Francesco Arena / Nina Beier
12 Dec 2009 - 30 Jan 2010
Opening December 12th 2009, 7.00-9.00 p.m.
Francesco Arena - "18.900 metri su ardesia"
"Nina Beier" - On Teasers and Tormentors
The forthcoming event scheduled by Monitor consists of two solo shows featuring Francesco Arena and Nina Beier, who will both be presenting two new and complex works of a strongly site specific nature.
Three years on from his last show at Monitor, Francesco Arena returns with 18.900 metri su ardesia (18,900 Metres on Slate), a large scale work that dwells on memory and the ephemeral footsteps left by a man as he walks along the pavement on his last day as a free, living individual.
The artist has retraced the itinerary that Giuseppe Pinelli made on December 12th 1969, from the early morning to the late afternoon when he entered the police station in Via Fatebenefratelli, Milan, from which he did not emerge alive and where he was transformed from a normal citizen into a symbol of Italy's political and social history.
The distance covered by the anarchist Pinelli on his last day - eighteen thousand nine hundred metres - is represented by a rut carved 98 times into a total of 322 slabs of slate and a section of flooring measuring 116 square metres. An entire room of the gallery contains the itinerary, which is pregnant with significance and open to different interpretations.
As in much of his artistic research, including works such as 3,24 mq or 92 cm (the first based on the cell in which Aldo Moro was kept prisoner and the second also dedicated to Pinelli), Arena has transformed a measurement into an object that in turn becomes the container of historical information and the artist's opinion on history.
During the final week of the show Arena will be concluding his vision with a performance accompanied by a text written in collaboration with the curator Luca Cerizza.
While Marco Belpoliti has defined Arena's work in terms of horizontal space and artistic vision, Nina Beier's exhibition revolves around a perpetual vertical movement upwards and down again.
Besides the evocative name of Teasers and Tormentors, a reference to the mechanisms used for the curtain separating the stage from the public in theatres, Nina Beier's exhibition is open to a number of stratified visual and material forms of fruition. A wall - a permanent or temporary sculpture/object - bars the entrance to the room, both limiting the view of the space and providing a protective frame to its contents. The chance encounter between a viewer, a sculpture (Spectacle #2) and a vast canvas (Background) still bearing the marks of a recent transport, function as theatre wings preventing a full appreciation of the space and hinting at the backdrop for another, hypothetical work. The piece Permanent Collection screens the viewer's gaze from the show through the transparencies and plays on light and shape provided by discarded glass from acquisitions made by the National Gallery of Copenhagen.
Reflecting on this isolated viewing experience, a text written by Mihnea Mircan will take the viewer through the exhibition from his remote location and perspective.
Francesco Arena (1978) Selected Solo Shows: 2008: 3,24mq, Nomas Foundation, Rome; 2007 Pallet Sospeso Su Raggi, Brown Project Space, Milan; Selected Group Shows: Qui è Altrove, curated by Francesco Poli e Francesca Referza, Palazzo De Sanctis, Castelbasso; Emonitional Community, curated by Teresa Macrì, Monitor, Rome; Premio Lum, curated by Luca Cerizza, Antonella Marino, Francesco Stocchi, Teatro Margherita, Bari 2008: Soft Cell, curated by Andrea Bruciati, Galleria Civica di Monfalcone, Monfalcone; Dai Tempo al Tempo, curated by Pelin Uran, Fiona Parry, Joseph del Pesco, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene per l'Arte, Guarene d'Alba, Cuneo
Nina Beier (1975) Selected Solo Shows: 2009, Le Testimony, Les Sabots, The making of difference; The complete works, curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni, Nomas Foundation, Rome; The Complete Works, performance, curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni, MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome; The Object Lessons, with Marie Lund, curated by Lorenzo Benedetti, De Vieeshal, Middelburg; Performer Performing Performance, performance as a part of The Object of the attack, curated by Vincent Honoré, DRAF, London; Selected Group Shows: 2009, Exercise in seeing, Queensnails Projects, San Francisco; Circus Hein, curated by Jeppe Hein, Atelier Carder, Sachè; Momentum Nordic Biennal, curated by Lina Dzuverovic and Stina Högkvist, Moss.
