ogni evento, la disgiunzione del tempo da ciò che tempo
non era, la sua esistenza autonoma, il suo statuto singolare, il suo impero, la sua tirannia.
Ricordo con estrema chiarezza quel pomeriggio in cui, per la prima volta, di fronte
all’universo vacante, non ero più che fuga di istanti ribelli ad adempiere ancora la loro
particolare funzione. Il tempo si separava dall’essere a mie spese.Questa è una parte su
cui rifletto da molto tempo, un estratto di Emil Cioran.”
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1-2 Astral and star maps
2021
Mixed media on canvas
Site-specific installation
REA ART FAIR! 2021 39
1
2
ARTIST N°16 FROM ITALY 40
CELLINI GIORGIO
Giorgio Cellini, with Florentine origins, was born in Turin, lives in Milan; he will
soon move to a seaside location. My research stems from the desire to investigate
the identity of being an artist and the status of the work of art. Divine is a subjective,
personal and autobiographical investigation that at the same time aims to connect with
the questions shared by my generation and by today’s society. For me, artistic creation
is a practice of knowledge that is not subordinated to creating a form. The research
I have undertaken is a daily, intellectual and manual practice, based on empirical
experimentation, without thesis and antithesis. Chance and irony concur, aimed at
making every day interesting as a place of personal and collective discovery.
Emerging artists’ performance starts from a series of research and actions
carried out by me in recent years, within the major Italian art fairs to investigate the
amateur and professionalism in the art system of art. Emerging artists movements
for REA Fair was born as a meta-reflection on the status of an emerging artist, on
the dynamics and performativity necessary to become a successful artist. The
performance consists of an extraordinary and extemporaneous crossing of the fair
spaces, a drift aimed at developing and proposing new narratives. The performance
also aims to involve the artists participating in the fair to compare and exchange their
artistic research.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 Emerging artists movements
2021
Performance
REA ART FAIR! 2021 41
1
ARTIST N°17
FROM RUSSIA
CHERNAKOVA NATALIYA
42
Born in Yekaterinburg in 1990, Nataliya Chernakova currently lives and works
in Milan. Nataliya’s education is extensive: in 2011, she graduated from the Ural State
Academy of Architecture and Arts in Yekaterinburg, Russia, specialising in industrial
design; during the years of 2012 and 2013, she moved between Loughborough
University (UK) and the Polytechnic Of Milan attending two courses in Product Design
and in 2017 she obtained an MA at the Royal College of Art in London.
Chernakova’s practice is influenced by design, architecture and fine art.
Her interest in diverse materials and contrasting mediums allows her to merge
design and fine art and formalise detailed research based on the history of the
tools and visual aspects of mechanisms of identity manipulation. Nataliya’s subjects
are nostalgic and emotional, influenced by the contemporary perspective and
Impressionism and Baroque movements, which fascinate her with their attention
to sumptuousness and the more introspective side of the formal aspects. Through
sensual and soft shapes achieved with different materials, the artist faces the
concept of the female desire that can not escape the current conditions of life.
Chernakova aims to reconcile this desire with the reality in which we live using a
historically transcendent language through creating marble sculptures, paintings
and videos.
The series of works Lolita is part of Chernakova’s new body of work that
represents the sensual forms of the female body recognised by the artist within
the shape of a boat engine. Power and masculinity, usually associated with skill and
speed, are overturned and accumulated in colours, sounds and materials that refer
to the opposite world. The male, by association, is relieved of his assignment and
directs the viewer to an alienated image where forms and ideas merge. The series
includes an animation in which this pink hybrid creature spins around itself with the
background sound - the song taken from Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film Lolita and a
water-carved sculpture made of pink onyx.
Nataliya Chernakova has participated in several group exhibitions
internationally, including the side-event on the official “Machines of Loving Grace” at
the Venice Biennale in 2015 and “Lost Senses” the ‘Common Projects’, supported by
the Arts Council of England. In 2019, Chernakova was among the 20 artists selected
for the Cairo Prize.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Lolita
2019
Video
3’ 13’’
Edition of 9 plus 1 AP
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021
43
2
3
2-3 Lolita
2020
Water cut pink onyx
38 x 20,7 x 10 cm
Edition of 6 plus 1 AP
ARTIST N°18 FROM ITALY 44
COLÒ ELISABETTA
Elisabetta was born in Milan, where she currently lives. She went to
Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and had many exhibitions in Milan and Germany.
Her artistic research is based on the reality she encounters every day, related to the
tradition of painting.
The work presented depicts the image of a bird found on the internet that
had particularly impressed her. She wanted to represent him in the manner of Rudolf
Stingel, paying homage to his works and exploring that area of painting closely
linked to photography. However, she started from entirely different assumptions
from Stingel’s work: trying to detach herself from the apathy and coldness typical
of black and white photographs, she wanted to return not only verisimilitude and
animation but something else, something intensely expressive.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 Aquila Arpia
2020
Acrylic on canvas
100 x100 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 45
1
ARTIST N°19 FROM ROMANIA 46
COLTEANU MATEI VLADIMIR
Colțeanu Matei Vladimir (1997, Romania) is currently working in Milan,
his drawing deals with the conflict between historical accuracy and conspiracy
theories backed by a postmodern perspective. In 2018 he participates in a series of
exhibitions INCONTRI #, at Fondazione Adolfo Pini in Milan, under the supervision of
Adrian Paci and Gianni Caravaggio.
Colțeanu Matei Vladimir chooses to integrate in his works elements that
come from stories of classical structure or daily encounters. Through narration
he initiates a process of self-awareness translated into suggestive images. He
avoids overcomplicating the artistic language and he is opposed to the inflation of
concepts, the artist stands for a more direct, meaningful interaction between the
creator, the spectator and the work itself. This simplicity of course doesn’t exclude
profound meaning or desires within the artwork, but it is an attempt to demonstrate
how the contemporary art scene can benefit from straightforwardness. Animal-like,
grotesque figures attacking and devouring one another, aim to deconstruct systems
of oppression of our society, condemning toxic masculinity, violence, corruption
and abuse of power.
1 Atomic Laika at Kármán line
2020
Colored pencils on paper
50 x 35 cm
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 47
ARTIST N°20
FROM ITALY
CONFORTI LORENZO
48
Lorenzo Conforti (b. 1996) was born in San Severino Marche. He holds a
bachelor degree in Decoration Arts from the Urbino Academy. In 2019 he founded
together with Andrea Luzi and Vittorio Zeppillo an installation writing project
called Hardchitepture. He took part in a show entitled “Nei sogni cominciano le
responsabilità” curated by Alberto Zanchetta at Galleria Adele Cappelli, Accademy
of Fine Arts Urbino (2021); “Surprize II”, curated by Umberto Palestini at the Centro Arti
visive La Pescheria Di Pesaro (2020) and “30 x 30 - a collective exhibition” curated
by the artistic collective Vidakrei in collaboration with the Talesofart gallery at the
Spazio Vidakrei di Ferrara (2019).
Lorenzo Conforti has an unconventional approach to pictorial gestures.
While studying at the Urbino Academy, he began to divide his research, probing
new techniques that led him to experiment with painting on canvas technique
in addition to the wall painting. For Lorenzo, the wall always remains a more
accessible and disinterested opportunity to experience the form and the writing.
At the same time, the sacredness of the canvas allows him to study and deepen
more intimate and emotional aspects. Despite this division of practices, the two
often meet and influence each other. The canvas is contaminated by spray paint,
a typical medium of the street World, and Lorenzo leaves quick and decisive
marks stylistically attributable to signing. Conforti dedicated part of his studies to
calligraphy that made him understand how writing is not only a sign but a form
composed of rhythmic emptiness and fullness. Conforti’s most recent paintings
distance themselves from earlier experimentation. The painting presented at the
Fair is the breakthrough painting of his pattern, not so much stylistically but rather
conceptually. Autochimerico is a reflective starting point on the concept that
originates from the artist himself and aims to review the idea of a dynamic character.
The notion of chimaera interests the artist concerning the possibilities of choice: the
interiorization of their life choices and the result that comes from those. So we’re
looking at an identity chimaera, as the artist’s identity is composed of various parts,
and therefore he is a kind of modern-day chimaera concerning the time he exists in.
The artist chooses and forms the image precisely as he illustrates a path of choices
made alongside the mistakes and external obstacles.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Autochimerico
2021
Oil paint, oil bar and spray paint on canvas
72 x 52 cm
1
CATALOGUE
50
REA ART FAIR! 2021 51
Now in its second
year, ReA! is
attempting to
showcase the
“harmony” which
can be created
when cultural
limitations
are removed.
1/5
ARTIST N°21 FROM ITALY 52
CONTI STEFANO
Stefano Conti (b.1994, Italy) is an artist living and working in Göteborg, Sweden.
He holds an MFA in Photography from Valand Academy, Göteborg, and a BFA in
Photography from LABA, Brescia, Italy. His works have been exhibited internationally,
and recent exhibitions took place at Tête Gallery (Berlin, 2021), Condominio (Milan,
2021), Faux Pas (Göteborg, 2021), Landskrona Foto Festival (Landskrona, Sweden,
2020) and Premio Nocivelli (Verolanuova, Italy, 2020). Furthermore, in 2021 he won
the Dummy PhotoBook Prize from Palazzo Rasponi (Ravenna, Italy).
Through a cross-disciplinary approach that intertwines photography,
sculpture, and video, his practice explores the limits of photographic space and
questions the perception of things: he re-arranges objects with printed matter to
investigate what we perceive as a photograph, reflecting upon the fragmentation of
the contemporary digital sphere. In the last years, Conti projects took the shape of
artist books and installations in which he juxtaposed photographic prints to objects
and materials, expanding them from the walls to the floor. Stemming from historical
issues linked to archaeology, museums, and history writing, in his practice, the artist
uses photography to stir these issues towards the contemporary time: “I believe that
a museum must not be the setting for an accumulation of isolated art objects, but
the space in which our relationships with them and reality can be reconfigured. The
methods that archaeologists use to fill in information gaps and to reconstruct the
past fascinate me. In my works, I want to re-establish this confusion of information
on a visual level, combining materials from the past to materials from the present to
observe what may emerge”. In He Found An Old Blue Ocean: Fossil n.25, by intertwining
his photographs of fossils with found video footage from YouTube, the artist created
a narrative that revolves around the orogenesis process which formed the Alps. In a
critique of the history writing, he developed replicas of fossils that were eventually
photographed and juxtaposed to archival materials seeking to build new narratives
that could question or confirm historical facts belonging to our collective past and
memory. By employing this small window on alpine history as a starting point, Conti
investigates the relationship amongst images, the notion of truth, and how they can
be used to create evidence of facts. He says: “Grounded in epistemological theories;
I question the contemporary problems of image dematerialization in the ether and
how societies trust the knowledge that these images convey”.
— Stefano Conti
1 He Found An Old Blu Ocean: Fossil n.25
2020
Archival pigment print on semi-gloss
paper, dibond
60 x 43 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 53
1
ARTIST N°22 FROM ITALY 54
CURATELA PLACEBO
Curatela Placebo was born in Venice in February 2021, the paths of
Margherita Falqui, Silvia Marchese and Marina Marques meet. Margherita Falqui
(1996, Sardinia), studied art history and visual arts in Venice and is interested in video
art, sound narration, writing and curating. Silvia Marchese (1993, Teramo), comes
from a background of product design and art publishing. She then went on to
study botany and visual arts. Marina Marques (1998, Natal), has a transdisciplinary
background that includes editorial curatorship, photography, visual and non visual
arts. They research and realise curative/curatorial projects that are developed in
order to narrate and communicate the olfactory perception and the experience of
its loss in the contemporary world. In the constant deodorisation and digitalisation,
it made sense to treat the loss of smell, as a pathology but also as lack of contact,
during this moment in time, an urgency that is impossible to escape.
It’s not medicine, it is placebo: it is an empathetic rescue kit, a sensibility
stimulus , means to evoke recovery of the sensory contact. A kit for an emergency
of physical, sensory and emotional isolation. This is an alternative remedy to the drip
of images and virtuality to which we are attached to, to the contemporary relational
and perceptive annihilation. Having collected the testimonies of individuals suffering
from olfactory pathologies such as anosmia, parosmia and phantosmia, as well as
testimonies of artists and researchers whose work revolves around the fifth sense;
the curators of Curatela Placebo are composing How to make sense without you, a
printed publication. The publication includes Scentytizer, a sanitizingsensitizing gel,
and Under Your Smell, one or more personal care products that accompany the
readings. The whole composes the kit of empathetic relief (You Keep Me) Under No
Smell: a reading, meditation and sensory experience that can help us “make sense”,
think and stimulate the body, relate, perceive, feel, sense.
— Curatela Placebo
1 You Keep Me Under No Smell
2021
Ongoing project
REA ART FAIR! 2021 55
1
The publication How to make sense without you collects the contributions of:
Enrico Boccioletti, Francesco Fazzi, IOKOI, Mariko Hori, Raffaella Naldi Rossano,
Maria Electra Pacini, Nuvola Ravera, Margherita Soldati, Marco Sgarbossa, Michele
Tiberio & Diletta Tonatto, Yoann Van Parys, Stefania Zanetti & Matteo Bellomo;
Matteo Dal Zovo, Andrea Gallozzi, Raul Sabbadini, Lisa Ventura.
Consulting and substance creation:
Emma Lecchini, Luca Veresani.
Graphic Consulting:
Giuseppe Defilippis, Eleonora Falqui.
Design consultancy and thermoforming:
Pier Luca Freschi, FlowEasyThermoForming.
ARTIST N°23 FROM HUNGARY 56
CZIKA KRISZTINA
The Hungarian artist Krisztina Czika lives and works in Amsterdam. She first
studied at the Fashion and Trade School of Crafts, Clothing and Textiles, in Budapest
and then completed her education at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, in Amsterdam.
Among the latest exhibitions she has participated in we find “Between Lockdowns”,
BIG ART 2020 in Zaandam,“Absurd Beings on Skin” group show in Amsterdam and
“The Space Makers” at Galerie Pouloeuff in Naarden. The artist has always been
attracted to the material world and to its possibilities of expression. Back as a student
in Budapest and later on in the Netherlands, she instinctively approached the theme,
fascinated by the different components that can constitute an object. In her work
Krisztina experiments with various types of physical materials, focusing not only on
their palpable characteristics, but also on the stories and emotions they carry, paying
attention to the physical and the metaphysical.
Divergence, which is exhibited in the three installations shown at the fair,
is a photography-based project that is divided into three different series: Reflection,
Refraction, Distortion. Born from a generalized and indefinite collective state of
existence in times of a global crisis, the artist felt the need to open a way to reflect
on the current state of interlude. In this series the photographs transformed into
sculptures that are the fruit of a reflective reach, of a global introspection that has
become a consequence of a prolonged and truly forced period of liberation from
all physical restrictions. The images - preserved and printed on broken glass and
mounted on wood - are each born from the artist’s desire to break free. Fruit of an
insistent desire to live a life of emotional indulgence and unrestricted creativity. Each
image is the physical manifestation of a longed for escape that has been fueled
during months of isolation and confined movement. The Refraction series starts
from the concept of refraction that bends light until
substances are reduced to transparency. Just as
the beams of light strike through the body of water
and consequently create their own abstractions,
the artist wants to soften our hardness, leaving the
viewer to float calmly in the free forms and free
movements of the image.
Czika tries to freeze a vibrant mood on a
reused glass fragment to give us a set of collective
memories. Seizing a moment of refracted luminescent
light during the times of the global crisis. Through her
captured and immortalized images full of light and
transparency Czika tries to touch upon the collective
1
turbulence and the figurative acts of adaptation.
1-2-3 Refraction serie
2021
Mixed media
Variable dimensions
REA ART FAIR! 2021 57
Czika tries to freeze a vibrant
mood on a reused glass
fragment to give us a set
of collective memories.
Seizing a moment of
refracted luminescent light
during the times of the
global crisis. Through her
captured and immortalized
images full of light and
transparency Czika tries to
touch upon the collective
turbulence and the
figurative acts of adaptation.
3
ARTIST N°24 FROM ITALY 58
DAVIDE SARA
Sara Davide (1994, Milan) lives and works in Milan, where she graduated cum
laude in Visual Arts, focusing on sculpture, at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. She
obtained a Masters in Photography at the CFP Bauer, Milan. Currently attending the
two-year specialist course of New Technologies of Art, specialising in photography, at
the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. She has participated in the TRACCIATI residency
(2021) and her work autoritratto (2020) selected by the COMBAT Prize jury and included
in the official 2021 catalogue. She is particularly attentive towards the photographic
medium in relation to materials, in a continuous game of integration and absorption
of photography by materiality and of materiality by photography.
“Sara Davide’s research revolves around the representation of the threedimensional
object, of the sculptural through photography and an investigation of the
subject being captured through the camera lens, as an entity exerting dominance over
the photographic medium. The artist observes recurrent patterns while documenting
natural and industrial surfaces as the two key practices through which she carries
forward her investigation meet.” — Paola Shiamtani
autoritratto (self-portrait) is a series of shots representing skin fragments
of the author herself. This work tries to reflect on our contemporary time, on the
concepts of portraiture and the face as tools for structuring individual identities. The
realistic sculptures, made out of silicon and realised with a direct casting technique,
give shape to a skin which is then captured as a still life subject. The face in its totality
is parcelled out, details gain importance and ambiguity takes over clarity. Photography
remediates the sculptures that cannot be assayed by the viewer: the perception of
the image superimposes itself on the subject, creating sheer illusion. Humans need
to keep faces alive since ancient times, through funeral masks or effigies. The masks
make way for photography, as it also operates by imprinting reality on a surface. What
does the face represent nowadays? In autoritratto the present remediates the past,
while the constant link between media - here mimetically employed - unearths the
plurality of the self.
1 autoritratto
2020
Photographs
Glicée print, mounted on
aluminium (framed)
50 x 75 cm
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ARTIST N°25 FROM ITALY 60
DEL FABRO CAMILLA
Born in Bologna (1993), Camilla Del Fabro moved to Ghent in 2016,
where she currently lives and works. Since she was a child, she has cultivated a
dispassionate interest in drawing, which she experiences and inserts into her life
as spontaneously and often as possible. She spends hours making pen drawings,
playing with restaurant’s signs, vitrines and the remains of food, or capturing scenes
or expressions of passers-by at the bus stop. In 2012 she enrolled at the IUAV in Venice
to organise and expand her research. She met Liliana Moro and Agnes Kohlmeyer,
which allowed her to get out of the two-dimensional plane of the drawing medium,
but it is with the transfer to Ghent and with the introduction to the KASK School
of Art, where she’s currently undergoing a course in Film and Animation, that she
finalises her love for drawing and sketching. Del Fabro’s interest lies first of all in the
inanimate object outside of its close relationship with the animate being. The idea
of bringing everyday objects to life is the engine that drives the artist to experiment
with animation techniques such as stop motion.
A Chair Porn comes from the most extensive research entitled “My chair
asked me to do an exhibition”, which saw the assembly of many visual elements in
which the story of the chairs engaging in monologues and existential dialogues is
told through photographs portraying them participating in various kinds of activities
such as going to the parks and the museums. Made with the stop motion technique,
A Chair Porn shows an actual 90s porn curtain with bright and sensual colours, in
which we recognise elements belonging to the private life of the two chairs. Sexual
desire and pleasure are the most human activities that the artist can associate with
the object to make it humanly independent and give it a physical and carnal body
with drives and passions associable with the human being. Although the artist has
tried to remove human sexuality as much as possible - no sexual organ is evident,
and no anthropomorphic characteristics are recognisable - the experience of sexual
intercourse has been projected onto the two chairs. The irony is another prominent
element that makes the work more accessible. Humour is a constant in Del Fabro’s
works and always aims to change the common knowledge regarding the objects
and, at the same time, Disturb and amuse the audience.
The film was selected and screened at the Austrian festival “Home is
where art is”, and the Fanzine Illustrated Chairs Manners Book was presented and
sold at the Fanzines Happenings IV - V - VI in Kunsthal of Gent. In addition, Del Fabro
has collaborated with several private and public structures for the realisation of
animated videos and fanzines.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 A Chair Porn
2018
Claymation
1728 x 1728 px
+
A Chair Porn
2018
4’ 23’’
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ARTIST N°26 FROM ITALY 62
DELIGIO ELEONORA
Eleonora Deligio (1998, Puglia) is currently working between Bari and Milan.
She works with video using analog and digital mediums, investigating her own
origins, collective and personal memory, shared primordial needs and rehabilitation.
Eleonora Deligio’s video entitled Amacangia is inspired by the monumental
landscape of Calanchi, in south-eastern Lucania, rough terrain and arid white dunes
devoid of vegetation become a symbol of the artist’s origin. The territory in this area
is rich in white clay and sand, its geomorphological conformation means that the
nature of the soil is not as solid or as rocky as one might imagine, on the contrary,
the soil soft, it breaks and crumbles between one’s fingers when touched. Leaving
and returning, whirling in the air, getting lost and settling momentarily like dust, then
settling a little and starting again to repeat the same journey, its destination; distance,
in a trajectory that is always new, accompanied by a new gaze, nurtured by distance.
