Rä di Martino - Adam Avikainen
24 Apr - 30 May 2009
Opening April 23rd 2009, 7pm
Monitor is pleased to announce the opening of the solo shows dedicated to Rä di Martino and Adam Avikainen at its new premises in Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, with two new projects developed by the artists over the past year.
After The Dancing Kid, presented in 2005, Rä di Martino returns to Monitor with her latest project conceived from the study of ancient oral traditions and completed with the support of Genk’s FLACC.
Shot in a fin de siècle villa in the Belgian countryside, August 2008 features a stunning Maya Sansa alongside Mauro Remiddi (who also composed the film’s soundtrack together with the artist), singing CNN news stories from August 2008, from the evacuation of New Orleans to the melting of the North Pole ice caps. Frozen within the stylistic evocation of a 1940s film, the two actors deliver familiar TV reports in a new, lyrical key that empties them of their inherent pathos.
The show of works by Adam Avikainen is the first exhibition in which Monitor features exclusively paintings by the artist. Following a period of living in Japan, Avikainen returns to Rome with a cycle of some thirty paintings of various sizes, structured according to the artist’s customary fashion of creating a kind of storyboard for a work of fiction and narrated by Avikainen’s own voice in a ‘radio drama’ lasting around eighty minutes.
From the Casino, a topical place in the artist’s imagination, to the cherry trees in blossom through the streets, the citrus and lemon trees near his studio by the river in the town of Kamiyama – all these elements emerge in Avikainen’s painting.
Each painting has a corresponding photograph, taken by the artist during his months spent in Japan – at times the significance is blatant, at times less so. It is the viewer’s job to go about deciphering the works, as the scent of chocolate and cinnamon brownie permeates the air.
We wish to thank the Awagami Factory of Tokushima for its precious assistance in the work of Adam Avikainen.
Rä di Martino, Selected Solo Shows: 2008: Maze, Turin; 2005 and 2003 Monitor, Rome Selected Group Shows: 2009 Italics, MCA, Chicago; 2008: Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Manifesta7, Rovereto; How Soon Is Now, AIM program, Bronx Museum; Quadriennale di Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; 2007: Senso Unico, PS1, Long Island, New York
Adam Avikainen, Selected Solo Shows: 2008: SARAKURA, Galerie Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam; 2007: Aki Akari, Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan; Sweathertz, De Ateliers, Amsterdam; 2006: Loyly Ikebana, Monitor, Rome Selected Group Shows: 2009 Slow Movement, Kunsthalle, Berne; 2007: Beauty Unrealized, PSWAR, Amsterdam; 2006: Just In Time, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; 2006: Aesthetics of Resistance, Assab One, Milan.
Monitor is pleased to announce the opening of the solo shows dedicated to Rä di Martino and Adam Avikainen at its new premises in Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, with two new projects developed by the artists over the past year.
After The Dancing Kid, presented in 2005, Rä di Martino returns to Monitor with her latest project conceived from the study of ancient oral traditions and completed with the support of Genk’s FLACC.
Shot in a fin de siècle villa in the Belgian countryside, August 2008 features a stunning Maya Sansa alongside Mauro Remiddi (who also composed the film’s soundtrack together with the artist), singing CNN news stories from August 2008, from the evacuation of New Orleans to the melting of the North Pole ice caps. Frozen within the stylistic evocation of a 1940s film, the two actors deliver familiar TV reports in a new, lyrical key that empties them of their inherent pathos.
The show of works by Adam Avikainen is the first exhibition in which Monitor features exclusively paintings by the artist. Following a period of living in Japan, Avikainen returns to Rome with a cycle of some thirty paintings of various sizes, structured according to the artist’s customary fashion of creating a kind of storyboard for a work of fiction and narrated by Avikainen’s own voice in a ‘radio drama’ lasting around eighty minutes.
From the Casino, a topical place in the artist’s imagination, to the cherry trees in blossom through the streets, the citrus and lemon trees near his studio by the river in the town of Kamiyama – all these elements emerge in Avikainen’s painting.
Each painting has a corresponding photograph, taken by the artist during his months spent in Japan – at times the significance is blatant, at times less so. It is the viewer’s job to go about deciphering the works, as the scent of chocolate and cinnamon brownie permeates the air.
We wish to thank the Awagami Factory of Tokushima for its precious assistance in the work of Adam Avikainen.
Rä di Martino, Selected Solo Shows: 2008: Maze, Turin; 2005 and 2003 Monitor, Rome Selected Group Shows: 2009 Italics, MCA, Chicago; 2008: Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Manifesta7, Rovereto; How Soon Is Now, AIM program, Bronx Museum; Quadriennale di Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; 2007: Senso Unico, PS1, Long Island, New York
Adam Avikainen, Selected Solo Shows: 2008: SARAKURA, Galerie Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam; 2007: Aki Akari, Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan; Sweathertz, De Ateliers, Amsterdam; 2006: Loyly Ikebana, Monitor, Rome Selected Group Shows: 2009 Slow Movement, Kunsthalle, Berne; 2007: Beauty Unrealized, PSWAR, Amsterdam; 2006: Just In Time, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; 2006: Aesthetics of Resistance, Assab One, Milan.