Luca Vitone - Prêt-à-porter

This is the second project that the Pecci Centre has produced after Massimo Bartolini's. It focuses on two themes that have characterized Vitone's work for years: cartography, in this particular case Italy's cartography, which is interpreted by the artist as a means of expressing "thoughts on this territory" and food, in its take out version, which is also seen as a social element but, above all, as a means of cultural expression.

A work of great visual impact, at the centre of the artist's expressly conceptual research is the complex relationship between places and representational means, between a personal direct exploration of reality and a filtered diffused exploration through "commonplaces", between the concrete materialness of objects and the traces that they impress on our memory.

In some of my work the social aspect is important. For those that redefine or relate to the cartographic instrument as a representation of the configuration of the territory. As well as those that relate to the city as a place where everyday experiences occur and interact with our personal and collective memories, a place where we define our relationship with others or the landscape in which we find elements of contemporary painting. It is also important to the pieces where food or folk music are the protagonists of our primary experience of cultures different from our own. (Luca Vitone)

The project for the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art foresees a radical environmental intervention by the artist: the transformation of a long sinuous wall into a cartographic relief of the coast; on the same wall of a unique map of Italy will be presented, composed of typical images collected from every region; there will also be the placement of a dividing balustrade and various telescopes to view and recompose the images made by the artist as he travelled through the country from north to south.

Vitone reflects on "topological loss", the loss of reference points and place identities, due to the social transformations and the arrival of new cultural habits. Therefore it combines the search for typically local flavours and the generalized practice of eating fast food. The parallel with fashion suggested by the title (Prêt-à-porter) recalls a trait that can also be found in "ready made" food and the mapping of current "taste", the visual synthesis of a tendency to preserve a place's complexity from the homologation that is currently occuring.

When we talk about take away food we are generally thinking about hamburgers or hot dogs, and we forget about the rich variety of culinary specialties that the local cultures, the Italian one in our case, already have to offer in this sector. In a moment in which gastronomic "deposits" and haute cuisine assume an exclusive value in the restaurant environment, like haute couture in the fashion sector, the variety available and its role in everyday consumption transforms this category into the prêt-à-porter of contemporary alimentation, becoming a sophisticated condenser of territorial knowledge.

The symbol that characterizes an individual is place. Every place has its own flavors…..Man is what he eats. (Luca Vitone)

This project will be accompanied by, at the beginning of 2005, the publication of a book with contributions from Davide Paolini and Andra Lissoni, an introduction by the curator Stefano Pezzato and a series of images, including a repertory of the artist's work on the same theme and a selection of various images collected for this event (touristic-gastronomic postcards from different Italian regions, photographs of spaces dedicated to take out food, etc.).

Pressetext

Luca Vitone - Prêt-à-porter
Kurator: Stefano Pezzato