Due corpi, un setaccio, due voci.
Il gesto ritorna.
La voce, la parola, la bocca è uno strumento.
Il luogo delle radici dà il tempo ai corpi.
L’ incontro con una parte remota e volontariamente cancellata.
Una litania scritta come un flusso di coscienza, un invito
alla riflessione sul cambiamento, uno tra
tutti, il ritorno nella mia terra.
La riscoperta.
Il ritorno.
— Eleonora Deligio
1-2-3 Amacangia
2021
Video, HD, b/n, sound
4’ 15”
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ARTIST N°27 FROM ITALY 64
DI FERDINANDO NICCOLÒ
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Niccolò Di Ferdinando (b. 1999) is an Italian artist currently based in Rome. He
obtained a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from ISA Roma2 and is currently studying for an MA
in Fine Art at RUFA. In 2019 he created his artistic project entitled ANTIFIGURE, where he
gathers his artworks that range from painting to video, installations and audio art. As Di
Ferdinando puts it - I have to disobey my projects to create something that I can enjoy; I
think of my approach as scientific when creating a new piece - as the shapes begin to
occur on the working surface, I am inclined to dismantle everything and start again, it’s
a continuous process of adding and taking away. Niccolo works with the limits, as he
believes that the most exciting situations occur between total control and the loss of
it; his research, therefore, is rooted in error and in the existential question of how much
control exists within any action.
IPERCOSTRUZIONE is the definition of gestural; it’s dynamic, aggressive and
unforgiving. The surface of the pictorial plane is scattered with bold, varied marks
applied with different tools: foam rollers that simultaneously make the work transparent
in some parts and matte, impenetrable in others; palette knife which creates a light
impasto effect, supported by the intense hue of crimson red; and finally the light, elegant
straight lines of ink that delicately hold the rest of the monumental shapes in place.
Abstract painting is filled with possibilities for interpretation; that’s one of the aspects
that makes it so astonishing; the viewer decides what to see and how to interpret what’s
in front of him. The artist has beautifully captured simultaneous lack and presence of
control, glorifying the unexpected, the chance and the surprising that goes hand in
hand with the most flexible and exciting mediums - oil paint.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 IPERCOSTRUZIONE
2020
Oil and ink on paper
50 x 62,5 cm
ARTIST N°28 FROM ITALY 66
DI MASSIMO ALESSANDRO
Alessandro Di Massimo (Italy) is artist who lives and works in Edinburgh. He
has lived and worked in Rome for a long time and during his studies of Set Design of
the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he quickly starts moving in the lively underground
scene of the capital. Street art, fanzines, political restlessness and the extraordinary
beauty of the Eternal city had a great influence on his artistic formation. After
graduation, he spent some periods studying and working in various European cities
and then settled in Edinburgh in 2013. Recent exhibitions include; Premio Cramum
at Villa Bagatti Valsedo, Varedo; The Rise and Fall of Your Chosen Empire at Ltd Ink
Corporation, Edinburgh (solo), Acies at The Number Shop, Edinburgh (solo), Refraction
at 24hourswindow (part of Glasgow International, solo show), Whole World Working
(W.W.W.) at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh.
The following text refers specifically to one of the works in the Terrain series.
In each of the of the 4 works; Reciting Italy’s National Anthem While Standing On My
Head, Trying To Hold Britain Together While Singing “Sympathy For The Devil”, Sixteen
Push-ups On Russian Soil and Vaticano, clay originating from the country depicted
on the map sculpture was used. The work Reciting Italy’s National Anthem While
Standing On My Head, which is based on the concept of territory, imagines new ways
of manifesting our personal and collective identity in relation to the contemporary
context. It involves an improper element - the body - in the traditional geographic
semantics of the map; pushing this tool beyond its descriptive function. The map by
its nature establishes boundaries, in this case it is used to reconsider them: Are our
bodies affected by our boundaries or are our boundaries affected by our bodies?
The installation, realised using ceramics, performance, consists of a scale map of the
peninsula made out of clay - from an Italian quarry - and a video. During the realisation
of the video, the map of fresh clay, comes into contact with the body that imprints its
mark on it; the baking will take place afterwards.
1 Reciting Italy’s national anthem
while standing on my head
2020
Ceramic (made with clay produced in Italy),
L shaped hooks, video portrait format 16:9.
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ARTIST N°29 FROM ITALY 68
DONAGGIO GIANMARCO
Gianmarco Donaggio, born in Italy, is director of photography, direction, artistic
research and image philosophy. He graduated from the art high school of Varese in
2010 and graduated from Bournemouth, England, in 2014 as a cinematographer and
director of experimental documentaries. Between 2015 and 2020, he mainly lived
in Oslo, travelling regularly in Europe and worldwide to collaborate with important
cinema contemporary figures. A careful observer of the role of image in society and
interested in the evolution of the cinematographic form, he continues his research
at the University of Lund in Sweden, specialising in visual cultures. His art is in the
balance between an interest in the formal component of cinema and one tendency
to conceptualise a cinema intended as a poetic atmosphere. Since 2018, his films
have taken part in various international film festivals and art exhibitions.
“Manifestarsi” (2021), presented in a world premiere at the 57th International
Exhibition of new cinema in Pesaro, is his debut as an author in the panorama of
Italian cinema. The film was born from the microscopic investigation of the material
component of posters advertisements posted in Milan. The author, through a unique
perspective, goes beyond the limits of vision by inviting us to fall in the alienating and
enveloping physical structure beyond the mythical surface of the images. The the
cinematic result is an atmosphere that is not abstract but relatively informal, where
the matter reflects a visual condition devoid of perspective references on which to
base metaphysical foundations: here, the process suspends the essence.
“Manifestarsi” (2021) is part of a series of experiments beginning in 2020,
including “Milano di carta” (2020) and “Aria di Attesa” (2021). A hypothetical “material
cinema”, one methodology influenced by the current of new materialism and informal
art, experiments with a procedural cinematographic form, where artistic investigation,
questioning the subject through meticulous technical care, produces deeply
atmospheric audio-visual results.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1-2 Manifestarsi
12’
Short film
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ARTIST N°30 FROM UNITED KINGDOM 70
DOUGLAS FERGUSON FREYA
Born in Oxford, Freya Douglas Ferguson lives and works in London. Driven
to undertake an interdisciplinary path, she studied Glassblowing at Urban Glass in
New York in 2018, Sculpture at the City and Guilds of London Art School, and then
graduated in 2020 with a BA in Fine Art from the Goldsmiths University in London. She
exhibited in various art spaces in London during her studies, including the 5th Base
Gallery, Anish Kapoor’s Studio, and Central Saint Martin’s. She was recently selected
as an emerging artist by the New Contemporaries project (UK). The artist has always
used a wide range of technical skills with which she undertakes creative practices
that are all seemingly interconnected. Metalworking - both forging and casting, is
one of Freya’s predominant techniques, along with glass medium. Freya spent much
of her time as a student in the bronze foundry, casting her sculptures, and, more
recently, she took up a part-time job at a blacksmith workshop. For her, artisanal and
traditional practices are perfectly combined with contemporary aesthetics. Guided
by the possible combinations and the inevitable tensions born from the process, she
creates a dialogue between old and new aesthetics.
Working with a wide variety of mediums and materials, the artist aims to
combine historical craftsmanship techniques with contemporary ready-made, hightech
manufacturing components, technological scraps and disposable products of
today’s technology. Douglas questions the hierarchies present in contemporary art
and visual culture through the manipulation of materials. Presented as an artefact,
Relic (Momentary Souvenir) appears aesthetically retrofuturistic. In other words, one
of the most standard elements linked to the contemporary is placed in conjunction
with the ambiguous armoured hand that ignites a sense of temporal tension in the
viewer. The selfie stick does not confirm the medieval aesthetic of the hand that
holds it between its fingers and appears to have come from some other era as it
resembles something that came from space. The hybrid image that has been created
appears as a futuristic cyborg that wants to explore the blurred lines between digital
technologies and the organic body.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Relic (Momentary Souvenir)
2021
Cast pewter, selfie stick,
iPhone, butterflies
H65 x W45 x D17 cm
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ARTIST N°31
FROM BELGIUM
DUFOOR ARTHUR
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Arthur Dufoor (b. 1997) is a Belgian artist based in Brussels. He has been
developing his skills in classical oil painting for the past ten years; starting with the
figurative approach, his work slowly evolved into the field of abstract painting. The
fluidity and aggressiveness of intensely coloured shapes and patterns are central to his
painterly approach; nevertheless, his appreciation and fascination for the Old Masters
always shines through. In 2020 Dufoor obtained an MA in Fine Art at the Luca School
of Arts in Ghent and had since shown his work in numerous spaces, including the
‘Witte Rook’ (Breda), the ‘Kunsthal’ (Ghent) and ‘LaVallée’ in Brussels. After completing
his studies in Ghent, Arthur got his own art studio in a small coastal town of Westende,
where he continued to paint for six months before moving back to Brussels.
My work departs from a radical intuitive and therapeutic approach,
communicating raw emotions and expressive sensibility through large scale oil
paintings. Drawing from diverse influences such as Mannerism, Baroque and Post-
Modernist painters, Dufoor’s work always balances between the confessional and
the brutal. His paintings constitute an abstract language but always remain close to
reality in a quest for the perfect artwork. Functioning as a large-scale diary, Dufoor’s
work often integrates various notes and quotes from his daily life. Untitled (Breda) is a
perfect example of the contrast that the artist so skillfully creates: emotions relating to
delicacy and susceptibility rise within me as I look at the thin, elegant black lines that
are first and foremost recognised as marks, and only then turn into words. In doing
so, the tension between personal vulnerability and the ruthlessness of the abstract
language becomes apparent. At the same time, I recognise the brutality of gestural
marks in ruby red that inhibit the surface of the canvas. This opposition created by
such diverse mark-making is apparent, yet they aren’t in conflict; on the contrary, they
are engaged in an intense, passionate dialogue, overlapping and retreating within the
pictorial plane of the canvas.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Untitled (Breda)
2021
Oil on canvas
200 x 180 cm
ARTIST N°32 FROM SLOVENIA 74
DVORSCAK PATRIK
Patrik Dvorščak was born in march of 1995, and he comes from Ribnica,
Slovenia. He has studied design and photography in Ljubljana. He has continued his
education in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. His creation deals with
content referring to today’s man in society and numerous crowds formations, which
indicate the desolate, shallow realities of everyday life and resist the ideas of a defined,
enlightened world and moral beliefs. Together with a group of elements or figures in
the artistic creation, I set the viewer in the position of the creator of everything around
us – the people we are, in the course of our stay, responsible for their own and the
lives of all the others. I am trying to put the participant to look at something reliable.
I see population growth as the most significant problem which intersects
with other global issues – more people, more deforestation, more toxins, water
scarcity … This makes me wonder whether the collapses of civilizations are indirectly
intentional. No matter the pattern we play as a culture, a form of self-destruction is
always present. The essence of humanity is not innate, but the fact remains that this
is how humans imagine it. Due to a certain measure of naivety and egocentrism, they
believe that they are, as spiritual and conscious beings, captured in a single historical
and geographical way of existence. The individual’s need to recognize fact is their
biological as well as psychological necessity. After being born, a baby will already
respond primarily to feelings of pleasure brought about by a full stomach. In its nature,
it gives an unscrupulous priority to satisfaction, experiencing itself as the centre of
the universe. Later on, when we grow up, the child inside us merges with external
influences and is brought into the unconscious. The unconscious, the deepest layers
of our soul, made of instinctive drives, do not know the harmful content of their death.
Observing what present “civilized” peoples are responsible for, the injustice and
cruelty worldwide, it seems that we behave as though we were immortal. In a world
of screens, illusions and consumerism conditioning the unreality of death, the sense
that nothing can befall our almighty civilization is perhaps even further intensified.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 Hold Together Things
2021
1
ARTIST N°33 FROM ITALY 76
ESPOSITO MANUEL
Manuel Esposito was born in ‘99, was born in Monza. Until early adolescence
he lives in a manner totally disinterested in the culture, which he will encounter in the
last years of artistic high school. Work with video, photography and performance. In
2020 he founded the Avocado Rosso exhibition research project. He currently lives
and works in Brianza and is attending the third year of New Art Technologies at the
Brera Academy.
A nature mediated by the inorganic eye of the room places the optical
unconscious at the center as a practice and as an attitude of fruition. The eye of
the visual machine produces images and imaginaries of the organic world, not
visible except through the aid of technical tools. Hence the research on the optical
unconscious as a specific filmic. Awareness of the relationship between the visual
machine and the subject produces a conscious image of its mediation and therefore
deeply respectful of the subject itself.
The visual machine’s eye makes images and imaginary of organic life that
are visible only by using technical instrument. From this point, I started my research
on the optical unconscious as a specific cinematic. The film borns from an interest in
architecture endangered. My gaze observes the nature inhabiting the space.
1 L’occhio, mi si è, adagiato”
Two channels HD video - sound
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ARTIST N°34 FROM ITALY 78
EYEROD ART COLLECTIVE
EYEROD is an artist collective formed by the two performers Davide Amato
(Italy, b. 1993) and Polly Wilson (England, b. 1993), the visual artist Lauren Raaijmakers
(Holland, b. 1996) and the sound designers Raphael Schuler (Germany, b. 1995) and
Christian Baas (Holland, b. 1995). They met in Rotterdam, where they are currently based
and carried out research on performance that started from investigating the state of
uncertainty concerning the world we live in. The name of the collective consists of two
words: EYE - a part of the body that gives and receives images and symbolises our need
to see and be seen; and ROD - which is a cell present in the visual apparatus that allows
one to have sight sensitivity even in a dark space.
Their first performance - The Glitch comes from a research process that has
given the duo the space to play with the postmodern conditions they are experiencing.
Initially conceived as a single act, it then takes on a more complex shape over time until
it is manifested as a living and constantly evolving work in its own right. The themes
brought to the stage by The Glitch are continuously transformed and exchanged with
the visions of EYEROD, creating an interconnected and codependent relationship
between the two. The performance functions as a narrative framework in which
artists can consult their perception of the cosmos, spiritually and abstractly, materially
and technologically. The early performances of The Glitch focused on the paradox of
freedom to emphasise the conditions of choice and sacrifice. A ritual, a rite of passage
in which the participants and guests were involved in the act and invited to get lost
in a narrative and mythological space made of sounds and dances on the verge of
primitivism. The Glitch started as an interactive theatre piece and has been adapted
and updated to diverse contexts. For this occasion, the collective brings a renewed
version of this project within a different philosophical lens; the duo aims to review
the symbolic meaning contained in the concept of ritual along with the theory of
Jean Baudrillard and the simulacrum - the notion of rituals and empty objects, the
link between consumerism and mythology. The same symbols brought to the stage
by the past performances are simulacra, which means that they are no longer rooted
in a “profound truth” but in infinite copies of themselves. The objects seem familiar,
but the whole composition is perceived as absurd, aided by immersion in a constant
background sound, a collage of disturbing and incoherent noises; accompanied by
random images and videos projected into the scene. For the performance duration,
the sounds and images are to be played live by DJs and VJs. Their role is to create the
illusion of myth in all of its power, which collides with the useless simulacra that the
performers are trying to utilise.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 The glitch in the shrine
2021
Performative installation
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ARTIST N°35 FROM ITALY 80
FASOLI ILARIA
Ilaria Fasoli was born in Mirano in 1992. In 2011 she enrolled at the Accademia
di Belle Arti di Venezia’s Painting course in the Atelier of Prof. Carlo Di Raco, becoming
acquainted with young emerging artists such as Nebojsa Despotovic and Thomas
Braida. After the immersive painting experience, Fasoli enrolled at the IUAV University
of Venice to experiment with different mediums and languages of art alongside
professors such as Alberto Garutti, Angela Vettese, Renè Gabri and Antoni Muntadas.
Painting remains Ilaria’s primary medium, although she’s simultaneously
interested in others. The artist defines painting as an introspective language that
allows her to depict emotional images that suggest and allude to the intimate female
world. Her paintings are seductive, and the primary rule of seduction is to never reveal
anything fully to the audience; the artworks capture the details but at the same time
do not display everything. The main protagonists of the canvases are bodies draped
in silk and shiny satin, and we can’t be sure who those bodies belong to. Through
her works, Ilaria explores the concepts of seduction, romantic love and stereotypical
sensuality.The painting entitled Bordeaux is an immersion in classical painting
manifested throughout the body of works. It touches on the aesthetics of Classical and
Baroque art, residing between the contemporary, the reality, the myth, the clarity and
the allusion - it is a pictorial reflection on the romantic nature of humans who, through
the countless legends that spoke of lovers and heroes, sailing the seas of passion,
driven by waves of desire, project romantic fairy tales onto their love experiences. In
modern Western culture, romantic love is considered the only way to live a romantic
relationship and the artist, through an effortless gesture, asks us to put at the centre
of the discussion a cliché, a collective stereotype like that of the romantic imagination
to recalculate everyone’s expectations. It asks us the question about the senses, the
motives and the meaning of the images themselves that constitute seduction, desire
and love descending into the depths of such stories to give us a version too bright to
be true. The artist has exhibited in Italy on different occasions, such as the Parma Film
Festival (2019), the combat Prize (2017), ARTES Di ArtVerona (2015) and the collective
Young Artists of the Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa in 2017 and 2018. She currently
lives and works in Venice.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Bordeaux
2021
Oil on canvas
50 x 70cm
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ARTIST N°36 FROM UCKRAINE 82
FEDOROVA VITALIIA
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Vitaliia Fedorova is a Ukranian artist who works and lives in Milan. Fedorova
is passionate about contemporary art and the film industry. In 2017 she graduated
from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a bachelor’s degree
in Psychology. And, after moving to Milan, she began her art path by showing her
installation entitled Culto Bianco during the # 20 // Erase to Mark exhibition at
the Fondazione Pini in Milan in 2019. Vitaliia completed her art education in 2021,
graduating with a BA in Fine Art (Painting and Visual Arts); during her studies, her
creative research was based on exploring codes and patterns of her native culture,
primarily through the mediums of installation and video. During the same year, she
took part in the Second Wave programme on the COVIDEO19 platform during the
second week with her video Two Person Scene.
My current focus is on auteur cinema, through which I continue my
research on the poetic and the social, and I am now studying film and sound
editing and the intricacies of this process’s organisation to improve my professional
qualifications. In her research, the artist distinguishes two primary trends: she is
focused on studying the cultural attributes of Eastern European countries, and,
having a psychological background, she inevitably performs an analysis based on
introspection. Symbology, language constructions, spirituality, memory, phenomena
of the psyche and the unconscious are the essential elements of Fedorova’s works.
By considering historical and psychological data, she acts as a bearer ofw a certain
mentality and culture, simultaneously existing in a multicultural and globalised
environment. Vitaliia always aims to share a part of herself with the audience
through her works so that her personal experiences are familiar and her everyday
adventures unique.
The film’s title refers to the Mavka - a type of female spirit in Ukrainian
mythology, a creature of the forest. Referencing Slavic rituals, the film investigates
the mother-daughter relationship - or rather daughter-daughter relationships,
since we always remain someone’s child even after growing up - throughout three
generations of the artist’s family, that has historically existed without the father
figures, and consequently didn’t correspond to the model of the ideal family firmly
imprinted in our thought patterns by the society that we live in. Having been shot
in Ukraine, the work makes evident the historically developed traces of language
deterritorialisation. For me, MAVKAS is a short film rather than simply a video piece; it
touched me so profoundly with its honesty, melancholy and nostalgia that it brought
me to tears. In merely 21 minutes and 43 seconds, Vitaliia connects and elaborates on
the concept of family, on relationships within it, the importance and significance of
rituals to keep the culture alive, on languages as a reflection of history and ultimately
on love. Vitaliia Fedorova is the one to watch.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 MAVKAS
2021
Video
21’ 43’’
ARTIST N°37 FROM GREECE 84
FIKOS
Fikos (1987, Athens) was first captivated by Byzantine Art at the young age
of 10, when he began embroidering and drawing christian saints in coloured pencils.
Active ever since the year 2000 in the street art scene as well, he combines both
iconography and graffiti and creates “Contemporary Byzantine Painting”. During that
time he is a student of Byzantine painting, his teacher the Greek master painter and
iconographer Giorgos Kordis. Fikos becomes a muralist, having painted large-scale
murals across the world, the most famous one being 46 meters high Earth and Sky
in Kiev, Ukraine. The mural is the largest in the history of Byzantine Painting and the
highest artwork in the history of Greek art since ancient years.
“I’ve studied Byzantine painting since I was 13 years old in Athens, and I studied
the art of the street in the streets”. Fikos describes himself as a “neo-muralist” and also
realises paintings on paper and canvas, revising art history, reconciling past and future
in the present time. The artist has a vision for ancient painting to live anew, for tradition
and mythology to be brought into the present-day art scene through immersion in a
contemporary pictorial language. This personal, expressive language naturally derives
from the artist’s longing for the folklore fables, Greek myths and Byzantine icons to
continue to be vividly present in every-day life. The audience is invited to consider the
relevance of the ancient art forms in a contemporary context, to question whether
modern-day society has maintained connection or is no longer in contact with visual
representations and celebrations of tales and myths from the past.