Francesco Arena - "18.900 metri su ardesia"
"Nina Beier" - On Teasers and Tormentors
The forthcoming event scheduled by Monitor consists of two solo shows featuring Francesco Arena and Nina Beier, who will both be presenting two new and complex works of a strongly site specific nature.
Three years on from his last show at Monitor, Francesco Arena returns with 18.900 metri su ardesia (18,900 Metres on Slate), a large scale work that dwells on memory and the ephemeral footsteps left by a man as he walks along the pavement on his last day as a free, living individual.
The artist has retraced the itinerary that Giuseppe Pinelli made on December 12th 1969, from the early morning to the late afternoon when he entered the police station in Via Fatebenefratelli, Milan, from which he did not emerge alive and where he was transformed from a normal citizen into a symbol of Italy's political and social history.
The distance covered by the anarchist Pinelli on his last day - eighteen thousand nine hundred metres - is represented by a rut carved 98 times into a total of 322 slabs of slate and a section of flooring measuring 116 square metres. An entire room of the gallery contains the itinerary, which is pregnant with significance and open to different interpretations.
As in much of his artistic research, including works such as 3,24 mq or 92 cm (the first based on the cell in which Aldo Moro was kept prisoner and the second also dedicated to Pinelli), Arena has transformed a measurement into an object that in turn becomes the container of historical information and the artist's opinion on history.
During the final week of the show Arena will be concluding his vision with a performance accompanied by a text written in collaboration with the curator Luca Cerizza.
While Marco Belpoliti has defined Arena's work in terms of horizontal space and artistic vision, Nina Beier's exhibition revolves around a perpetual vertical movement upwards and down again.
Besides the evocative name of Teasers and Tormentors, a reference to the mechanisms used for the curtain separating the stage from the public in theatres, Nina Beier's exhibition is open to a number of stratified visual and material forms of fruition. A wall - a permanent or temporary sculpture/object - bars the entrance to the room, both limiting the view of the space and providing a protective frame to its contents. The chance encounter between a viewer, a sculpture (Spectacle #2) and a vast canvas (Background) still bearing the marks of a recent transport, function as theatre wings preventing a full appreciation of the space and hinting at the backdrop for another, hypothetical work. The piece Permanent Collection screens the viewer's gaze from the show through the transparencies and plays on light and shape provided by discarded glass from acquisitions made by the National Gallery of Copenhagen.
Reflecting on this isolated viewing experience, a text written by Mihnea Mircan will take the viewer through the exhibition from his remote location and perspective.
Francesco Arena (1978) Selected Solo Shows: 2008: 3,24mq, Nomas Foundation, Rome; 2007 Pallet Sospeso Su Raggi, Brown Project Space, Milan; Selected Group Shows: Qui è Altrove, curated by Francesco Poli e Francesca Referza, Palazzo De Sanctis, Castelbasso; Emonitional Community, curated by Teresa Macrì, Monitor, Rome; Premio Lum, curated by Luca Cerizza, Antonella Marino, Francesco Stocchi, Teatro Margherita, Bari 2008: Soft Cell, curated by Andrea Bruciati, Galleria Civica di Monfalcone, Monfalcone; Dai Tempo al Tempo, curated by Pelin Uran, Fiona Parry, Joseph del Pesco, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene per l'Arte, Guarene d'Alba, Cuneo
Nina Beier (1975) Selected Solo Shows: 2009, Le Testimony, Les Sabots, The making of difference; The complete works, curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni, Nomas Foundation, Rome; The Complete Works, performance, curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni, MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome; The Object Lessons, with Marie Lund, curated by Lorenzo Benedetti, De Vieeshal, Middelburg; Performer Performing Performance, performance as a part of The Object of the attack, curated by Vincent Honoré, DRAF, London; Selected Group Shows: 2009, Exercise in seeing, Queensnails Projects, San Francisco; Circus Hein, curated by Jeppe Hein, Atelier Carder, Sachè; Momentum Nordic Biennal, curated by Lina Dzuverovic and Stina Högkvist, Moss.