Dimension Folly

An excess of subjectivity and passion as a condition of mental disease are territory of research for this exhibition that opened on September 24th at the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento. Dimension Folly, curated by Roberto Pinto, investigates the everyday manifestation of various forms of obsession, schizophrenia, alienation, feverish exaltation, fury, of all those small and big deformations of a reality more and more perceived as evasive and indescribable. By intentionally setting aside the territory of art brut and of art made by people affected by a declared mental disease as a whole, as well as the territory characterized by the double-track genius/madness, the present show will analyze in-depth how several contemporary artists have tried to describe, live and narrate daily moments of feeling lost, the distortion of a logical-rational reality, and an ordinary uneasiness, the one most latent and diffused, which borders and very often goes beyond society’s canons in force without ever entering into such a conflict to make the situation finally unacceptable. The exhibition starts begins with selected events linked to performance and body art around the Sixties – when many of the new artistic trends aimed to detect both limits and characteristics of the body, seen under a physical and psychological perspective – and continues its course the artistic production conducted in the last few years. Historical works positioned close to art works created specifically for this exhibition build up an itinerary – hosted not only in the gallery but also at other sites in via Belenzani – which shows how subtle the border is that distinguishes normality from what is commonly defined as madness, also for the subsequent displacement of the concept of normality since social changes gradually move up to progressively involve what had previously been considered to be mad. All the exhibited artists have tried to investigate the notions of physical, aesthetical, ethical, moral “normality” by forcing the same concepts up to make them unrecognizable, to finally reach a threshold where the analysis of ourselves becomes paradigmatic of the state and of the development of society. All consequent aberrations, due to cultural, economic and social constructions, have been manifested and often anticipated by works which denounce individual suffering and the failure of individuals to relate to others within a certain increasingly media-oriented society, and in which the distance from others becomes inversely proportional to the “technical” possibility of being in contact with the world.

Participating artists: Adel Abdessemed, Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Francis Alÿs, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Monica Bonvicini, Chris Burden, Roberto Cuoghi, Patty Chang, Sue de Beer, Mike Kelly & Paul McCarthy, Yayoi Kusama, Li Wei, Maria Marshall,Marzia Migliora, Aernout Mik, Ottonella Mocellin, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Adrian Paci, Erik Parker, Federico Pietrella, Pipilotti Rist, Gregor Schneider, Michael Smith, Monika Sosnowska, Vibeke Tandberg, Minnette Vári, Cesare Viel, Gillian Wearing.

Pressetext

Dimension Folly
Kurator: Roberto Pinto

mit Adel Abdessemed, Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Francis Alÿs, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Monica Bonvicini, Chris Burden, Roberto Cuoghi, Patty Chang, Sue de Beer, Mike Kelley & Paul McCarthy, Yayoi Kusama, Li Wei, Maria Marshall, Marzia Migliora, Aernout Mik, Ottonella Mocellin, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Adrian Paci, Erik Parker, Federico Pietrella, Pipilotti Rist, Gregor Schneider, Michael Smith, Monika Sosnowska, Vibeke Tandberg, Minnette Vári, Cesare Viel, Gillian Wearing