1 Fikos, Earth and Sky, Kiev, Ukraine
Painted for Mural Social Club
Curated by Oleg Sosnov and Sky Art
Foundation
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ARTIST N°38 FROM ITALY 86
FIORAMONTI SOFIA
Sofia Fioramonti (b. Rome, 1997) took photographs since she was a child; at
the age of 15, she was given her first camera and from there began her obsessive
experimentation with photography. In 2016 she enrolled at the Faculty of Architecture
at La Sapienza University in Rome, and in 2021 she obtained her MA. However, it was
studying in different European capitals that allowed her to travel across the medium,
exploring genres such as portrait and street photography, finally circumscribing her
experimentation of intimate documentary photography.The artist does not want to
define herself as a photographer, despite being fond of the photographic medium
for many years. Sofia investigates and expresses herself through the images,
photographic or otherwise, of her daily and intimate life composed of travels, people
and landscapes that belong to her experience as a young woman. Her images have
been created with the naturalness of those who want to frame and give order to their
experience: things and people. The artist’s practice arises from the need to analyze
herself and what happens around her.
The photographic series Silenzio is an ongoing project that evolves with the
artist and her desire to pay attention to the details: the places and the people around
her - by speaking directly to her viewer, with extreme sincerity and intimacy. Currently,
the artist is working with different mediums such as video, continuously going
through an utterly personal investigation that confirms that Fioramonti prefers the
intimate image over the medium that composes it. She is currently working on her
second solo show at the International Women’s House in Rome. She has exhibited in
various art spaces such as the Rashomon Club and the Rome and Holy Art Gallery in
London.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1
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3
1 Blue Boy, Giugno 2020
Montpellier, Francia
Print on matte paper
18 x 27 cm
2 First Day of Summer, Luglio 2020
Tilburg, Paesi Bassi
Print on matte paper
18 x 27 cm
3 Last Day of Summer, Maggio 2019
Faro, Portogallo
Print on matte paper
18 x 27 cm
ARTIST N°39 FROM GERMANY 88
FISCHER JORINDE
Jorinde Fisher was born in 1990 in
Schwäbisch Hall and currently lives and works in
Berlin. After obtaining a diploma in Visual Arts from
the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, she entered
the studio of the German artist Jhon Bock with
whom, after a year, she obtained a First Level Master’s
degree. Numerous exhibitions have been held
since 2015, including the one held in Berlin in 2020 at
the Berlin Masters Foundation, the Berlin Reset, the
birds & Richard Gallery and finally at the Enter Art
Fair in Copenhagen in 2021.
Interested in the study of figures and proportions,
the artist works mainly with fabrics and
steel that she modifies and folds, experimenting
with a harmonious play between colours and shapes.
Fabrics, elastic bands and industrial products
are the starting point of her artistic practice - all
highly dynamic elements, shaping and bending to
her needs. Anne-Kathrin Segler notes how these
qualities contrast with a solid formal rigour visible
in the finished work: “the fabrics appear compact
or engaged in an organic interaction between folds.
Sometimes these bands appear as vertical, sometimes
as loose or rolled arches [...] Precision, tactile
effect and humour characterize the work of Jorinde
Fischer”. Fabrics often refer to draping, but they are
synthesized and removed from their original form,
giving life to new visions and applications, while
steel is used as a structure, a suspension element,
a weight, profoundly affecting the dynamics of the
composition. “The results oscillate wildly, we want
to detect an essence in these curtains, breaks, folds,
yet we can not, too minimal the training intervention,
too rigorous and clear its conception” - Johannes
Bierlein. Two works that exemplify her artistic practice
are Together_1 and Momentum. In the first one,
she uses elastic material placed together in a series
of knots, creating a suspended element that takes
shape in space through repeated but never equal
volumes. The second artwork represents a precise
moment of a movement that can only be guessed
as it is shown stationary - locked in an instant.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 89
1 TOGETHER_1
2021
Elastic band
H170 x W11 x D10 cm
ARTIST N°40 FROM ITALY 90
FLORIO LORENA
Lorena Florio (1996, Pescara), currently working between Pescara and Roma,
graduated in New Technologies of Art from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera.
Her photographs that often derive from simple, real-life elements are subjected
to different levels of processing and manipulation, both digital and physical, in an
attempt to translate the artist’s imaginary into visual images. Her work has been
published in the last two issues of Yogurt magazine (Quarantine Flavour and Bad
Taste). Lorena Florio has participated in the collective exhibition New Talents 2020,
curated by Photographic Exploration Project at the B-Part gallery in Berlin.
Lorena Florio’s photographic works are part of the Lacerazioni series, a
production that the artist begun during the first lockdown. Lacerazioni is a study that
revolves around the act of cutting, as through the cut made on the printed images
both the artist and the viewer try to define the interaction between an external
agent, light in this case and the support, that is the material on which the image is
present. The cut intervenes, dissecting the captured subject - generating an opening
- a material, rather sculptural approach to photography, that allows for the what is
on the outside to enter the documented field. The totality of visual representation is
fragmented. The manual laceration allows for the light to pass through the subjects
represented, moreover, depending on the time and climate in which the images
are captured, the light that penetrates them during a particular moment of day is
different. The artist subsequently reappropriates this crossing, a forced dynamic
moment in which the bodies act as a filter and irradiate our field of vision. A minimal
gesture, a change of perspective: an enlightenment that is no longer wisdom of the
One, but wisdom of the many.
1 From the “Lacerazioni” series
2020 - 2021
Pigment print on fine art paper
20 x 30 cm
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 91
CATALOGUE
92
REA ART FAIR! 2021
93
Emerge.
Show.
Empower.
2/5
ARTIST N°41 FROM ITALY 94
FRACASSO DAVIDE GIUSEPPE
Davide Giuseppe Fracasso is an Italian artist based in Alessano. He is
currently in his third year studying for a BA in Fine Art (Painting) at the Brera Academy
of Fine Arts. I have always been attracted to puns, mythology, magic and elements
strongly linked to the circus world. Some images perceived by Fracasso make such
a strong impression that they become imprinted in his head - so much so that they
inevitably make their way into his artworks, and they end up creating unexpected
hybrids. Davide is interested in creating buoyant, sometimes seemingly senseless,
ridiculous and ironic artworks. His goal is to tease the audience, and his Uova
installation does exactly that; the artist often uses humour, paradox and the concept
of fake news in his works.
Uova is an installation that consists of six paintings and a 7’’ video played
alongside it. The paintings are made with egg tempera, a witty reference to the
title, and correspond perfectly to the colour of the brown eggshell; the number of
paintings - six - references the most popular number of eggs in an egg tray. The
video shows the six artworks hanged in what resembles a barn with chickens
walking around it - one expressing a particular interest in the installation. For me,
the installation creates a brilliant parallel and is mocking the way we see and look at
art. Often we come to the exhibition spaces and notice endless amounts of people
aimlessly walking around the artworks, much like the chickens in Fracasso’s video,
not because they are particularly interested in the works shown, but because lately,
exhibition spaces became cool places to hang out in. And then occasionally there’s
one chicken that takes an interest in the art shown, but perhaps to merely take a
picture, to then be posted on its Instagram with a hashtag “cultural”.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Uova
2020
Installation: Egg tempera on canvas; Video
Hexaptych - 60 x 50 cm each; 7’’
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 95
ARTIST N°42 FROM ITALY 96
GIACCIO DARIAS CARLA
Carla Giaccio Darias (b. 1998) is an Italo-Cuban artist who lives and
works between Milan, Rome and Habana. She holds a degree in Architecture and
Environment and a BA in Fine Art (Painting and Visual Arts) from NABA. Darias has
participated in various exhibitions, among which Women Under the Sky at the Apriti
Cielo Association in Milan (2019) and Incontro # 21 Erase to Make a Mark at the Adolfo
Pini Foundation in Milan (2019). She recently won the Arte Accademia award of the
renowned DucatoPrize (2021).
Carla identifies herself mainly as a painter, but her practice is also mixed
with other techniques such as sculpture which alternates with the visual dimension.
The starting point of her images is the cultural contaminations that the artist has
always cultivated, keeping her Cuban roots physically alive while building her
environment in Italy. The artist’s travels and different perspectives have allowed
her to reinterpret symbolic worlds and study artistic intentions and practices
within different perceptions. She sees the animal world as full of symbolism
linked to nature and the organic part of terrestrial species, inseparable from her
childhood experience. A cosmos represents something beyond, which has always
attracted particular attention being out of the ordinary and regularly perceptible.
Every day is seen as something surprising and spontaneous in its encounter
with the pictorial or sculptural image. An image that can also be charged with
negativity but which, through manual work, blends with the intimate and collective
experience simultaneously. The interest in these possibilities opens up a discourse
on a practice of gaze, sensitivity and love. By defining objects and memories at
risk, connected to them, Darias carries out a transformation by not attempting to
represent or narrate such objects. Senza titolo painting refers ideally to this concept
by proposing an image that is not very recognizable, which requires a closer look to
superimpose a narration onto it. As an attachment to life and art, the pivotal point
is the resistance that information can arouse. Opening up different considerations
concerning painting as a changing material leads to an experimental act that no
longer distinguishes a sign from a body, a painting from a sculpture, but transforms
matter into pure language.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 SenzaTitolo
2020
Oil on canvas
50 x 50 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 97
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ARTIST N°43 FROM ITALY 98
GIOACCHINI FRANCESCO
Francesco Gioacchini (1985, Loreto) lives and works in Berlin. Francesco
studied editorial communication at the University of Macerata where he graduated
in 2011; he attended the summer program in life painting at the Slade School of Fine
Art in London in 2014 and in 2016 he worked on The Floating Piers, art installation
made by Christo at Iseo Lake in Italy. In 2018 he graduated for a second time,
obtaining a master’s degree in Painting with honors from the Academy of Fine
Arts of Macerata. In 2018 he presented his first solo show in Macerata, Francesco
Gioacchini. Missing Days; during the same year he was awarded with the Premio
Marche and his winning work has become part of the permanent collection of the
Pinacoteca Civica in Ascoli Piceno. In April 2019 he was selected for an Art residency
in Berlin with a final group exhibition at Green hill gallery. In 2020 he participated in
several group exhibitions in the German capital, in the UK, and he has been selected
as one of the finalists of Exibart Prize 2020. At the end of May 2021 he will be holding
his first solo show in Berlin at Prenzlauer Studio.
“My research moves between drawing, painting and installation and my
artworks are a reflection on the boundaries between painting and drawing, past and
present, self and other. Starting from references linked to art history, literature and
contemporary culture, I carry on a visual research made of collisions of meanings
and media. My works show an overlapping and stratification of different elements;
sometimes the figures are invaded and challenged by the spray that “claims” its own
space, its own presence, in other cases the image appears taped, as a reference
for a new work, in other works the painting looks like an exercise book, with notes,
scribbles and drawings. There is always a contradictory tension, a juxtaposition of
what is different, divided, separate. With a meta-painting approach, I focus on the
aesthetics of opposites, of the different, trying to create a language where such dual
elements can look at each other and merge.”
— Francesco Gioacchini
1 We used to draw on the table
(AAAAAAAAAH)
2020
Oil, felt tip pen, marker, pastel, pen and
oil stick on canvas
50 x 70 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 99
1
ARTIST N°44 FROM ITALY 100
GIORDANI SILVIA
Silvia Giordani is an Italian visual artist, based in Venice. She attended the
Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where she achieved the BD in Painting in 2015
and the MD in Visual and Contemporary Art in 2018. She has been working as an
assistant of Anatomy Drawing and Painting at the same Academy. At the moment
Silvia Giordani works in Venice, as an assistant of the artist Federica Marangoni. She
has participated in group exhibitions such as Flat Rate Contemporary’s eighth (2021),
Whatever it takes, A plus A gallery in Venice (2020) and Abstract Mind, CICA Museum
in Gimpo, South Korea (2019).
As a visual artist, Silvia Giordani works mostly with traditional oil and
acrylic painting on canvas and paper. Her practice comes from a personal need
to explore the space that surrounds her, in order to find a dimension of slow reality.
Her desire elucidates her research approach towards conceptualising mimicry
in a metaphorical state of the disorientation of the real. A particular, meticulous
combination of acrylic and oil, a play between control, precision and unrestricted
movement unfolds, it becomes evident on the pictorial surface that the artist is
conscientious with regards to the quality and potential of her medium. Natural
landscapes metamorphose into ethereal, whimsical scenes.
1 Telline
2021
Acrylic and oil on canvas
175 x 140 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 101
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ARTIST N°45 FROM ITALY 102
GODINO ERIKA
Erika Godino (b. 1993) is an Italian artist who currently
lives and works in Milan. In 2018 she obtained an MA in Fine
Art (Painting) from the Reggio Calabria Academy of Fine Arts.
Godino was the finalist of the Art Award 2018 for the Academy
Painting section held at Palazzo Reale in Milan. She was involved
in various group and solo exhibitions throughout Italy, such as
Brera Aperta at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, and Pandemic
Communication at Bookcity, Milan, in 2020 and 2021. My artistic
research is based on creating a solid visual impact on the
interlocutor. Godino aims to create a sentimental connection between her artworks
and the viewers. Through mark-making and colours, she constructs emotional
solicitation to disorient those observing the work - the reality becomes disturbed
through the unconscious of the artist’s mind. The theme of emptiness is the central
one in Erika’s research. The void is perceived not as loneliness or abandonment but as
the void that we should look for within ourselves. The artist wants us to look for inner
peace while we observe the works, immerse ourselves in colour and merge with the
piece, forgetting everything that surrounds us: thoughts, emotions, feelings, traumas,
challenges, and let go.
For Erika, the pieces describe her dream journey, and the title - Viaggio
Onirico hints at that. The artwork consists of twenty-one round canvases exhibited
alongside each other, engaged in a visual dialogue. Persistent, energetic shapes
and delicate forms painted with different shades of crimson red invade the pictorial
surface, oscillating between confusion, anxiety, disorder, loneliness and stillness.
Godino, however, wishes for the viewers to forget about her, the artist, and what she
was feeling and thinking while creating, and instead focus on themselves, go through
the process of self-rediscovery, savouring, accepting and celebrating everything that
exists within ourselves. Become disoriented, adrift, bewildered - for it is necessary
for the process of reclaiming your identity, for the acknowledgement of the self, and
embrace everything that exists within us, as well as the external circumstances.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Viaggio Onirico
2021
Mixed media on paper on a board base
Complete installation: 64 x 152 x 4 cm
Individual piece: 20 x 20 x 4 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 103
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ARTIST N°46 FROM MEXICO 104
GÓMEZ LÓPEZ ROMEO
Romeo Gómez López (1991, Mexico City) is a visual artist who works with
religion, celebrities, telenovelas, science fiction, and other pop culture references.
He is co-founder of Salón Silicón, a gallery that focuses on making visible and
disseminating the work of women artists and members of the LGBTI+ community.
In 2020 he presented “The Woke Zone” within Siembra at the kurimanzutto gallery, a
sexual puppet show performed with hyper-realistic silicone marionettes between
two pop singers. That same year he participated in the “OTRXS MUNDXS” exhibition
at the Tamayo Museum with his piece “Heteropiedra”, which criticizes the use of
stone as a representative material for a sector of heterosexual artists. In 2017 he
presented the installation “Lust of the Flesh!” in the group show “Le Gran Luxe” at the
Futurama Cultural Center, curated by Daniel Garza Usabiaga. He has had two solo
exhibitions, “I want to beliebe” (2018) at Salón Silicón and “Fantastic Voyage” (2019) at
LADRÓNgaleria. He has participated in group exhibitions in spaces such as “Artificial
Kingdoms” (2019) at the National Center for the Arts curated by PICS and “Young
Explorers Camp” (2019) at the Museum of the City of Querétaro.
Nightmarish alternate worlds contained in dioramas, puppet sex shows,
and toys, are some elements that constitute the work of Romeo Gómez López
which represents a resistance to the expectation of compulsory heterosexuality
and a personal insight which thrives on humour and pornographic imagination.
Romeo uses religion, celebrities, soap operas, science fiction and other references
of mass culture, to inject a much-needed and well-deserved dose of faggotry, thus
creating a pastiche that criticizes the conservative character that still exists within
the Mexican art scene. Romeo Gómez López creates a series of utopian chess
sets, the idea was first conceived while watching Star Trek and observing the “Tri-
Dimensional” Chess prop. The artist was intrigued by the fact that in a futuristic, sci-fi
scenario as such, the hierarchal game would remain a constant and he goes on to
create diverse versions of subversive chess sets. The colours are no longer two but
four, the players will loose track of their pieces, the architecture of multiple-platform
structure and arrangement of the pieces will not allow for one to overthrow another,
the war ceases.
1 Futuristic chess utopia
2021
Plexiglass, chess pieces, iron structure
60 x 30 x 50 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 105
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ARTIST N°47 FROM GERMANY 106
GROOT TOBIAS
Tobias Groot (he/him, Hoorn, Netherlands, 1994) is currently based in Berlin and
is working with photography, CGI and Artificial Intelligence. He received his bachelor’s
degree in Photography from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and has since exhibited
work throughout the Netherlands, while being the Photographer in Residence at the
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Groot’s digital conglomerations contend
with artificial intelligence and humans’ fleshy embodied experience. Capturing nonexistent
worlds without real people. applying physical experiences onto virtual bodies.
Tobias Groot digitally simulates intimate scenarios, human flesh takes on a
newfound 3D-animated quality as the artist explores relations and physical closeness
during a time when individuals exist and interact in the virtual space. Computergenerated
unearthly bodies float and intertwine in video loops, they split into liquid
forms in a way that is anatomically impossible, as Groot researches the ways in which
one can experience sexuality in a post-human, non-physical space. Through glitching
abstract matter visuals and uncomfortable the manoeuvring of shape-shifter beings,
the artist demonstrates his interest towards depicting carnality in the cyber age. A
glimpse from the artist’s latest mixed media project, First, they gave me bones (2021),
a dyptich of two prints on aluminium, opening up at times and unveiling the cold
metal underneath. The borders between the material and the virtual worlds become
thinner as the digital image becomes tangible and is brought into physical space.
Scratching the Surface (2019) “centers around a science-fiction narrative of a
humanless future” (Tobias Groot). While creating the piece, the artist had been teaching
an algorithm how to imitate his own writing, the scrolling text an unintentionally
encrypted compilation of personal diary entries — AI poetry. Behind these words,
a one-take scene of the digital rubber-like skin as it crumbles and moves, almost
recognizable. Familiar surfaces and shapes, faces and body parts are deconstructed,
ever-transforming, in an attempt to define an incorporeal state of being.
— Paola Shiamtani
1 Scratching the Surface
2019
Video
16’
REA ART FAIR! 2021 107
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ARTIST N°48 FROM ITALY 108
GUARNERI DUCCIO
“There is no movement without rhythm”. Malinke Proverb
Duccio Guarneri (b. 1994) is an Italian artist who lives and works between
Cremona and Brescia. He holds a BA in Artistic Decoration from the Santa Giulia
Academy of Fine Arts and is currently studying for an MA in Contemporary Visual Arts.
Guarneri’s artistic research draws inspiration from scenography and theatre,
influencing his visual poetics. This allows him to broaden his vision and start from
the medium itself. For Duccio, the framework is limiting and linked to the concept of
finite and static – he creates dimensions in which the viewer is invited to enjoy the
work by engaging multiple senses, not just sight. The scenario he intends to explore
through his work comes from the memory of a place that he defines as the preplace:
“neologism indicates the archetypal dimension of the rarefied and enveloping
entity, the fruit of the union between figuration and the evanescence of the dream.
Within this dimension, there are two components, a pro scenic and a scenic, figure
and landscape: they are two very distinct realities, each of them residing within the
universe of the work.” In Subsidence, the artist is interested in directly involving the
Observer by presenting an environmental installation work consisting of a modular
PVC pipe with speakers placed on the inside. Guarneri says: “The work is changeable,
it changes shape and dimensions according to space at its disposal, thus becoming
a dynamic work, engaged in everlasting movement and search for the involvement
of the sensitive spheres of sight, touch, hearing. A movement is an unpredictable
event, as well as sound and rhythm. These elements make up our days. You do not
know what will happen, nor where you will go. The current carries you. A metaphor
for all this is an intricate line of tubes, the same ones we use to build the ramifications
underground, usually invisible to the eye, just like our cognitive process. [The speakers]
reproduce different sounds: percussion, drums, train whistles, subway, sampled
noises, mixed to create a concerto of rhythms that converge in a meta Symphony,
creating a sequence of sounds as well as silences.”
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Subsidence
2020
PVC, speakers
H150 x W150 x D100 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 109
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ARTIST N°49 FROM RUSSIA 110
GUKUN ALEXANDER
Alexander Gukun (b. 2006) is a Russian artist who lives and works in
Moscow. The installation piece entitled Physical Soul is a debut for Gukin; the
complexity, profundity and intensity of thought behind the artwork have impressed
me deeply. Physical Soul is an interactive art therapy installation. The exhibit consists
of multiple elements, the central one being a pair of trousers and a t-shirt sewn
together, instantly referring to a human figure, and in fact, the artwork represents the
human Soul. Seemingly bright and colourful on the outside with its watermelon pink
and indigo blue, the longer I study it, the more inconsistencies I notice regarding that
supposedly cheerful figure. Not only is the body asymmetrical, once taken a closer
look, but we also notice the unevenness of embroidery, breaking and creasing; the
inscriptions that read entrance and no exit, instinctively, I’m looking for the word exit
that is nowhere to be seen and so I’m trapped, without even realising it, inside the
sewn lines. The feeling of entrapment, perhaps due to the colours used by Alexander,
reminds me of the same sensation of being captured when looking at Peter Halley’s
paintings.
Physical body is each and every one of us. How many of us are being
conditioned by and are suffering from past traumas, limitations imposed on our
identities by society, or simply drowning in everyday struggles - keeping all those
inside ourselves, being slowly eaten by anxiety, pain and dissatisfaction? The artist
wants us to interact with the installation by releasing some harmful thoughts by
writing what’s bothering, hurting, or simply anything one wants to share but doesn’t
yet dare to - on blank sheets of paper placed next to the figure. Write it. Release it
from within yourself. Drop it inside the figure. And if you aren’t sure yet, slide your
hand inside and get a feel of what’s there - you shall discover the notes others have
disposed of, some are simply crumpled, some are tied with colourful threads, and
some are poked with needles - these represent childhood grievances and unresolved
psychological trauma. Occasionally you’ll come across several clear boxes containing
sparkles and various charms - these represent the good memories - unfortunately,
amidst the overwhelming majority of the rest of the notes, these boxes are practically
unnoticeable.
Write.
Release.
Drop.
I know I will.
I wouldn’t be able to put it better than Alexander did: This exhibit can be filled until it
cracks at the seams, but it is better to break an artwork than your Soul from the inside.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Physical Soul
Interactive installation
Variable dimensions
REA ART FAIR! 2021 111
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ARTIST N°50 FROM ITALY 112
GURGONE CAMILLA
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 113
Camilla Gurgone (b. 1997) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Rome. In
2020 she obtained a BA in Fine Art (Sculpture) from RUFA University in Rome. Before
receiving her degree, Gurgone undertook a thesis research work at UPV / EHU in
Bilbao, where she won the BilbaoArte GRANTS residency, curated by Juan Zapater.
Her research revolves around the limits and paradoxes linked to society, crises, and
diversities that we encounter through environments and familiar places. During her
studies, Camilla was involved in numerous initiatives, workshops and exhibitions,
winning the Rome Jaguart roadshow in 2020 organised by Artissima and Jaguar Italia.
She is currently working on multiple projects together with galleries and associations
in Northern and Central Italy.
Accidents, breakdowns, sudden pipe breakages and water leaks - these
are neither accidental nor symptomatic explosions of the often remote but recurring
events that destabilise our daily routines within the safe space that is our home.
Faced with this complexity, made up of small things that suddenly become huge, the
artist, in her two sculptures Pronto, fa Acqua da Tutte le Parte and Fix the Leaky Faucet,
Please from the larger Problemi di Idraulica installation, suddenly becomes a resolute
worker, throws herself headlong into this chaos and illustrates an extensive field of
issues. Impersonating respectable and useful professions, she takes the consolidated
practice of assimilation, simultaneously deforming, through the transgressive use
of this possession, the bourgeois and the official status of the same, common
patrimony of the same subjects struggling with their ego. Against the cliché that
being an artist is not a serious job, this sprawling and camouflage takes on a playful
and at the same time corrosive aspect. In this fictional game, where problems are
turned over, the viewer is invited to participate, to make an aesthetic experience out
of this dysfunctionality that has exploded formally and conceptually. This creates a
short circuit that complicates the relationship between reality and fiction, creating a
plot for the exchange and, through a wide range of implications – captures within the
installation the stereotypes and prejudices, trivia and vulgarity.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova and Mattia Cucurullo
1 Fix the leaky faucet, please
2021
Wood, microfiber mats, glass,
brass tap, painted plaster
H120 x W49 x D55 cm
ARTIST N°51 FROM SWITZERLAND 114
HARLACHER LUCA
Luca Harlacher (b. 1993) is a Swiss artist who lives and works between Zurich
and Winterthur holding a BA in Fine Art. His works demonstrate a playful approach
to the abundance, fuelled by the accessibility of the internet that we are surrounded
by every day: thoughts streams, sensory impressions - some stored, others forgotten
- we are showered with imagery and become overloaded by it. Harlacher processes
those impulses through his works and creates connections between them, triggering
movements, thus providing the chaos that exists externally and within a new form. His
source materials derive from all places imaginable: he works with consumer and found
objects, childhood memories, everyday life impressions, the internet as well as fantasy
elements that range from figurative and clear to those abstract. All those act as an
alphabet in his artistic language.
As Luca puts it: Their colourful, often trashy exterior make my nested worlds
initially accessible, but they simultaneously and repeatedly refer to the problematic
aspects of our time. The mixed media paintings presented at the Fair - Tinkering Models,
Then Forget the Rules and Climbing up to the Flying Gifts are accompanied by the Le
Chiffonnier’s Magic Tower sculpture. The works are an explosion of colours, shapes,
symbols, textures, and seemingly random imagery - there’s something for everyone.
Goats, umbrellas, castles, scales, faces... I’m simultaneously intrigued, confused,
excited, curious, and overwhelmed by examining the works’ surfaces. The paintings are
consuming, and I can’t take my gaze off them, as every time my eye wanders around
the pictorial surface, I notice more and more details. The works make me feel joyful,
playful, child-like - everything about them is tasty, perhaps due to the colours that
the artist works with; I want to interact with, touch them and feel the various textures
present. According to recent studies, the average time a person spends looking at a
piece of art in an exhibition space is between fifteen and thirty seconds. I firmly believe
that Harlacher’s pieces will enchant you for a significantly more considerable amount
of time.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Tinkering models, then forget the rules
2021
Mixed media on canvas
105 x 130 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 115
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ARTIST N°52 FROM USA 116
HAUGE LAUREL
Laurel Hauge (b. 1994) is an American artist and writer who lives and works in
Milan. She holds a BA in Fine Art, as well as being a co-founder, together with her partner
Lele Buonerba, of Have a Nice Day Press which develops editorial projects around
artists’ work related to current Internet culture. In 2020 Hauge exhibited the installation
I think about / all the things I could reach / before you a North Pole Exhibitions in
Chicago, while in 2016, she took part in a show with All These Things at Bowtruss-Pilsen
in Chicago. In 2018 she participated in the Endless Editions Biennial: Optimism project,
curated by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project
Space, New York. Laurel has an intense fascination with the aesthetics of objects and
devices developed and created according to their function rather than their shape. In
this sense, she was influenced by her own professional experiences. For some time,
the artist had collaborated with and assisted artists in the production and construction
of the works. This allowed her to think about the development and birth of an object,
particularly a work of art, its statute and its specific setup needs. The tasks, gestures,
and equipment make up the basis for the simplest acts, such as hand movement when
dividing something in two. Hauge studies the aspects that are often taken for granted in
the production and display of objects. Her practice includes various techniques ranging
from photography to video and performance, but her most intimate works - which
focus on themes from her personal experiences - are often made in writing through
exploring a narrative. Part of this is the video installation which tells a particular moment
in Laurel’s life through an impersonal and robotic voice.
The images of the ocean and seas between New York and the Italian coasts
collected by Google Earth, combined with the mechanical narrative, dwell on the
feelings of displacement, separation and uncertainty that she experienced during the
year and a half in which she had lived in New York. The glitch, the low resolution and
the difficulty in discerning monochrome images reflect the many complexities that the
relationship between the artist and her partner had to face over the long distance.
Although the work comes from a personal experience, it opens a broader discourse on
the mediation of the internet and its instrumentalisation for relationships, without which
certain emotional situations could not exist. Despite this, the video’s content grieves
about the loss of contact and visceral interaction, which transcends the perception of
the incompleteness of the experience.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Hauge Laurel
I think about all the things I could reach before you
2020
Single-channel video
2’52”
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ARTIST N°53 FROM FRANCE 118
HOLST SEVANA
Sevana Holst is a French-American writer and visual poet. She studied History
at the Sorbonne and Persian Studies at the INALCO (language research institute),
starting her professional life as an independent translator and writer (collaborating on
theatres and artists in Paris).
Her work focuses on exploring the limits and aesthetics of language through
visual and concrete poetry (taking inspiration from other female visible and tangible
poets, such as Susan Howe, Paula Claire, Giulia Niccolai...). Through her work, she
combines both visual and literary realms in search of a complete desacralization
of both the text and the image. She is based in Paris, France. Bribes et essais is a
long-form piece created with an Olivetti studio 44 typewriter, on upcycled granulated
paper, from an old iconographer workshop in Paris. It is an evolutive reflection on
Time and the Self that exists through a continuum of experts of poems and thoughts
written by the artist- a patchwork stream of consciousness. The letters are woven
together on the page, mirroring the written themes through their physical form and
structure. Here, the literary and visual realms work together to desacralize the text and
the image whilst adding layers of meaning to the page.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1
1-2 Untitled 2
2020
Mixed media
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ARTIST N°54 FROM SWITZERLAND 120
IKUM BASIL
Basil Ikum (1998, Switzerland) lives and works in Basel / Bern. He is currently
developing his practice and studying Fine Arts at Institut Kunst, Hochschule für
Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW, Basel. Basil Ikum has participated in group exhibitions
at; the Nomad Design & Lifestyle Hotel Basel (May 2021) and Alte Schreinerei
Bern (December 2020). In his work, Basil Ikum explores the relation of art and
consumerism and the ordinariness of branding that surrounds him in every-day life.
Ikum Basil paints in a fast-paced, spontaneous manner, using a combination
of different materials such as acrylic paint, spray paint and oil-pastels. Through
typography and decontextualisation of visual advertising the artist tampers with
widely recognisable logos and forms in a humorous way, twisting words. Tension
is generated between the elements on the pictorial surface as Ikum intuitively adds
strokes of colour and unrefined, playful outlines to the compositions in order to
suggest the presence of an item for instance. Basil Ikum also often directly paints
onto found objects whether those are abandoned paintings, carpets or wooden
pallets, contaminating and transfiguring them; a process which allows for the artist
to reflect upon their own impulsive activity, creative decisions and aesthetic purpose.
A game between opaque, semi-transparent and transparent layers tests the viewer’s
gaze and calls for them to question their own perception of the fragmented icons,
symbols and marks. Ikum’s installative interventions bring the domestic yet also the
suburban and the outdoors into the exhibition space, meddling with contemporary
society’s preconceived notions of artworks as opposed to commodities, he
repurposes and depicts mundane objects in unconventional manners in order
to build an environment of genuine contemplation — a disruption of compulsive
consumerist behaviour.
1 IKUM 2021
2021
Spraypaint, acrylic and marker on shower curtain
180 x 200 cm
Ikum Basil
Abstract neon series
2021
Spraypaint, acrylic, marker and pencil on canvas,
each is 60 x 80 cm
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ARTIST N°55 FROM FRANCE 122
INCULTE REJETON
inculte-rejeton (b. 1986) is a French multidisciplinary artist holding a BA in
Fine Art who lives and works in Milan. His artistic practice starts from the observation
of what is tangible by acquiring data that he then combines and transforms, creating
other possible realities synthesized through the use of different mediums. Behind
inculte-rejon’s research lies the questioning of what we perceive and consider
indisputably true, questioning everything: “what is behind what we see?”. Through
his art, he invites us to reflect on a philosophy of science that leads to a renewed
consideration of matter and spirit, time and space.
The artist’s vision is mainly focused on taking the scientific and the
philosophical concerning the reality - corroborating the idea that our world is
reduced to the mere representation of what we perceive, based on the doctrines and
physical characteristics of quantum mechanics - such as those theorized by Jean-
Émile Charon and Bernard d’Espagnat - and building bridges with various concepts
related to those principles. He then deals with abstruse, turning to art, as it acts as a
metaphysical thought that allows him to bypass conventional understanding: gravity
no longer exists, objects become animated, and bodies are deformed. This exercise
of thought leads inculte-rejon to realize real visual allegories, sometimes sarcastic,
often close to the fantasy film with the primary purpose of provoking and dispelling
our previous convictions. An example of the reflections he poses and addresses the
viewer is found in the ballpoint pen drawing entitled Drifting Fantasies. The artist says:
“This work inspires the happiness of completed research. But is it a man linked to
his audacity or the desire to embark? What is the other’s perspective? Where is he
going after achieving his goal? Is this result at least real or a fantasy or the trick of a
mirage?”. The point of view that led to the realization of the Inner Horizon is fascinating:
“From the stoic point of view, the world is made up of a mutual interweaving of all its
elements. The lungs breathe oxygen atoms while the wind blows through the lungs.
So, everything is in everything, crossed by one breath - pneuma. In that case, a fish
lives as much in its vessel as the latter lodges its contents in the animal. Is our identity
in perpetual motion? Does it make sense to define a personality when a universal
dynamic drives it?”
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Drifting fantasies
2020
Ballpen on Bristol paper
65 x 50 cm
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ARTIST N°56 FROM ITALY 124
ITALIANO ANGELA
Angela Italiano (b. 1996) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Cortina
D’Ampezzo. She holds a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from the Venice Academy of Fine
Arts. Aside from being an artist, Italiano also works as a multidisciplinary art teacher
at the Liceo Artistico. My artistic research focuses on the analysis of the landscape
and the investigation of the interdependent phenomena of Catastrophe and its
creation. Angela begins by studying and reinterpreting the underlying constituent
elements of the landscape, reflecting on the symbolism loaded within it, to then
radicalise the point of view on the primaeval dimension. As she breaks down each
element, the process of disintegration itself becomes the focus of each artwork’s
journey, seeking the essence of the transcendent bond between Man and Nature.
Her research takes a particular look at the concept of footprint; a visual narrative
becomes apparent, and it invites an awareness of the importance of guarding the
wonder that emanates all that surrounds us, enhances its fragility, therefore creating
the need to protect it.
The artistic project entitled The Last Breath analyses the ongoing metamorphosis
of nature through the emblematic element of Fire. For the Fair, the artist presents
two paintings from this series - The Last Breath 2 and 3 - one engulfed by raging
Fire, perfectly captured with its amber oranges and marigold yellows; the other,
perhaps its consequence - raven black, resembling coal - burned to the ground, still
and lifeless. Through visual storytelling, the viewers are confronted with the environmental
consequences of human behaviour. The works draw inspiration from recent
catastrophic events such as the fires in the Amazon, Yosemite and California and foreshadow
a future where a man prevails irretrievably over other forms of life. The Last
Breath invites reflection and an awareness that pushes us to protect nature and its
fragility to cure and guard the wonders of our world.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 The Last Breath 2
2021
Oil on canvas
120 x 90 cm
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ARTIST N°57 FROM UNITED KINGDOM 126
KING SAM
Sam King (b.1995) is a British artist who lives and works in London. He holds
a BA in Fine Art from The Art Academy in London, where he developed technical
skills and formed the conceptual basis of his artistic research. Sam received various
awards, including The Jorge-Aguilar Artist Award and the Liberty Art Award in 2019 and
in 2020, he was shortlisted for the ACS Studio Prize. Since 2018 he has participated in a
series of group exhibitions in Asia and Europe.
Through his artistic practice, King investigates the subjectivity embodied in
the digital age, highlighting the contradictions of living and contemporary experience
characterized by the dispersion of identity between the physical and the digital
world. We find the basis of this research in the exploration of the human condition
in time aimed at disrupting the notions of identity: those built-in and imposed by
the society, to find a connection to the primordial with the self: “The resulting work
deals with universal concepts of creation and destruction, to be or not to be, fullness
and nothing [...] Addressing the issues of being, spirituality, mortality and incarnation,
he strips the physical boundaries of the body, to reveal it as the active place where
meaning is produced” – the Flux Review. Interested in the idea of removal to achieve
incomplete and transient states, along with the classic oil painting technique, the
artist uses various creative and destructive processes, including kneading, burning,
cutting and dragging to alter and change the figure and surface. The main subject
of his compositions is the body, painted with the combination of historical art
techniques - such as chiaroscuro and dramatic composition - and digital distortion;
he uses different material processes to address a monolithic representation of
corporeity. “My latest series, of which Pietas is part, combines traditional oil painting
with airbrushed fades to form a dialogue between past and present: the authentic and
coherent narrative of the flat and glossy aesthetics of the digital screen together with
the fragmentary experience of consumerism. My work elicits contradictory sensory
and emotional responses to reveal the contingent nature of incarnation and the
subversive possibilities of representation. By synthesizing alternative interpretations
of the body, my practice aims to transgress the experiential boundaries imposed by
contemporary culture”.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Pietas
2020
Oil on canvas
147 x 100 cm
1
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ARTIST N°58 FROM AUSTRALIA 128
LENNON OLIVIA CONCETTA
Olivia Lennon Concetta (b. 1988) is an Australian artist who lives and works
in Berlin. She graduated from the National Art School in Sydney in 2010, and then
started her career as an artist, taking part in numerous exhibitions in Australia, the
United States, Germany, and France, including the Los Angeles Centre for Digital Art,
Los Angeles, U. S. A.; Vzor Studio with Neuköllner Produktion, Berlin, Germany, and
Exgirlfriend Gallery in Berlin, Germany.
Lennon’s research has recently shifted to issues of political importance,
focusing on the necropolitics of the European Mediterranean border. Her last work
starts with evidence that most of the marble extracted in Europe comes from today’s
same areas, the western frontiers, and not the West itself. The same places where
many people die daily in the hope of crossing that border and reaching everything
that Europe represents. Olivia, through a series of visual references, introduces us to a
reality that is still little known, for example, the patrolling of the maritime boundaries,
which are exercised in a way that is as sophisticated and deadly as, for example, ships
and surveillance drones that are way out of legal obligation in international maritime
law to directly save a person who is drowning - because a drone can not board the
passengers. Using marble shapes and colours, the Borderstone watercolour series
investigates a series of blocking elements, barricades and surveillance tools to
criticise new practices and contemporary technologies used at EU borders in the
context of the continent’s growing ethnic-nationalist politics. Marble thus becomes
synonymous with a hardness no longer of extreme charm but becomes solid and
hard body due to the constriction and destruction of the same places from which it
comes. Her research is not limited to a visual investigation. The artist uses watercolour
to create images, with multiple and meticulous details created through a long and
painstaking process made of many layers of watercolour. This process helps her
interpret the ideas built on paper to have a longer and more careful time of reflection
and study than the argument that will be suggested. Lennon always makes use of
this technique to conceive of works of different nature and with other interests, with
constant attention to details and using long periods on one topic at a time, in such a
manner as to be able to enter, with the gesture and the sign, in the different layers that
a study requires.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Drone (A Continuous low Humming Sound
/ a Male bee in a Colony of Social Bees,
Which Does no Work but can Fertilize a
Queen)’
2019
Watercolour and graphite on rag paper
50 x 70 cm
2 Obelisk (A tapering Stone Pillar, set up as a
Monument or Landmark)
2019
Watercolour and graphite on rag paper
50 x 70 cm
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2
ARTIST N°59 FROM ITALY 130
LOCATELLI GIULIO
1
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Giulio Locatelli (b. 1993) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Bergamo.
He holds an MA in Fine Art (Painting) from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. In 2020
Locatelli participated in several awards and group exhibitions: Think BIG! curated by
Francesca Canfora in Turin and Extroversions curated by Ghiggini Arte in Varese. In 2021
he participated in the group exhibitions MINIARTEXTIL curated by Paolo Bolpagni, Sonia
D’Alto, Giovanni Berera and Festina Stonata curated by Luogo. Giulio was among the
finalists of the COMBAT Prize, Laguna Art Prize, and the Nocivelli Prize curated by Ilaria
Mariotti and the YICCA Award curated by The Rivoli 2 Association.
His artistic research is based on wire and paper, used as a tool of analysis
and reflection and the basic materials of his works. The images that emerge desire to
create visions of the world that are not reduced to known places and spaces but allow
glimpses of ghostly and changing forms. The artist says: “The reflection starts from the
English term landscape, as this term speaks of lands and escape, of a space in which to
get lost and escape, with the anxiety of overcoming the finitude of borders and places
of the collective imagination. Driven by the desire to cross and contaminate that limit
that arises between the languages of painting and sculpture, The Wire has thus given
life to indeterminate forms, open to different connections that through the wire are
given shape. Filaments, skeins, knots and tangles that become symbols of relationships,
friendships and awareness”. Aspects that are persistent in his works are accumulation,
storage and sediment that we also find in the Il Libro Delle Seppie made from a series
of sheets of handmade paper, stacked and sewn together – plain paper, yet they are
rich in marks and scratches so perfectly legible, that we read in them the encounters,
moods, stages, kilometres. This work was born from a reflection on the Japanese word
tsundoku - a word used to indicate the practice of buying books, leaving them on the
shelf and never reading them: however, the work is presented as a book only in form
and not in the function, the wires make the text utterly inaccessible by denying the
possibility of reading. The artist asks us to trust the artwork in the same way that the
pilgrim puts trust towards the journey yet to be made.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Il libro delle seppie
2020
Paper and thread
H26 x W50 x D26 cm
ARTIST N°60 FROM ITALY 132
LONGA MARTA
Marta Longa (b. 1995) is an Italian artist who lives and works between Milan
and Erba. She holds an MA in Fine Art (Sculpture) from the Brera Academy of Fine
Arts. I constantly look for new narratives, for a language I can speak to the viewer in,
project my view of the world, and make one see beyond what already exists in one’s
mind. Longa is looking for the tension that pushes us forward, to examine the things
from the inside; she is interested in the concept of space and its possibilities. The
gestures used in her artworks are soft, delicate and fragile; they reside within small
intimate spaces - we as viewers recognise that those are special, cherished places
and are compelled, quite naturally, to treat them the way they’re supposed to - with
quiet fascination. We relate to the artworks through the parallel they create between
that intimate, fragile space within us that we all have. Lately, the concept of responseability,
developed by Donna Haraway - an American philosopher and professor -
became central in Marta’s practice. As Haraway puts it: Response-ability is about both
absence and presence, killing and nurturing, living and dying - and remembering who
lives and who dies.
The artist interprets it as a commitment to be present within the process
achieved through cultivation and taking care of something; she believes that the
construction and reconstruction of opening up the vast field of relationships between
ourselves and the things around us are within our capacity. Ricucio (Ferite Aperte) is
a sculptural wall installation consisting of twelve dried sage leaves sown with cotton
threads. Longa uses shades of the forest, olive and hunter green, to accentuate the
openings that naturally occurred inside the slightly faded sage leaves. The artwork title
suggests those be open wounds, and the artist to be sowing them shut, or perhaps
merely making them evident enough for us and the others to notice them and treat
us with care?
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 (Ricucio) Ferite aperte
2021
Dried sage, cotton threads
Installation takes up 30 x 35 cm
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1
CATALOGUE
134
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135
Art is
the new
sexy.
3/5
ARTIST N°61 FROM ITALY 136
LUZI ANDREA
He was born on 8 October 1997 in Ancona. He works and lives between
Urbino and Filottrano. Graduated in 2017 from the Edgardo Mannucci Art High School
in Jesi, the interest was mainly directed towards music, improvisation, drawing, and
wall painting, and consequently, an interest in painting on canvas also arrived. He
attended the three-year course of decoration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino,
while now he is attending editions and illustrations for graphic art for the master’s
degree in the same academy. In 2019 the Hardchitepture installation writing project
was born, composed by Lorenzo Conforti and Vittorio Zeppillo, guys from the Marche
underground. In 2020 his first publication, “Coding of a wild style: Insights in the sign
and the tache”, is released, a collection of drawings on paper.
The proposed images appear to be an iconographic mix; through an
aesthetic of the VS, The artist offers suggestive battles between iconographies
(both from the football and musical world) through the eye of the video game, thus
highlighting an ironic tragedy. At first glance, the image may be poster-like, flat, but as
it approaches, it reveals itself in its not well-defined acid stratification that occupies
foggy, hazy spaces. Andrea involves us in a discontinuous vision, in a continuous
rethinking of matter, transporting us to impromptu architectures dictated mainly
through improvisation, the painting. As soon as it is completed, it becomes the trigger
for the next one. This attention to his creative process, which is shown and revealed in
all its phases, derives from a strong influence of the patchanka culture, where results
and stimuli are continually renewed and rethought. Andrea is a first-person witness
of collective activities, everyday experiences where the creative act is made up and
shared by several people. In this regard, it is essential to underline his participation in
the Hardchitepture installation writing project, founded in recent years with Lorenzo
Conforti and Vittorio Zeppillo. The collective of Marche artists is engaged in translation
of the basic principles of graffiti in environmental installations, sculptures (usually in
situ) of an underground character composed of discarded objects, rubbish, ready to
change through colour combinations and interventions. - Alberto Rota
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 Framed 50 x 70 cm
2021
Oil, acrylic and spray paint on canvas
90 x 80cm
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ARTIST N°62 FROM BRAZIL, ESPANA 138
MACHADO LUAN
Born in Curitiba (Brazil), he began his research in Butoh at the University of Arts
of Paraná (2012) where there he presented his first butoh solo “RUSS” (inspired by the
trilogy of Kazuo Ohno, “My Mother”) in theaters, abandoned spaces, festivals, shows,
on the streets and in unconventional spaces. Danced with Zé do Caixão (famous film
director of horror films) in 2014 in the video “Maldito -Zé do Caixão” in Brazil. He started
training Butoh Public Classes at the MAM (Modern Art Museum, Rio de Janeiro) in 2014,
where he teached for 5 years there. Until now he teaches Butoh doing workshops
mixing with video dances lessons and productions. In 2015, he danced butoh in New
York with interventions and presentations of solos by the public spaces of the city,
where he created his second solo, SAINT MARIA; a solo that he performs only in
cemeteries. This work was performed in Queens-NYC, Brazil, Père Lachaise-Paris and
Barcelona (2016), Milan (2019).In 2020 he was at Butoh Festival Amsterdam performing
his solo “DEAD ZONE’’ and “RUSS” and at Mandala Performance Festival in Poland
performing “I’M NOT A ROBOT”.
A lipsing operetta from the butoh-queer universe. The colorful flag that
defends the difference, the body violated by the prejudices of society is printed in
words and gestures on the scene. A contemporary remix of the noises of technology
shot from dating apps, pop music, the performer’s authoritative voice in electronic
beats coming from the dance floor where voguing, glamor-trash, the exacerbation
of symbols inhabiting the POSE aesthetic. The world’s contradiction in categorizing
the body (which is free) in formats set by the standards imposed by advertising,
commercials and the appeal to the beautiful. This work is a satire of the beautiful,
the perfection that does not exist, the exploded illusion, sodoma-gomorra clubber,
the state of war in belonging and being in the tedious world that employs the regular.
This colored and melted body purges the salt from the earth, the invocation of the
demons that were once violated by the oppression that silenced and today takes
this body and is represented by shadows and shapeless forms. With its essence
butoh; dance created in postwar Japan that expresses pain, Hiroshima bomb, chaos,
hope, fetus-body and disillusionment in poetry, meets the hysterical queer universe
crammed with glitter and accessories, transforms the body of the performer in a
ghostly and erotic ritual, the grotesque peep-show of distorted sensuality. The story
of this body that dances comes from the tropical lands, imbued with an indigenous
and black ancestry, when dancing, invokes its ancestors who already suffered with
the exploration of the body, the migration of relatives across the continents add to
the impulses and movements, sometimes choreographed, sometimes reverberated
through space, passing through the Artaudian body through the elements of
illumination and somnoplasty, make this body a dark and fun possession.
— Text by Pelin Zeyticni
1 I’M NOT A ROBOT
Performance
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 139
ARTIST N°63 FROM FRANCE 140
MARQUES FABIEN
Fabien Marques (1982) is a French visual artist based in Udine, Italy. He
gained his MA Visual Arts at Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design
after completing a BA (Hons) Fine Art Photography at the Glasgow School of Art.
His artworks have been shown in the context of numerous exhibitions and festivals
such as the Copenhagen Photo Festival and the Glasgow Festival for Visual Arts. He
has taken part in exhibitions, among others at Galerie CC in Malmö, Sweden, and
Salon de Montrouge. He has has been recently a finalist for Foundation Francesco
Fabbri Prize for contemporary photography. Fabien Marques is a visiting lecturer at
Lille University, France and a member of AWI, Art Workers Italia.
The photographic image is central to the practice of Fabien Marques. His
works often stem from historical and scientific investigations and usually, explore
territories marked by invisible stories. From intensive research, he reconstructs
a constellation of iconographic and textual elements that illuminate and recontextualize
historical or particular events.
The Distinctions is a research-based project exploring our understanding
and acceptance of novelty through food, colour, and daily practices. It starts
from the artist’s visit to the Porta Palazzo farmer market in Turin in June 2018 and
his discovery of Momordica Charantia: a South American and Asian fruit known
as Bitter Gourd, which became a staple in the stalls of the Chinese vendors. The
indigenous vegetable is taken as the symbolic embodiment of the foreign as a
transient state: what is the ‘exotic’? How long does it take for the ‘exotic’ to become
normalised? Using the photograph of Bitter Gourd as a source for extracting its
colours, the artist developed a series of artworks influenced by colour perception.
Through the interaction between photographic documentation and physical
objects, this work delves into the cultural habit of incorporating exoticism into
everyday life and challenges our way of experiencing colour and our visual culture’s
defining standards. The research project is named after Pierre Bourdieu’s book
“La distinction: critique sociale du jugement, which addresses the socio-cultural
processes of developing taste. The Distinctions has been initiated in Turin, within the
residency studio program at Cripta747, with the help of Alliance Française.
1 The Distinctions
2019-2020
Installation
Variable dimensions
Photo credit: Alessandro Ruzzier 1
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ARTIST N°64 FROM ITALY 142
MATTIA GIORGIO
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Giorgio Mattia (b. 1997) is an Italian artist who lives and works between Rome
and Milan. He holds a BA in Fine Art (Painting and Visual Arts) from NABA. He took part
in various exhibitions, including Broken Falls of the Angels - the fourth exhibition of the
cycle “Incontri” – at Studio Rouge in Milan and Erase to Mark at the Fondazione Pini in
Milan - both of 2019.
Giorgio’s research examines the concept of sacred from different points of
view; one linked more to the actual artistic practice – taking into account this theme
within the language of Contemporary Art – the other with a philosophical imprint for
which he analyzes the term itself expanding its meaning. This process has led him
to identify an idea of the sacred no longer as something exclusively transcendental
that is above the world but reconsidering it in immanent terms and then within the
world, as this is the only field of investigation available. Mattia says: “The reflection
on language has been and is inexorable within my research, which evolves even
living in a metalinguistic state, retreating to itself and reflecting on its dynamics. So it
would be fair to say that my practice lives in a dichotomy between a conscious and
unconscious state, natural feeling and reflection on how it was made to feel, between
vision and cognition. Inexorable is the reflection on the role of art, on the role of my art,
which as already mentioned starts thinking about its ways and seeks its possibilities”.
The Viandanti series consists of five small drawings made in pencil and placed on
shelves made with different materials using various techniques. Taken from images
from his archive, the artist reworks them through the unconscious juxtaposition of
elements. This process has created a generated sense and not a prerequisite for an
open narrative in which all individual elements participate simultaneously and are
inextricably linked. Once again, Mattia explains perfectly the meaning of his research:
“The passage of the drawing becomes essential, and through the loss of formal
information, you may disclose, with more force, its nature within the image. It can now
become defined as pre-theoretical, therefore not orally explicable, but only through
a direct emanation. In these drawings, I then look for something that in a sense is
behind the image.”
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Viandanti
2021
Pencil on paper, wood, metal, cardboard,
strings, ceramics, plastic
25 x 100 x 10 cm
ARTIST N°65 FROM ITALY 144
MINELLI ILARIA
Ilaria Minelli (b. 1995) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Bologna. She
holds a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts and an MA
in Visual Arts, focusing on installation techniques, sculpture, video, and photography.
Since 2016, Minelli has taken part in various group and solo exhibitions. In 2019 she
performed in Prospect < E V A > by Michele Rizzo and Billy Bultheel, during the Live Arts
Week VIII; a solo show P420 in Bologna Armerìa, curated by Alberto Ceresoli and Vaku
Project Space in Bergamo; CASAMATTA Discontinuity curated by Valentina Baldelli
and Simone Giacomoni at Fano and Sexxx & Pop, curated by Pier Giorgio Carizzoni at
Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan in 2020.
Minelli’s commitment and involvement in educational and social projects
made her reflect on the political message that her works can convey and transmit,
implying that the personal is profoundly political and meaningful, as we as humans
are social and therefore culturally conditioned. This awareness was gradually formed
until she grew to prefer the liberal interpretation of her last series of works. The
observer must not feel bound to a pre-established meaning, but his thought must be
born through direct comparison, thus giving life to personal elaborations generating
a constructive dialogue around and with the work itself. Ilaria’s compositions are
often an overlap of opposing materials and aesthetics. This aspect of her practice is
evident in the Armerìa series in which the artist applies pink ostrich feathers to the
blades of potentially dangerous objects from different contexts – cooking, gardening,
collecting and crafts. Feathers have the function of censoring danger by giving it a
different meaning and an aesthetic of fetish. For the artist: “This opens a reflection on
contemporary society; the work focuses on the disproportionate use of violence to
the point of becoming itself a fetish for humanity.” The act of neutralization makes the
weapons almost harmless, making the work assume an ironically political position,
in which the objects become extensions of gestures made harmless through the
materials and the colour.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Armerìa
2018-2021
Mixed media
Variable dimensions
REA ART FAIR! 2021 145
The work mostly
revolves around the
disproportionate use
of violence, to the
point that violence
itself becomes a
1
fetish of humanity.
ARTIST N°66 FROM ITALY 146
MIOTTO ILARIA
Ilaria Miotto (b. 1995) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Venice. She
holds a BA in Fine Art (Visual and Performing Arts) from the Venice Academy of
Fine Arts; Miotto is currently studying for an MA at the same Academy. In 2020 she
participated in the artist residency in Gad, Venetian Foundation, and later took part
in a group exhibition organised by the foundation. Each work represents a mental
dimension consisting of edges and unidentified fragments of almost organic memory.
The purpose of Miotto’s artworks is to alter memories; she is particularly interested in
the concept of the metamorphosis of identity - of changing from one state to another.
Mental states and memories re-emerge, evolving from the state of passivity to a
state of malignant depravity through trauma and injury and manifest themselves
in a cathartic process, in the form of scars and malformations. The layering and
stratification of various materials, which we see in the presented artwork entitled
Feticcio - an installation piece made of wood and latex - adds to the cathartic cycle
of overwriting, erasing the previously left tracks, instead, overlapping the new ones,
engaged in the infinite cycle of accumulation. It is an act of extreme violence aimed
at searching for balance; it is an echo, a void left where once resided something
that is now transformed and distorted. Time is fluid, and sooner or later, everything
resurfaces and is crushed by the stratifications and lacerations.
Ilaria’s aim isn’t to portray the reality as a solid entity but to instead portray
it as a fleeting, fragile concept, underlining that we all have a different reality, and the
same events affect us in diverse ways, their legacy permanently imprinted in our
psyche. The artist prints these realities onto latex, and if we go back to the definition
of the verb to print (to produce (books, newspapers, magazines, etc.), especially in
large quantities, by a mechanical process involving the transfer of text, images, or
designs to paper), we shall realise that it is precisely what Miotto is doing symbolically:
applying pressure and leaving traces of that pressure. The world is disturbed and has
always been; it intervenes with us perpetually and continuously, sometimes distorting
us to the point where it becomes impossible to comprehend and recognise even
ourselves; for me, Feticcio is a reminder of that.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Feticcio
2021
Installation: latex and wood
70 x 90 x 50 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 147
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ARTIST N°67 FROM ITALY 148
MIRATA NOEMI
Noemi Mirata was born in Catania in 1995. After graduating from the Academy
of Fine Arts in Catania, address Painting, he moved to Milan to attend the two years
at the Academy of Fine Arti di Brera, specialization in Theory and Practice of Artistic
Therapeutics. In 2019 she was selected from Collettivo Flock to take part in the PUPI
project - The new story, giving it the opportunity to deepen a new symbiosis between
tradition and the contemporary world. In January of the same year he participated
in the Macro Asilo in Rome with a performance Pro-Memoria, curated by Nicoletta
Braga. From 2019 to January 2020 she carried out a workshop with abused women
in the Cerchi d’Acqua (MI) anti-violence center. In July 2020 he led a workshop at the
DENDRON Space (CT) creating a site specific work. In the same year she carried out
an internship for Alain Urrutia Studio (Berlin), giving her the opportunity to broaden
her knowledge and share her research with the artist. During the same year she
was selected by MUSPA by creating a personal exhibition through the platform. He
currently collaborates with CELL online art project. His research focuses on the
concept of nature seen as the place from which everything originates and to which
everything come back. Nature is Mother but at the same time it is a devouring force
in continuous transformation. The themes of resilience and intimacy are part of his
artistic project, the use of elements purely natural underlines this almost exasperated
search for a lost or forgotten place. He currently lives and works in Milan.
The fascinating Salicornia is an ancient plant belonging to the Amaranthaceae
family, it can grow in arid and even desert environments. Considered a resilient
plant, it changes and evolves to adapt to its surroundings. Inside the disused space,
emblem of the artifice, the group of plants proudly ascends towering over the space.
The iconographic style of the work tends to hold this plant of great importance. In
a moment of pandemic like ours, nature makes us see the possibility of imitating it,
imitating its ability to adapt to a reluctant context.
1 Resistenza
2021
Salicornia, interventi olio su tela stampata
96 x 145 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 149
ARTIST N°68 FROM ITALY 150
MONTI BENEDETTA
Benedetta Monti is an Italian artist who lives and works in Rome. She holds
a BA in Fine Art from the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts and a degree in Marketing and
Management from Napier, Milano, with a thesis on mockumentary. Monti started to
draw from an early age; her most concrete approach to art and painting dates back
to 2016, which began her artistic research. Over the years, she has experimented
with different modes of expression – from performance to installation and video art
– to return to pictorial practise eventually. Benedetta is interested in body language,
the psychology of the masses and sales, which led her to reflect extensively on the
fickleness of thought and the critical capacity of people, with a focus on the art world:
“How many times does a seller change history of the product according to the type of
buyer he has in front of him? How many times a critic changes the meaning of a work
to make it more attractive?” - the trust given to narratives is often fictitious.
Se ti Chini Forse mi Vedrai is the legacy of a suggestion that she had
developed in 2017 after looking at the etchings of Max Klinger in the series called The
Glove - dream-like and symbolic: “I tried to investigate, through a different medium, a
painting, the many different allusions of meaning, which have led Max Klinger up to
the dadaists and artists of today; for my contemporaries to fall in love with the glove
as a symbol that shows different evocations”. After years of experimentation, the
artist’s attention turned to unusual details such as the mischievous profile, a shadow
without clear boundaries or the carapace. The glove element is linked to different
and opposite symbologies – in the past related to the identification of social class
or amorous rituals, while in contemporary times, it refers more to the dimension
of domestic and gender stereotypes. “Glove is a plastic sign, open to the personal
interpretation of a form, discounting it from its original combination with the glove as
the object. The floor creates a surreal and suspended perspective; the human figure
is not contemplated and almost does not seem necessary, although the object may
make us wonder if something has just happened, or it happened a long time ago
or will happen in the future. Despite the range of action the trajectories of the floor
want to expand, they collide with the limit of the canvas, filling the atmosphere that
surrounds the viewer.”
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Se ti chini forse mi vedrai
2020
Acrylic paint on canvas
120 x 100 cm
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 151
ARTIST N°69 FROM ITALY 152
MONZALI ERICA
Erica Monzali (b. 1993) is an Italian artist
who lives and works in Milan. She holds a BA in
Fine Art (Printmaking) from the Bologna Academy
of Fine Arts and an MA in Fine Art (Painting and
Visual Arts). Monzali is currently studying for her
second MA in Art Direction and Copywriting at the
Poli Design in Milan. Pursuing her strong interest
in various artistic disciplines, especially printmaking,
Erica completed two internships to enhance
her knowledge of the medium: at Checkpoint
Charly atelier in Bologna, followed by one at an art
publishing house called Three Star Books in Paris.
The artist’s visual research is mainly focused on
abstract aesthetics; she works with a vast range
of imagery, creating patterns and textures. Monzali
works with various techniques, focusing on visual
and tactile aspects of colours, forms and materials.
She is interested in the concept of repetition
- a distinctive characteristic of the printmaking
discipline. In Erica’s artworks, however, the reiteration
is considered the approach to technical reproduction
and a method of creation, causing it
to develop into a dialogue with different variables
that become continuously modified, altering the
final result.
The large work presented at the Fair entitled
Untitled. Trame - Gotico 1 - is created using
the frottage technique on a hand-carved linoleum
plate, working with wax pastels on Wenzhou paper.
This work, in particular, illustrates perfectly the
concept of repetitiveness - the materials and the
way they are used are engaged in the organic dialogue:
the gestural application of rubbing the wax
pastel and the plate with the manual creation of
the frottage. This artwork is part of a larger body
of work entitled Untitled - Trama. The pieces compare
the concept of seriality of the printing matrix
and the imperfection and randomness that
the manual action brings to the process. The repetition
of the same pattern on the surface - the
movement from the rubbing of the wax crayon
- creates a complex texture whose uniformity
- generated by a semi-mechanical gesture, is repetitive
and not particularly creative. However, it is
strongly linked to the aesthetic choice governed
by the eye and the mind.
1
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
REA ART FAIR! 2021 153
1 Untitled. Trame - Gotico 1
2021
Frottage on a hand-carved linoleum plate,
wax pastels on Wenzhou paper
184 x 131 cm
ARTIST N°70 FROM ITALY 154
MUSSI FRANCESCA
Francesca Mussi (1992) is a visual artist based in Milan. She studied Visual
Arts at Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and Design at the University of Leeds.
In 2015 she founded the cultural association Landskap in Milan, in 2016 and in 2018
she collaborated for the international art residency PASSAGE in Bergerac. She is the
co-founder of the art collective Bidet à Boire since 2020. The artist started her production
with different traditional and experimental printmaking techniques on paper
but more recently she works with installations in an heterogeneous language.
Francesca Mussi’s work is often born from actions recorded privately,
conceived as the translation of an intimate dimension and brought into a universal
common sphere. The action is a sort of generative matrix that remains as the base
of the following multiples. Even the object production, sculptural production, is conceived
as a print of a former action. She uses myths and micro-tales of the place
she exhibits in to establish contemporary observations, building sometimes a direct
dialogue with the place in which the works are being shown.
The work Ses flancs de bois is part of Never seen performances, a series
of images that come from a hidden action, as the artist recorded a performance
secretly in a contemporary art museum. The video was never made public, but its
testimonies are visible through a series of different images. The action consisted
on stripping layers of tissue-paper the artist had previously used to cover the entire
surface of a sofa in the museum space. She then reduces the tissue-paper into
little crumbled balls, throwing them on the floor. The piece is a reflection on the
relationship that the emerging artist has with the institution. Never seen performance
is composed out of images deriving from this past action, printed on different
surfaces and objects, all related to the artist’s personal tools and imaginary, like her
former working desk, studio drawers etc.
1 Ses flancs de bois
2021
Silkscreen on wood
103 x 67 cm
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 155
ARTIST N°71 FROM ITALY 156
NARDULLI DOMINGO
Domenico Nardulli (b. 1983) is an Italian photographer who lives and works
in Milan. In 2011 he completed a degree in photography at the Apab in Florence and
is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public relations communication at the
Iulm University of Milan. Founder of doubleone_studio, Nardulli’s artistic production
is divided between fashion photography and realistic photography. His works have
recently been published for Vogue Italia and I-D Italia. Domenico was selected
with the project Spazio Libero, winner of the REFOCUS call promoted by MIBACT in
collaboration with MUFOCO and TRIENNALE Milano. The exhibition will be held in 2021.
His photographs are distinguished by a realistic approach and, at the same
time, with an ironic intention in placing and selecting objects and everyday situations
usually unnoticed within the lens. For the artist, the photographic composition needs
the union of all the indispensable elements: technique and subject are not enough for
optimal communicative success, to be able to give emotional value to photography,
according to him, one must put the intention and the message, albeit subtle, before
centring the objective. This does not mean that technique, method, and irony cannot
coexist. His photos are a natural blend of documentary and emotional photography.
The spirit that distinguishes Nardulli is of nostalgic carefreeness, who in an interview
declares: “We must remove from us all the conventions, the superstructures that
surround us and rediscover ourselves authentic and without masks. Return children
with an awareness of soul and spirit. Don’t take yourself too seriously.” His challenge
lies precisely in revealing an image for what it is, moving it from its initial concept and
loading it with new meaning. A photograph that could be considered a random error
becomes restitution of purpose, an ironic but punctual communication of the reality
in which we live.
Timeless was taken in Snæfellsnes, on the north coast of Iceland, during
one of the many trips to the north that Domenico loves to take. A simple moment
of daily life and the portrait of an individual with whom we can all relate seems to be
completely comfortable in the grandeur of the natural landscape surrounding him.
A seemingly dull moment that is warmed by the bright and intense colours of
photography. Everything seems wonderfully calm and serene: a window into daily life,
where the house, the car, the lamp in the road, the mountains behind, give a sense of
place and non-place, in which we can recognize all the common-places of a possible
city. A stop in time that allows us to acknowledge something already seen and already
known in that man who sweeps the driveway.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Timeless
2018
Digital photography taken with Fujifilm XT2,
35mm f/2 lens
50 x 70 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 157
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ARTIST N°72 FROM ITALY 158
NUVOLA CAMERA
Nuvola Camera (1998, Como) lives and works in Milan and she is currently
attending the course of Painting and Visual art at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle
Arti. In her pictorial research the subjects are always recognisable but the atmosphere
that surrounds them is rarefied, the depicted forms become part of another, abstract
dimension. The reduction of forms is not to take away their reality and concreteness,
but rather to give a new space to the represented subject, opening it up to unexplored
possibilities without forcing it into a closed and finite dimension.
Be it landscapes, interiors or still life, Nuvola Camera’s subjects, while always
maintaining a strong link with reality and remaining recognizable, are transformed
in form and colour. The artist is approaching a more abstract, contemplative,
metaphysical dimension that belongs to painting alone. In practical terms, what takes
place is perhaps a reduction of the subject to its minimum terms. Nuvola Camera is
interested in ropography, that is, depicting those things that lack importance, trivial
objects, small wares, things that are not always what they seem, the first appearance
may deceive. Her attentive eye on simple every-day things, rather unusually transforms
the subjects afterwards through brushstrokes on canvas, shedding new light onto
them. The painter is not letting anything slip, she carefully observes all life and still life
around her, in her studio environment and her daily surroundings, a tactile luminous
dimension.
1 Interruttore
Oil on canvas
2020
35 x 25 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 159
1
ARTIST N°73 FROM ITALY 160
PACE ARIANNA
Arianna Pace (b. 1995) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Pesaro. She
holds an MA in Fine Art (Painting) from the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts. In 2020 Pace
joined the artist Giulia Cenci as an assistant and exhibited her works at Spazio In Situ
In Rome and Casa Sponge a Mezzanotte in Pergola (PU). She has also taken part in
the “Premio Nazionale Delle Arti” (PNA) of the Accademia di Belle Arti Torino, in group
exhibitions at PXL Mad faculty, Hasselt, Belgium; Galleria in Paradiso, Giardini della
Biennale, Venice; BIGAM (Biennale giovani artisti), Macerata; and Museo tattile Omero
in Ancona.
The obvious and necessary correlation between landscape, nature and
anthropological society is the core of Arianna’s discourse, who has always studied the
places where she was born, not only through long walks but mainly through collecting
information and details using photographic medium and casting. The material then
becomes a study plan to open scientific arguments and questions. Almost like a
geologist, she studies the different microorganisms that make up a circumscribed
landscape and the slow processes of modification that this context undergoes over
time through human action. Karren is the name that defines the forms of deterioration
of the rock by meteoric waters and chemical, biological agents.
Karren is born from the analysis of one of these chemical processes
recreated here specifically to show the public the erosion of organic material, in
this case, clay. The artwork is an asset to be protected as a non-renewable resource
nowadays studied and surveyed as components of the natural landscape to be
safeguarded. The installation, therefore, seeks to raise the viewer’s awareness of the
subject by paying attention to the geological heritage and its essential protection and
enhancement. The activity of corrosion is, most of the time, triggered and accelerated
by the action of man in the anthropocentric era, and the installation becomes a
metaphor of this dialectical component of human nature that at the same time
implements a strategy of safeguarding the landscape without stopping its action of
undoing.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1-2 Karren#1
2020
Separating funnel, acetic acid, clay, iron,
wood, acetate printing
90 x 63 x 118.5 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 161
1
2
ARTIST N°74 FROM ITALY 162
PACUCCI SARA
Sara Pacucci (Treviso 1999) graduated in 2018 in plastic disciplines -
sculptural and graphic pictorial, current-mind studied painting at the Academy of
Fine Arts in Venice in Luca Reffo’s Atelier 12. Collisions and encounters. Looking out
into the world, I would like to get lost in the infinite delicacy of visual systems that
sometimes recognize- without knowing, an intimate and subtle sensitive interaction
between multiple worlds that manifest themselves in whispers. Looking for contact
points, sometimes, by magic, we see and immerse ourselves in an invisible network.
My research aims to investigate the real, starting from the idea of the Points
of Con-Tact; give it the theory created between several bodies, public participation,
an attempt to break I-world dualism. All things seem to reconnect with each other,
silent dialogues, they “touch”, almost in secret. An infinite grid is being drawn, a map,
where the elements come alive with each other. In my work, I always look for a
delicate story; I want images to establish themselves in the beholder’s mind, making
others emerge, a reminder of our experience, memories, the clear indefiniteness
of dreams. Blurred boundaries to seek a grand vision of the whole: everything is
reconnected, everything tells us. My goal is to open a glance searching for links; I
restarted from the concrete tactility, investigating the gesture, then opening the way
to broader visions; so came images of landscapes, signs, natural elements, bodies.
In my operating method, words also had a particular weight: their resonance in mind
often has the power to reunite with the imagination and unlock it; thought is always
imaginal, and through painting, it can approach the visual manifestation. My artwork
has developed thanks to these suggestions; the technique can vary from subject
to subject, tailored to the exact needs, from a more material painting to thin and
precise layers. A dialectical juxtaposition to search for links. Two surfaces that let
transpire king. Two sensitive paths that refer to each other. An overview. Always of
everything is connected, everything. He tells us.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1a-1b
Interconnections
2021
Oil on canvas
Diptych, 40 x 30 cm each
REA ART FAIR! 2021 163
1a
1b
ARTIST N°75 FROM KOREA 164
PARK CHANBYUL
The shapes vary and
it never repeats itself
because of the many
natural phenomena
that take place.
Chanbyul Park (b. 1994) is a
South Korean artist who lives and works
in Eindhoven. She holds a degree in Industrial
Design from Ewha Womans University
in Seoul and is currently studying
for a degree in Contextual Design at the
Eindhoven Design Academy. Chanbyul is
an artist-designer who develops her perspective
on the world through research
of objects and the rules of nature to understand
what surrounds us and develop better awareness. Her source of inspiration is
the Impressionists and Cubists whose modes of reading the world she studies, establishing
her contemporary interpretation: “I paint, create objects and draw visual novels
to express my ideas. I believe that understanding this world we live in leads to a better
understanding of ourselves.”
Park’s research aims to record the order of the world in her works, paying
particular attention to the theme of time that has an invisible character but that at the
same time is perceived by humanity. Impressionism Object is the name given to the
entire series in which she uses candles as a material to record time – the title refers to
the Impressionist approach with particular attention paid to the passage of time. Nature
of Time is part of this vast series, composed of drawings, sculptures and design objects:
“This painting is a trace drawn by drops of a candle. The shape varies and never repeats
itself because of many natural phenomena such as the time it takes the wax to flow
and solidify or the direction in which the wind blows, the position, the temperature and
the humidity”. This work is the visual documentation of the natural order of nine loose
candles deeply influenced by external conditions and time.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Nature of time
2021
Candle wax on watercolour paper
76 x 56 cm
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 165
ARTIST N°76 FROM ITALY 166
PASSANTINO PAOLA
She was born in Palermo in 1995. She graduated in painting in 2018 and
always specializes in painting, graduating with honours from the Academy of Fine
Arts in Palermo in 2020. She is followed by teachers Fulvio Di Piazza, Francesco De
Grandi, Alessandro Bazan, Pierantonio Romanelli. Currently teaches art and image in
middle school in the province of Forlì Cesena.
Passantino’s painting starts from a study on whites and snow. It then moves
towards the concepts of space, full and empty, whose emptiness is not intended as
the absence of something but is an integral part of the vision of the work as a whole.
Her works result from a violent process where the starting image from which
he draws inspiration is destroyed or mutilated, replaced by new identities and
new forms. The work proposed for ReA! Art Fair is an oil painting from 2020 and
measures 70 x 100 cm. Together with the latest artworks, this work wants to create
bewilderment in the viewer’s vision, who may believe that he is in front of different
mediums, while the only one used is that of oil colour.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 -
2020
Oil on canvas
70 x 100 cm
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 167
ARTIST N°77 FROM ITALY 168
PAVAN PAOLO
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 169
Paolo Pavan (b. 1987) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Nerbon. He
holds a BA in Fine Art (Painting) and an MA in Decoration from the Venice Academy
of Fine Arts. During his study years, Pavan exhibited in multiple places between
Venice and Treviso, including the Cittadell’arte gallery in Venice (2017), Villa Orsini in
Scorzè di Venezia (2015) and the Museum of Santa Caterina in Treviso (2015). Most
recently, he was a finalist of the Combat 2018 prize with the group exhibition at the
G. Fattori Museum in Livorno; in the same year, he exhibited at the Atelier 3 + 10 in
Venice, while in 2021, he was a finalist of their Winter Prize.
Paolo has always identified as a painter, but during his journey, he
went through various phases of experimentation in which, however, his work is
characterized by a robust colour scheme in which the detail is almost always lost
in the blur. His works during the academic period were large canvases, where he
used bright and liquid colours, which allowed him to experiment more with light and
space. Currently, we find the same technique in the artist’s paintings, which differs
from the previous one in terms of subjects and the use of colour, which now seems
to have disappeared from his interest. He is attracted not as much by the technical
possibilities of the canvas but by the subject that takes shape on it.
Through photos taken at an amateur’s level, personal archives and complete
books, Pavan sources images and narratives that create an imaginary visual diary
composed from his history and experience. L’amore ci farà a pezzi borrows a detail
from a Flemish painting representing a typical hunting scene. He captures one
point above all: a white greyhound trying to get the better of a wolf. Paolo decided
to pay homage to this animal and his effort by making it the scene’s protagonist
with a pictorial gesture. Through enlarging and proportioning the original image, he
comes into direct contact and has a more intimate relationship with the subject that
interests him. This detail is lost on the canvas, through the printing of the colour and
in the glazing, which the artist himself defines as a means to read reality and create
something realistic and predictable, which turns out to be the visual reconstruction
of what he has experienced in an emotional sense. The play of greys, rather than
black and white, helps him be abstract and further detach the image from its original
to make it his own and distance it from reality.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 L’amore ci farà a pezzi
2019
Oil on canvas
100 x 100 cm
ARTIST N°78 FROM ITALY 170
PIGNOTTI GIADA
Giada Pignotti (b. 1992) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Milan. She
holds an MA in Fine Art (Painting and Visual Arts) from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.
Pignotti recently had her first solo show at Nowhere Gallery in Milan. Previously she
participated in the “Helicotrema - Recorded Audio Festival” (2020), “Latibule”, Walkin’
Studio festival at Matteo Cremonesi’s studio, Milan (2019) and “The Wolf Used to Bark
Every Night”, a group exhibition curated by Ambra Castagnetti in Genoa (2018).
Ever since a young age, Pignotti perceived drawings as her method of
expressing the most intimate side of her personality. For her, drawing is something
extraordinarily physical and performative that brings along healing and revitalization.
In 2016 Giada found some of her old drawings in the family archive, which made her
understand specific mechanisms that are repeated in her way of processing: the
graphic is not only a tool of analysis, but it is also a strategy to narrate and act out,
tell stories that are a continuous exchange between the image and the narrative. Her
artistic practice feels the influence of this relationship that takes shape through voice,
recording and narration, sometimes in combination with free drawing, almost always
done quickly, on torn sheets of paper. To analyze the most performative components
of the drawing, the voice is placed as the negative image, capable of oscillating and
communicating along with it while retaining sensorial independence. Thus “MON-
DIBUI” - a sound project structured in episodes was born, divided, in turn, into two
different narrative strands (“1. Adam, Rosemary and the Enchanted World” and “2. La
Cantante”), still open to this day.
The visual work present at the fair, on the other hand, deviates from this research
to bring to light the artist’s childhood images through a series of four drawings.
The hidden protagonist of these sketches is the water, transparent or cloudy, which
intrinsically hides the feeling of relief that she sees in the bathroom, a sensation of discovery
and danger. The image created is that of a pond. Seeing your fingertips wrinkle,
being in contact with different microorganisms, drawing in the water, discovering
submerged worlds and feeling your own suspended body are suggestions for Pignotti
to think about the state of body matter and the mysterious relationship between
body and pleasure. Still, water is suspended in time in which she takes the time to wait
out whether something fascinating will sooner or later emerge. The creatures that
wait with her just below the water level will probably continue to change shape, and
for this reason, they will never be able to be captured, just as water can never be one
form but at the same time will adopt all the forms.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1-2-3-4 Mystic Swamp (Questa palude
è un tempo di mezzo)
2020-21
Series of 4 drawings
Mixed media on paper
Variable dimensions 1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 171
3
2
4
ARTIST N°79 FROM ITALY 172
PILUSI ALICE
Alice Pilusi (b. 1997) is an Italian artist who lives and works between Milan
and Pescara. She holds a BA in Fine Art from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan
and has also received training at the L’Aquila Academy of Fine Arts. In recent years
Pilusi has participated in the NOCCIOLINE #8 (2020) exhibition, a project promoted by
Yellow (VA), curated by Davide Serpetti, Tortoreto; Straperetana - Produttori di Silenzio
(2020) brainchild of Paola Capata and Delfo Durante, curated by Saverio Verini in
collaboration with Matteo Fato, Pereto (AQ); Overlap (2019), curated by Andrea Croce
and Michela Murialdo, National Gallery of Cosenza.
Pilusi’s work moves in and out of contemporary reality by constructing an
imaginary world characterized by hyper-luminous, artificial and grotesque visions. In
this world, we recognize visual elements that belong to us in everyday life and find
alienating details that interfere with the purity of materials, shapes, and colours. Alice
wants to bring to light the sinister side of childhood in the digital age. Her installations
focus the viewer’s attention on the darkest shades of a value system that fetishizes
youth, beauty, and innocence. The imaginative pool from which the artist draws
inspiration is undoubtedly derived from the contemporary beauty industry, cake design
tutorials and glossy packaging. The materials she uses result from an investigation
in this environment that represents an unsatisfied desire to go back to her inner
child. One of the first works reflecting this research is Beauty Guru, a performance
in which Pilusi puts the nail polish on a girl for a very extended period in which the
simple gesture of applying the nail polish turns into a mantra, a ritual that, in its final
result manages to ironize and mock the construction of image and beauty within the
macrocosm of the internet. After this experience, digital work was born: focusing on
the digital beauty filters used in social media to open a critical investigation on the
self-celebration of one’s image on the web.
The work Ma$K is one of Alise’s latest passages on the subject of female
aesthetics on the web and how the idea of women is stereotyped through concepts
of sweetness, softness and sensuality. The work takes the form of a cotton beauty
mask, trendy at the moment, and makes it a tribal object with characteristics almost
from a primitive geological find. By inserting the mask between these two opposite
poles, the artist leverages on the cult of today’s identity, on the perception of beauty
and at the same time on the social and cultural appropriation of globalization, thus
speaking of a possible inheritance that today’s homologated society could leave to
future generations.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
REA ART FAIR! 2021 173
1
1 Ma$K
2020
Glazed ceramics
17 x 21 x 0,6 cm
ARTIST N°80 FROM ITALY 174
PIRAS YARNO
Yarno Piras (1997, Turin) has studied Visual Cultures at the Academy of Fine
Arts of Brera. His works seem to have a direct link with the past. It is the material
that suggests the possibilities of transformation and manipulation for the research
of the final form; a simple amplification of the primary. This approach becomes
concrete with the series of works Grand Bois: the subject is the object in its singular
and individual form. The reflection on the attention to containment leads to the
concretisation of the intimate dimension through the realisation of the series Petit
Bois. The relationship, at first beginning with the self, subsequently extends to the
social context, feeding questions about the role of the artist, the value of technique
and work; thus was born the series of works Lavoro Forzato.
A matter of solids and voids. The seat is born from contrasting forces, a
balanced tension of a downward thrust and a resistance that pushes upward. Just
as the act of inflating is born from an attempt to alter a contrast by forcing the
introduction of air through the use of energy. Sitting implies an effort, not so much
in letting oneself fall, but in moving and looking for the space you want to occupy.
An effort, a force exerted for a displacement, finds its definition in the work, where
its resultant becomes a displacement, a change both physical and of the sense
of emptiness and fullness. It is the work that certifies and declares fullness. The
work Forced Work N.03 is a chair from which the backrest and the top of the seat
have been removed and covered on all its surface by air chambers. The chambers
intertwine and thanks to the tension that they create, they reconstruct that balancing
relationship that allows for one to sit. The chair is connected to four bicycle pumps.
To sit is to fill a space or to be filled by the space?
1 Lavoro Forzato N. 03
2019
Aluminium, air chambers + n. 4 pumps
Variable dimensions
REA ART FAIR! 2021 175
1
CATALOGUE
176
REA ART FAIR! 2021
177
We are working
towards creating
a more intimate
communication
between the society
and the emerging
artists, as well as
the curators.
4/5
ARTIST N°81 FROM ITALY 178
POLLONI FEDERICO
Federico Polloni (b. 1991) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Venice.
He holds an MA in Fine Art (Painting) from the Venice Academy of Fine Arts. Polloni
exhibited in various cities, including New York, London, Bergen, Milan and Ljubljana.
Among the most recent exhibitions is the Wopart fair in Switzerland, The Collective
Upgrade at the Dimora Artica Gallery in Milan and Unlikely at Palazzo Mocenigo Venice.
In 2020 he founded the Cultural Association Acromo in Venice; in the same year, he
opened the first Lab space shared with Casablanca_studio_ in the same city. In 2021
Federico collaborated in realising the first independent festival and open studio of
young emerging artists operating in Venice (Venice Independent Art Scene).
His pictorial universe has a circular dimension and time, in which the
horizon is always elsewhere. Immediately perceptible is the will to go outside the preestablished
visual places to arrive at a personal deconstruction of space. Starting
from figurative elements of reality, the artist creates environments with colours and
digital forms. His is a primitive imaginary that oscillates between the artificial and
the dreamlike, where figurative elements are placed beyond space and time. The
intelligibility of Polloni’s works manifests itself gradually, after a careful observation of
every little detail. What he wants to do, is to invite the gaze of the observer to get lost
to be able to eviscerate the visual patterns that characterise the details. Federico’s
paintings dialogue with each other, generating a constant connection between past
and present and creating a recognisable stylistic figure that unites them all. In each
work, there is always an element that suggests what will come next, establishing in
this way a narrative anthology that becomes a key to reading for all its production. The
critical aspect of all his poetics remains the constant tension between interiority and
the sensitive world, between what is in us and what we draw from the outside, making
it our own. In Ragenbogen and Ortensie, the artist digs into his inner self, making
materialise sensations, memories and obsessions, which then declines into objects
suspended in metaphysical spaces, manifesting a tension towards the unknown.
— Federico Polloni
1 Ragenbogen
2021
Acrylic paint on paper
50 x 30 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 179
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ARTIST N°82 FROM ITALY 180
POZZATO FRANCESCO
Francesco Pozzato lives and works between Venice and Vicenza. He
completed his studies first in Theater and then in Visual Arts at the IUAV University of
Venice and is currently enrolled in Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean History at the
Ca ‘Foscari University. In 2020 he participated in the Galleria Continua and the Elpis
Una Foundation project Boccata d’Arte in Sepino (Campobasso), in 2019 he was in
residence at BoCs Art (Cosenza) and in 2018 at the ateliers of the Bevilacqua La Masa
Foundation (Venice). He has recently participated in various exhibitions, including
Metafotografia, curated by Mauro Zanchi and Sara Benaglia, BACO Contemporary
Art Base Today (Bergamo, 2020), Photo Open Up - Argo, curated by Carlo Sala at the
Cathedral Ex Macello (Padua, 2019), Coming Soon, curated by Mira Asriningtyas, Nora
Heidorn and Kari Rittenbach at the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation (Turin, 2018),
and the solo show In this sign, you shall lose, curated by Saverio Bonato (Schio, 2019).
Also in 2018 he took part in the Q-Rated workshop with Zach Blas, Rana Hamadeh and
Robert Leckie, curated by La Quadriennale di Roma near Lecce.
His work focuses on the analysis of the relationship between matter and
history, between three-dimensionality and temporality, in particular on the relationship
between raw materials and the historical interval which is defined as Ancient.
According to the artist, in fact, the the past of mankind has had a preponderant
influence on the present of contemporary man. Society, especially Western, appears
completely changed, especially in the last few centuries, and it is precisely on this
discrepancy that Pozzato’s artistic research focuses on: he investigates how Ancient,
apparently disappeared, dialogue with contemporaneity and vice versa.
1 Earthquake baroque (al-Hassan mosque)
50 x 70 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 181
ARTIST N°83 FROM ITALY 182
RAMUNNO MARIKA
Marika Ramunno (1991) born in Puglia. After the degree in communication
science at University of Bari with a thesis on the relationship between Cinema and
Photography, she decided to spend time in UK. Back in Italy, during the two.year
specialization at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, she participated in the Erasmus
program in Estonia. Since 2017 she has been working as a freelance photographer
and videomaker for communication agencies, events and companies, also making
music videoclip. In 2019 she worked with Canon Europa for the Matera European
Photography project, making interviews and final editing of a short-doc. She is
currently attending a new study programme in Video Designer at Apulia Digital
Maker (ITS). She is the founder of the photography magazine “Ombra Magazine“ and
“A Necessary Choice“ is her first documentary.
The photographic project “Relationship” investigates the evocative power
nature asserts on mankind, drawing on their innermost and ancestral soul, which
humans themselves translate into impressions: strokes of light and colour. Here is
especially analyzed the relationship between human and horse: a real meeting of
souls, which presumes mutual trust and respect, returned through a game of looks
and hands. The shots represent metaphors for a renewed golden age, in which
happiness is the skin-to-skin connection between man and horse, knight and
steed, biped and quadruped. Emotions are overwhelming but fleeting, feelings are
slow to arise but lasting. The photographic journey I propose attempts to explore
a deep and passionate emotional
dimension. These pictures
come from my personal relation
with the world of horse riding. I
spent a lot of time with them in
my childhood. So I decided to
get involved in this kind of relationship
with my camera: a relationship
that became strong
through a code made by gesture,
voice and gaze. It becomes
a connection between human
beings and nature, made by respect
and faith.
1
1-2-3 Relationship I-II-III
2020
Photography
Variable dimensions
REA ART FAIR! 2021 183
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3
ARTIST N°84 FROM PORTUGAL 184
RAPOSO PIRES RAFAEL
Being influenced by his parents from a young age to observe and create
thoughts on architecture and urbanism, he uses photography to communicate my
artistic concepts. His body of work consists mainly of photographs produced while
practising dérives made in diverse urban areas. He has started his projects supported
by the interest in how transformative architecture can be, observing improvised
elements that made him aware of the distancing between planning and how different
people use a constructed space. Reflecting on how the implemented solutions
impact and influence the living experience of its inhabitants.
There is more to Urban Limits than a Circular Road (2021). ‘There is more to
Urban Limits than a Circular Road’ is a photographic essay of numerous dérives made
around urban areas in the Umbrian region of Italy. While walking towards the outer
areas of a city, I am being guided by what my senses recognised as the limits of an
urban area. Main infrastructures such as larger roads, railroads and railway stations,
dormitory blocks, industries, or even sport centres and urban parks are what primarily
bind my areas of interest. From an improvised solution at a tennis court to the child’s
swing overlooking the cable car line, passing by the saddening truth of suburbialooking
cemetery houses, to the open stairs leading inside a private apartment block,
all these peculiar situations convey a certain humour and irony to me. Borderline urban
areas can often feel as monotonous as circular roads since they are used chiefly as
rapid pass-through places. But when they are observed at a walking pace, several
elements turn visible, displaying a rich amount of functions, materialities, shapes and
presence. That multiplicity in the features found here convey to me a sentiment of
urban limits.
— Text by Pelin Zeytinci
1 Minimetrò (Bystanders)
Inkjet print on fine-art cotton paper
edition of 3+1 a.p.
100 x 66 cm
2 Support II
Inkjet print on fine-art cotton paper
edition of 3+1 a.p.
40 x 60 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 185
1
2
ARTIST N°85 FROM ITALY 186
REGUZZONI EVA
Eva Reguzzoni (b. 1965) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Borgo
Ticino. Restorer and designer archaeologist by profession, she attended the school
of industrial Applied Art of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. In 2020 the artist’s
monograph Eva Reguzzoni - a un PASSO was published with texts by Irene Biolchini
and Rossella Moratto for the series PageNotFound-Editore vanillaedizioni.
Since 2009 she has developed personal artistic research investigating the
instability of moods: unconscious thoughts generated by trauma create disturbances
that cause fragments of memories and unconscious thoughts. Intensely intimate,
Eva’s works are born from suggestions taken from moments of life, moments that,
lived through sensory experience, are imprinted in memory as precious memories.
Rupture, fragmentation and transformation are constant themes in her research,
an obsessive but liberating mental investigation that leads to an unconscious selfanalysis.
Constantly influenced by her profession as a restorer and archaeological
designer, the continuous contact with the past contaminated Reguzzoni’s artistic
process and generated valid stimuli to develop a personal language. In her works,
there is a constant presence of natural elements taken from everyday life such as
leaves, stones and woods or others, which in their fragility and fragmentation suggest
creative dynamics that are always revealed during the making. The installation is the
art form that she prefers because it allows her to amplify the dialogue between the
works, objects, and space; the titles are often indicative of her research work and
voluntarily suggest reading keys, helpful to understand the creative processes that
generated the artwork.
Combining forms to compensate for memories perfectly describes
the creative process that turns into an objective rite of remembrance—through
an ordered and classifying sequence of still lifes, the composition objects take
on unexpected aspects, becoming found in the archive of the present. It is a
creative process of construction on a white surface to be invaded with fragile and
straightforward objects, a work that has generated a solid call to nature and, at the
same time, looks like a fossil of memory that can be traced back to other recalls.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Unisco le forme per
compensare i ricordi
2021
Mixed media installation
82 x 180 x 40 cm 1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 187
ARTIST N°86 FROM ITALY 188
RESSETTA CHIARA
Chiara Ressetta (b. 1996) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Turin. She
holds an MA in Fine Arts from the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and is currently
finishing a painting course at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts. At the moment,
Ressetta works mainly in the pictorial medium, which over the last two years has
helped her to develop a specific image-based practice. Specifically, she is interested
in subjects that may represent the iconic aspects of modern society, while to others,
they can be considered of total disinterest or at least of daily interest but often not
evaluated as meaningful. These facts, subjects and phenomena are certainly part
of Chiara’s experiences, where subjects are linked to her usual visual world; more
in-depth research takes place within photographic shots and archival books. To
give an example, the washing, which is the act of purification through the bath and
immersion in water, is a theme that she addresses promptly within her paintings,
images and collages of people taking baths in the fountains and public.
Caco in Pineta - the spontaneous and animal act of a person who releases
their physical needs outdoors, in a natural situation, is the theme addressed in
the painting Le Forme Della Memoria (Caco in Pineta). In the artwork, we find a
not immediately recognizable, crouching human figure under the palm leaves. Le
Forme Della Memoria results from a photographic project born between 2019 and
2021 from discovering a war book that documented the effects of dysentery during
the I World War through an extensive photographic archive. The instinctual and wild
aspect of this action gradually became of interest; the artist then began to notice this
phenomenon was less unusual than she thought—an act of a certain vulgarity which,
however, always retains a certain irony and naivety. She tries to refine this gesture
to bring it back into the familiar collective environment. The project aims to bring
to light a reworking of collective memory through moments of personal memory.
The importance of indifference that certain phenomena considered common can
reflect a different type of value when a subject is activated in the pictorial scene. At
an early stage of her work, Ressetta breaks down and composes, through collage,
the photographic image, then moves on to the canvas on which she uses different
materials. The canvas is never covered in the initial phase; she instead uses natural
colours to make her protagonists interact. Pure oil colours, oil pastels and acrylic,
are the materials that Chiara uses with straightforward gestures. In work presented
at the Fair, you can also see details in coloured pencils.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1 Le forme della memoria
(caco in pineta)
2021
Mixed media on canvas
160 x 140 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 189
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ARTIST N°87 FROM ITALY 190
RINALDI ELEONORA
Eleonora Rinaldi (1994, Udine) has attended the Academy of Fine Arts in
Florence, where she graduated in Painting in 2020. Rinaldi is currently attending the
two-year course of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, at the atelier
of Professor Di Raco. She takes part in several group exhibitions in 2020, including
Combat Prize (Livorno) as a finalist in the Painting section, The Life of Art (Milan)
curated by A60 Contemporary Art Space Gallery, The Ark of Noah (Milan) curated by
Ex Fabbrica delle Bambole and ArtParmaFair (Parma).
Intrigued by the tension between forms that inhabit a shared pictorial
surface, Eleonora Rinaldi composes environments that require for at-timesunrelated
elements to engage in a dialogue. The outcome differs each time, in
consonance with the viewer’s gaze and perception of the painterly subjects as
Rinaldi pursues an unrestricted, ambiguous visual field. Seeking entryways to
different possible dimensions, the artist experiments with the representation of
material objects and living organisms in relation to one another, questioning the
ways in which at any given point the instinctive or determined artistic choice might
give way to shifting definitions and changing dynamics of the painted scenes. There
is an external source of light in La Ciotola D’Oro (2021), shining on animal fur in what
seems like an otherworldly, nocturnal setting. A second, internal source is a golden
bowl that seems like no ordinary object but it appears to be bizarrely illuminating the
space around it. Rinaldi partially illustrates the animal’s body in the enigmatic scene,
rendering the spectator unsure of whether the creature is aware of the radiant item
next to it, our vision restricted by the physical borders of the canvas. The viewer is
met with the dilemma of attributing this happening to the sphere of the natural, to
symbolism, to the fictitious or to the supernatural.
1 La ciotola d’oro
2021
Oil on canvas
140 x 120 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 191
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ARTIST N°88 FROM CANADA 192
RUOFF AIMEE
Aimee Ruoff (b. 1997) is a Canadian artist born who lives and works in
Toronto. She holds a BA in Fine Art from the University of Guelph and now makes oil
paintings, drawings and prints from her home studio, recently venturing into handpainted
animation. Ruoff has participated in group exhibitions, fairs and publications,
both locally and internationally, and between 2018 and 2019, she won the Samuel
and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation and Junior Juried Art Show awards.
In her practice, she combines classical painting techniques with a reflection
on time and the pressing rhythms that characterize contemporary society. Aimee
declares: “Wrapped up in everyday life: an unexpected fog settling over a morning
commute, golden sun shining on I am drawn to the nostalgic moments of bedroom
curtains, a plush pink chair abandoned on the side of the road and gone the next
day. What is fleeting and ethereal reminds me of the temporality of life and my place
within it. I work from life and my photographs, often combining many different
moments within one composition to build a visual narrative that feels both familiar
and strange. Being present and seeking out small sublime moments within the
mundane is where I make art; this process of taking time to seek and translate what
I see into painting has become my subversion of the pressing speed that defines
our cultural moment. For me, art-making is an act of devotion, an avenue to see the
world and hold it close”.
Filled. Overflowing, and Morning Light in Teal are two paintings starring
sunlight, of which she has long studied its properties and characteristics. It shines
and bounces on the surface of objects, and representing it means stopping a
moment in time because the light and shadow will not be the same in an hour or
a minute, giving a sense of immediacy to both the process and to the final piece: “I
capture these moments in time quickly with loose brushstrokes, trusting that the
fluidity of the signs represents the weightlessness of the moving light.”
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Filled. Overflowing.
2021
Oil on panel
30,5 x 30,5 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 193
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ARTIST N°89 FROM FRANCE 194
SALZGEBER LUCIA
Lucia Salzgeber (b. 1988) is a French artist who lives and works in Montours.
She holds an MA in Fine Art from the National School of Art of Brittany. Salzgeber
produces words, lines and spatial settings. From 2012 to 2014, she led the Morpho
cultural project in Nantes, a laboratory of techniques and humanities, and until 2016,
she was also associated with the supervision of research and creative laboratory
at the National Higher School of Art in Brittany. In 2017 Lucia led the creation and
construction of a new cultural place in Montours, Ille-et-Vilaine, in France, where she
built her studio.
Taking a direct cue from life and its mechanisms, intimate and collective
experiences she had from a young age, she tried to portray a glimpse of the furious,
wounded, ambiguous and primordial intensity of herself and the other. Constantly
aware that the ability to transcend oneself is one of the qualities and the best capacity
of the human: being fragmented enhances life during the long moments of creation in
intense loneliness and gives life to installations that mix up the body, pictorial languages
and performative drawing, filling dozens of notebooks that I always carry with me. Writing
is a way to “heal” the mind. I am standing in a black apron and hands greased with black
ink, measuring white paper. I silently beat the rhythm of a single piece of classical music
that envelops me for hours. Equipped with my thick scratches, I rest my body on the
ground and on the white surface, which moves with me at this moment”. The artist, in
her practice, investigates objects, forms and time by digging white with black, releasing
black and delivering white - writing a timeless temporality. Like a perpetual beginning,
with an intangible fever, her work is a path between painting, writing and installations, a
triad that gives all the thickness to her work.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1
1 Froide
2021
Engraving Ink on wood paper
80 x 120 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 195
ARTIST N°90 FROM ITALY 196
SERI GIULIA
Giulia Seri (1988, Rome) has been living and working in Florence since
2008. After graduating with a master’s degree in biology she studied painting at
the Art Students League of New York and in 2017 she obtained a scholarship to the
international school of graphic art Il Bisonte in Florence. She has participated in
group and solo exhibitions as well as art residencies in Italy and abroad. In her work
she uses different techniques: painting, engraving, sculpture and installation. In her
works Giulia Seri investigates the randomness of the formation of living beings, the
condition of humans within the absurdity of existence.
Giulia Seri’s research focuses on the theme of depression, on the distorted
perception of the body, on the precariousness of the conception of identity. Focusing
on the human being and their relationship with life and death, the artist portrays
through painting, drawing and sculpture, the fragile conditions of our existence, the
states of transition, mental and bodily. Seri is particularly fascinated by the rituals
and customs of the ancient Egyptian civilization and in particular by the Book of the
Dead, a funerary text intended to assist the deceased in their journey to the afterlife.
The sculptural production and representation of anthropomorphic bodies reference
animal and mythological resemblances.
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 197
1 Sfinge
2020
Bread, wax
87 x 38 x 53 cm
ARTIST N°91 FROM ITALY 198
SIMEONI ILARIA
Ilaria Simeoni (b. 1995) is an Italian artist who lives and works between
Venice and Trevignano. She holds an MA in Fine Art (Painting and Visual Arts) from
the Venice Academy. Simeoni has participated in a series of group exhibitions of
painting and engraving, and in 2020 she participated in the 103rd group exhibition
of the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation at the gallery of St. Mark’s Square, where she
was awarded the first prize with the work Al Mutare Delle Ombre.
Her artistic practice is linked to a personal vision of nature and the approach
of Plein Air, which since the beginning has allowed her to synthesize the various
concepts of uncontaminated landscape. This study of landscape nature is not to be
considered only a silent representation of reality but is, first of all, a manifestation of
the relationship between the aspects of the soul, the natural and its interpretation.
Inspired by Baudelaire’s statement that it is necessary to know the elements of
nature and the soul, Ilaria creates landscapes depicting visual-imaginative aspects
linked to the sensitive data. Today she turns her attention to confined natural
spaces and cultural tradition linked to them: “This total vision of uncontaminated
nature over the years has approached an interest in cultivated environments and
a mink of nature closer to everyday life. Thus the interest in gardens was born. The
nature of the garden as a philosophy of thought and vision of refuge as an ideal and
intimate place”. A close relationship that binds the soul of the garden to the world
and to the living beings that inhabit it, triggering memories and feelings of the soul:
“In the shadow of the flower bed of Lily, appears at first a modern flower bed of a
house, located in a small country village. The uniqueness generated by these few
elements has a continuous and infinite vision of plant life where this immensity is
like the universe that has neither width nor depth because it contains the totality
of the cosmos. The garden becomes the narrator of a dialogue with Man and the
world, where everything that happens in the green space is full of metaphors of our
psychic life”.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 All’ombra dell’aiuola dei fiori di giglio
2021
Oil on canvas
211,5 x 150,5 cm
1
REA ART FAIR! 2021 199
ARTIST N°92 FROM ITALY 200
SOARDI THOMAS
Thomas Soardi (b. 1991) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Milan. He
holds a degree in Fashion Design from NABA. Between 2019 and 2020, Soardi was
an artist in residence in the spaces of VIR Via Farini in Milan. He has participated in
group exhibitions at the Palazzo Santi Civic Museum in Cascia (PG) and Via Farini
open studio in Milan (MI). In 2018 Thomas had his first solo show at Plasma Plastic
Modern Art, Milan (MI). He is a multidisciplinary artist whose research revolves around
three macro themes simultaneously involved and naturally manages to coexist in
his works of art. These three arguments initially start from a decisive investigation of
space and the meaning that defines and regulates it, coming to study privatisation
processes, that is - the regulation that the human experience projects onto it, mixing
in architecture and urban planning. Another theme that characterises the artist’s
research is his interest in ethology within the animal kingdom and, therefore, the
aspects that relate humanity to the life of other species. On the other hand, treatment
is another theme studied by Soardi through the employment of psychic and
physical support devices invented throughout science history. To give an example of
research that he has carried out in the past, autotomy is the ability of certain insects
to self-mutilate while escaping aggression by possible predators. This phenomenon
is examined through the specific areas and therefore studied under the aspects that
characterise it in the environment in which it naturally occurs through physical and
psychological regulation.
The work U25 aims to rehearse an experiment conducted by the ethnologist
John Bumpass Calhoun in 1968. The experiment consisted of constructing a cistern
that lent itself to accommodate a colony of domestic rats, which, despite being
given maximum comfort, soon manifested anomalous behaviours that led the
colony to death. The study was later considered by sociologists and anthropologists
who called it a behavioural sewer, used to denote the collapse of society due to
behavioural anomalies caused by overpopulation. The installation, made part of a
stainless steel chain, refers to an instrument of constriction in which we find three
glazed ceramic sculptures depicting three laboratory guinea pigtails. The image
created suggests the absence of space and the constraint that, together with the
three queues, calls for the control of space and overcrowding. Thomas’s vision is
strongly linked to the concept of material and the formal tension that it can create
at the time of its formalisation to convey appropriate solicitations for his substantial
conceptual research. The media used in his practice range from installation to
photography, drawing, graphics and textile art.
— Text by Milena Zanetti
1-2 U25
2021
Chromed stainless steel,
glazed ceramics
43 x 14x 19,5 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 201
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2
ARTIST N°93 FROM UNITED KINGDOM 202
STRATTON PATRICK
Patrick Stratton (b. 1994) is a British artist who lives and works in London. He
holds a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of Leeds, HNC at
Kensington and Chelsea College and is currently attending an MA course at the City
and Guilds of London Art School.
The scientific and artistic training allowed Stratton to combine these
two aspects in a single research and create works in which the mechanical and
manual components coexist harmoniously. He documents social Microsystems
and moments of daily life through weaving and electronics by taking objects and
actions of everyday life and converting them into a moving tapestry. Patrick explains
why he decided to make weaving his style: “I appreciate weaving for its restrictions,
it works similarly to the way an inkjet printer operates, creating the image one line at
a time [I find it particularly inspiring] when the restrictions inherent in weaving lead to
different solutions. This means that depicting an object becomes a problem-solving
experiment. This interest in its restrictions has remained with me, along with the
comfort that this aspect of problem-solving brings, and has become fundamental in
my practice.
Step in Gum is part of The Things I Do Sometimes series and is the work
that led him to move from small to large format: “Patrick Stratton’s series of smallscale
tapestries embraces aspects of contemporary life in many ways. [Mindful of the
social change experienced recently] we all had more time to reflect on our lives and
actions; what was important became insignificant, and the insignificant moments
of daily life amplified. Patrick Stratton, using the long traditions of tapestry, weaves
those moments into small-scale humorous classic works of art that share with us the
moment when chewing gum sticks to the heel of his shoe, now the pink threads of
wool stretch and relax in a looped memorial of that significantly insignificant moment.
The activity of grating cheese, cleaning teeth and doing sit-ups. Everyone now repeats
their actions as fragments of his day, the rest of which is left to our imagination” –
Clare Denton.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 Things I do sometimes: step in gum
2020
Tapestry and electronics
90 x 74 x 14 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 203
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ARTIST N°94 FROM ITALY 204
VALERIO CLAUDIO
Claudio Valerio (b. 1991) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Bologna.
He obtained a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from the L’Aquila Academy of Fine Arts while
simultaneously teaching a painting workshop at the Academy. Valerio is currently
studying for an MA in Fine Art (Painting and Visual Arts) at the Bologna Academy of
Fine Arts.
His research is mainly pictorial, although the artist always remains open to
experimentation with various mediums. My research reflects concepts such as the
unknown, the almost, the hidden, the ineffable with particular reference to pictorial
practice. His creative process is attentive when studying the materials and confronts
an oxymoronic and paradoxical reality, aiming to lay bridges to regions of meaning,
which are by nature unknown and indefinable. Claudio believes that within pictorial
practice lies a cognitive possibility capable of questioning reality.
Memento Mori is gloomy, dreamy and full of contradictions. The bottom part
of the painting seems to gently invade the calm, ghostly, semi-transparent surface of
the top of the piece. The work’s colour scheme is very atmospheric, with its shades
of cedar brown, ochre and a drop of ecru creating a sense of controlled tension. At
first glance, the painting appears deceptively serene, but the more I look at it, the more
apparent the feeling of anxiousness and melancholia grows. You begin to question
the reality in front of your eyes: what am I looking at? Has it got a specific meaning? Or
is it, just like any reality, unstable, personal, and is open to interpretation? My gaze gets
lost and delightfully consumed by the gentle sways of what I read as smoke. Much
like those delicate marks, I feel that I become slowly dissolved and disperse in the
sublime unknown, and somehow, it feels right to be consumed by Memento Mori.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Memento Mori
2020
Oil on canvas
70 x 70 cm
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ARTIST N°95 FROM NETHERLANDS 206
VELDHUIS STEF
First displayed at the former Doornburgh monastery (NL), these site-specific
installations use beeswax to establish a new perspective on the human habitat. The
installation was inspired by architect Dom Hans van der Laan saying: “Nature […] is
unfathomable. Its forms have countless sizes. Architecture, as the fundamental
HABITUS is there to surround us like clothing and to make our environment readable.”.
Using the beeswax, artist Stef Veldhuis (b. 1992) counters this principle by using
natural materials to rediscover the man-made space. For the REA Art Fair, two new
interventions have been created. The Entrance, and the Threshold.
Between two of the existing columns of Fabbrica del Vappore, a threshold
is placed. This small intervention transforms the space between the two pillars into
a site of transition. Traversing over the doorsill signifies change, similar to the uses of
thresholds in ancient European and African rites of passage. It divides the space into
an inside/outside, before/after, with the liminal space (“the physical spaces between
one destination and the next.”) of the beeswax border in the middle. The doorsill can
be frequently observed in Chinese architecture where superstition dictated that it
would keep the souls of the deceased from leaving the house, whilst at the same
time preventing evil spirits from entering.
1-2 Telling the bees
2021
Beewax
Site specific installation
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ARTIST N°96 FROM ITALY 208
VITALI PIETRO
Pietro Vitali was born in Lecco in 1994. After attending the artistic high
school Medardo Rosso in Lecco, he obtains in 2019 the three-year degree in Painting
at the Academy of Fine Arts Giacomo Carrara in Bergamo. Growing up in a family
engaged in construction activities, he has always been in contact with the earth,
excavation and cement. The development of a fascination for these elements leads
him to build an imaginary related to them, investigating their possible forms and
observing the dynamics between them.
Pietro Vitali’s work speaks of the ways in which the fusion of the human
factor and the natural process, result in unforeseen formations. He draws inspiration
from architectural structures, archaeology, geology and so on, in order to initiate
reactions between elements such as cement, iron oxide, gypsum, ash, snow and
water. Hollow spaces become moulds and solid complementary of partially twin
structures are produced, as Vitali pours molten materials in cavernous natural
openings, making them exist in a separate and autonomous dimension. The research
thus focuses on the space immediately adjacent to the source structures. Source
structures; the latter are forms generated by phenomena of erosion and physical
decay of materials, that for their organic nature mutate, continuously redetermining
their conformations. The aesthetic expression is the result of a continuous
contamination between a sculptural practice of excavation and exhumation and the
same processes of decay of materials; the final result often has an uncontrollable
aspect, derived from a conscious and a spontaneous action. Through the direct
taking of the positives with cement castings, the negatives of these forms are thus
obtained and at the at the same time an imprint of the metamorphosis is taking
place on the material.
1 ARIA DURA
2020
Cement, gypsum, graphite and iron oxide
Variable dimensions
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ARTIST N°97 FROM ITALY 210
VOLONTERIO MATTEO
Matteo Volonterio, born in Bergamo, lives and works in Rotterdam,
Netherlands. He grew up in the valleys of Bergamo, and this has influenced his artistic
practice: most of the sculptures are inspired by the typical hunting hut of the area.
Hybridization is the main topic and purpose of his works. He creates relationships
between human and natural elements, chemical and organic materials. During
his academic studies at Accademia di Belle Arti G. Carrara (BG), he worked with
different media, from installations to 3D modeling, from photography to sculpture,
without ever straying too far from the concreteness of the materials which he’s most
attached to. Plants, cement, wood, polyurethane, moss. He projects and realizes
small and large spaces by assembling exhausted products and consumer objects.
Then, weaving an aesthetic relationship between them until they become a whole,
a tentacular aesthetic organism. His purpose is to move from creating “works that
talk about” to “works that interact with”.
He believes that art has an ethical function as well as an aesthetic one,
and for this reason it has the duty to take part in the great challenges of modernity,
first of all the environmental issue. Aesthetic and intellectual speculation allows us
to imagine and model alternative forms of futures to overcome the dynamics of
exploitation on which our cultural hegemony is based. The Symbiosis Project is all
about this: designing in 3D and printing site-specific art installations aimed at the
ecological regeneration of specific habitats.
Born as a thesis project in collaboration with curator Eleonora Garini, it is
now the artist’s most important ambition and the reason for which he lives in the
Netherlands. Volonterio graduated with honors in Visual Arts at the Accademia di
Belle Arti G. Carrara in Bergamo, Italy. He was awarded three merit scholarships
at the same Academy. Moreover, in 2019, He
was selected for the National Fine Arts Award,
and in 2020 he won the Top 15 Talent Prize of
Paratissima in Turin. Since the beginning of his
academic career, he has participated in twelve
exhibitions, including five in Bergamo (at Spazio
Gamec, Luogo_e, Spazio Giacomo, and Ex Prison
Sant’Agata and Accademia G. Carrara), two in Turin
(Paratissima Art Station and Accademia Alberitna),
and one in Venice (Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello).
1 Auri vanitas
2021
24 x 48 x 16 cm
Mixed media
2 City Tree
2019
3D structure
1
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ARTIST N°98 FROM ITALY 212
VULLO FRANCESCO
Francesco Ideale Vullo (b. 1994) is an Italian artist who lives and works
between Milan and Sicily. For almost 20 years, he has lived between the hinterland
and the east coast of Sicily: the strong connection with the natural world, historical
scenery, and multiple cultural influences have become a source of inspiration,
contributing significantly to distinguish and raise awareness of his poetics. In 2016
he graduated in Illustration and Animation from the European Institute of Design in
Milan. After several years of editorial and advertising illustration, Vullo began to be
interested in the plastic arts, with particular attention to sculpture and installation.
In his artistic research, he uses and reinterprets everyday objects to tell
aspects of the human being and modern society. Fascinated by the symbolic power
that they can assume, Francesco investigates their ability to evoke feelings and
affective scenarios and collect and transmit memories. The research of materials
plays a primary role, meeting the sculptural practice to which he dedicates himself
and distinguishing himself for a multiform formal and technical variety. Found
objects, natural elements and waste materials become catalysts for the artist’s
explorations. The most recurring themes concern the relationship between the
natural and the artificial world, the emotional tensions of man. The reinterpretation
and reconfiguration of objects and work tools turn into surreal, simultaneously
poetic representations that tell the contemporaneity. In the environmental works
Alterations Series, natural stones collected on the Sicilian coasts are compressed
by plastic clamps or metal structures that irreversibly alter their shapes. In a surreal
action, the industrial element quickly transforms the morphology of the rocks,
replacing a prolonged process that is usually carried out by natural agents such
as wind, rain, the flow of river waters or sea waves. A reflection on how the human
being with his activities has succeeded with territorial, structural and climatic
changes affects geological processes. The works develop taking totems, which
with their monolithic rigidity oppose the organic forms they dialogue. The sculptures
subvert the viewer’s physical perception with solid visual contrast, creating a sense
of disorientation. The cable ties change the shape of the stones, creating a sensory,
short circuit that leads us to question the actual consistency of the rocks.
— Francesco Vullo
1 Islands
2021
Natural stones, plastic clamps,
stainless steel, concrete
H90 X W24,5 X D24,5 cm
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ARTIST N°99 FROM UNITED KINGDOM 214
WILSON STUART MEL
Wilson Stuart Mel (b. 1986) is a British artist based in the northeast of England.
He holds a degree in Contemporary Art and Critical Theory from the Goldsmith
College of Arts in London. Wilson has taken part in a variety of group and solo
exhibitions over the past two years. He creates large-scale works that he projects
into space; in this way, the two-dimensional nature of the work is transformed
into an installation object between sculpture and drawing. The driving factors of
Stuart’s work come from themes such as morality and ethics, which, together with
dogmatic thinking and code, give life to the reflection on how we process the world
as a collectivity and as individuals.
Another fundamental aspect of his art is the relationship with words,
language and the nature of communication concerning the image. The creation
process is characterized by the traditional use of drawing that remains conservative
in aesthetics but not in the intentions: to give life to his works, the artist uses found
objects, driven by the need not to realize valuable pieces that over time would become
a commodity. This aspect is fundamental and is a direct criticism of society and
the world of contemporary art characterized by transient and ephemeral fashions.
Wilson’s works commonly refer to the paintings of the European Renaissance, a
period of history in which the art had a central status and exalted in the culture:
“I examine the contradictions and paradoxes in the idea of the artist as a teacher
when one of the main roles of the object of art in the world today often seems to
function as a means to showcase the wealth and affirm their social status”.
I Don’t Like Shakespeare is an ironic self-portrait that describes the pain
of being creative in producing something good for the world. With this work, Stuart
demonstrates his willingness to enter the space to attract the viewer in and around
the work, encouraging an unconscious language between the work and its viewer.
— Text by Laura Pieri
1 I don’t like Shakespeare
2021
Drawing installation
on plaster board
H180 x W110 x D72 cm
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ARTIST N°100 FROM CHINA 216
ZHENG XU
Xu Zheng (b. 1995) is a Chinese artist who lives and works in Milan. He holds a
BA in Fine Art (Painting) from the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts obtained in 2020. Xu
is now studying for an MA in Fine Art at the same Academy. He has been involved in
various shows, the most recent one held in 2020 entitled From a Newspaper Imposed,
which took place at his Academy.
I work mainly with monochrome surfaces, through which I analyse the
relationship between emptiness and space. Zheng borrows imagery taken from nature
and things surrounding him, creating powerful artworks that instantly evoke a sense of
tranquillity in the viewer. The blank spaces present in his paintings aren’t empty even
when technically there aren’t any forms or colours there; those spaces are a critical
point in the works, to which the artist attaches great importance: according to him,
the image breathes through the openings, and it’s the space that gives life to the light
brushstrokes next to them. The concept of white space is significant and is present in
traditional Chinese painting, where all the figures serving a cathartic purpose have a
white outline. The stressing of the empty space is a Daoist feature: it is a philosophical
concept, a synonym of void or nothingness. Daoism advocated attaining the limit of
open space, retaining extreme stillness, further regarding that only the Dao (Way)
accumulates space. Empty space is regarded as the beginning of myriad things so that
it can be considered a foundation of Daoist philosophy - Space is the heart’s fasting.
The Chan (Zen) school of Buddhism also emphasises that what is the form that is
emptiness, what is the emptiness that is the form. This concept is very present in the
artwork presented at the Fair - entitled Flirt - it is simultaneously delicate, dynamic, and
very much alive.
— Text by Maria Myasnikova
1 Flirt
2021
Oil on canvas
100 x 100 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 217
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ReA! Art Fair acts as
a platform, a starting
point, a link between
an emerging artist
and the art world.
5/5
GUEST ARTISTS | ARTODAY
220
Telling the stories of
the best emerging
talents of the
contemporary art
scene and supporting
their work has
become the guideline
of the project.
REA ART FAIR! 2021
221
Artoday is a project founded in 2017 by Federico Montagna and Alessia
Romano. It was born as a digital incubator of contemporary art, according to the
founders’ vision. Passion and determination have always been the key words that
distinguish and that have allowed Artoday to be a project capable of promoting
and supporting today’s art in today’s world. Telling the stories of the best emerging
talents of the contemporary art scene and supporting their work has become the
guideline of the project. Their approach, from the beginning, has been described by
many professionals in the sector as “new”, defining their profession as that of Digital
Curators. A profession that just a few years ago could be considered utopian, almost
senseless, but which in fact consists of the work of selection, storytelling and sharing
of art through the online. It considers Instagram as if it was a “gallery” that presents
artists chosen through a careful process of study and research, on a daily and weekly
basis. The artist scouting, above all, is done offline to avoid incurring a risk to which
many people are subject, connected to the deception of numbers: “the more online
following an artist has, the more valid they are”. For Artoday social media became
the fundamental channels to take the operation to the next step - which means
interaction, and therefore the construction of a vast network (currently made up of
over 16.5 thousand users). The aim of the project is supporting the work of those who
are building and defining the art of the future. The community that has been created
around Artoday is as varied as the whole art system is: collectors, curators, journalists,
gallery owners, critics and artists are put on the same level and are connected
through a metaphorical bride, a link, order to create a sharing platform which, in the
first place, has the goal of creating contact between the different projects within
the system, but at the same time, aims to ensure that art is conveyed to a new and
wider audience. Over the years Artoday has developed online and offline formats and
events that are “within everyone’s reach”. The way in which art is narrated, described
and communicated is as simple and immediate as possible.
N°101 FROM ITALY 222
ARANI FEDERICO
Federico Arani (1995, Rome). In Federico Arani’s work, space is a cognitive
device, a fluid tool freed from the chronological linearity of language and thought.
Tempered by the pluralities of Rome, by Sci-Fi literature and by Spaghetti Westerns, his
research is conceived as an ecosystem, an ever-evolving organism that investigates
the concepts of evolution and cognitive revolution, as well as the relationships between
languages and knowledge, between consciousness and nature.His works are images
that dig into changes of state, into points of fusion and transformation; thought and
objects full of subversive restrained energy and limbo-places that invite one to look for
the right position to enter them.
The recent series of Odradek works is born from a series of questions that
have arisen by investigating the possibilities of overturning the links between language
and the processes of empirical-cognitive perception and connection with reality, both
as a collective global consciousness and as individual bodies. In these works, the artist’s
intention is to build wearable devices, harnessing the open questions about their very
nature and their function, similar to creatures that embody the limbo of their inability
to self-determine, like defused objects waiting to be picked up and be worn again. Are
they prostheses for the body or are they an extension of it? Are they objects that come
from the past or the future? They ask questions and invite hypothetical action, like Les
machines célibataires that never define certainties, but always generate new questions
and tenaciously call for a possible alternative.
1-2 Nautilus
2019
Sound performance, wood, iron, fabric,
rubber, speakers, vulcanic rock, ground,
animal bones, bullets, inkjet print on
paper, screen print on sweatshirt
59:44 min, V.D. Performer: YIIXIII
REA ART FAIR! 2021 223
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N°102 FROM ITALY 224
SCHIAVONE MARCO
Marco Schiavone (1990, Turin). The intimacy of the surrounding landscape
and how it appears in the eyes of those who observe it: nature, the environment, the
territory, mainly surrounding or geographically close, is what Marco Schiavone’s
research focuses on. Starting from the exploration of the place in consideration, from
its structural and material dimensions,it is analyzed in its principle, in its original form,
and subsequently adopts an foreign, external element, which is positioned and placed
in dialogue with context that is not its own. Hence arises the interest and curiosity to
understand how an element can change and constrain the narration of the landscape
and, generally, of an image.
For this reason, the use of a net for climbing plants becomes the element
through which the artist’s research develops: positioned like a cloth stretched over
different surfaces, it leaves an imprint of itself that modifies the original underlying
structure. Once the photograph has been taken and printed, the mesh, or rather its
imprint, is drawn on tracing paper, leaving the image imprinted by this forcibly inserted
“foreign body” as a result. It is isolated to understand what the shape actually is, and
the design that modifies the reading of the image and therefore that of an altered
landscape. Drawing becomes an instrument of comparison with photography, needed
to better understand the process and result of research and its development.
1-2 Volume doppio 01
2019
Diptych fine art print on Innova paper
100% cotton 320g and one print on
tracing paper
129,5 x 86,5 cm
REA ART FAIR! 2021 225
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ReA! Art Fair draws inspiration from the original concept of the Biennale: a
platform to celebrate emerging artists without a gallery or museum mediating the
exchange between creators and their audience.
Now in its second year, ReA! is pulling broadly from the current climate,
attempting to showcase the “harmony” which can be created when cultural limitations
are removed: an ergonomic society which is free of oppressive categorizations, one
where a collection of narratives can emerge and exist together, without division.
What separated the fair is the emphasis we place on Artists and individual
creators, not only their selected works. The creators selected to exhibit at the Fair
represent a shifting paradigm within the art world: individuals for whom innovation
is hard-coded into the DNA of their potentiality. Everyone chosen to participate is an
emerging artist without extensive exhibiting experience, to whom we want to give a
chance of becoming a part of the art scene. For us, the medium - whether that was
painting, video art, or a performance piece had little to do with our final decisions,
what was essential was the execution - if the idea that the Artist was searching to
communicate, corresponded to the visual representation.
ReA! Art Fair acts as a platform, a starting point, a link between an emerging
artist and the art world. The artists’ evaluation is based on guidelines that also
consider the different career points - from that perspective, the Fair acts as a kickstart,
ensuring steady artistic growth in their future career.
We are working towards creating a more intimate communication between
the society and the emerging artists, as well as the curators. As you walk through the
Fair, you might find yourself following a path, a natural flow, a connection between
the artworks as an intricate storyline unfolds before your eyes. The artists haven’t
been conditioned to work on a specific subject; we want to unite them so that a
beautiful connection between all the art pieces and the exhibition space of Fabbrica
Del Vapore will be created. The reason why the exhibition spans so many types of
artworks, ranging from oil paintings to performing arts, is because we aim to change
society’s point of view about the value of art. It isn’t just about collecting or decorating
your home, but rather about creating a connection with the world as a political being
where one begins to own, sustain and encourage ideas.
— The Curatorial Team
© 2021
As you walk through the Fair,
you might find yourself
following a path, a natural flow,
a connection between the
artworks as an intricate storyline
unfolds before your eyes.