4.12.2003 – 24.01.2004
GIULIANO GUATTA – The right front seat lever
Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea presents the new solo show by Giuliano Guatta, featuring six drawings and three large paintings.
Is it possible for a banal occurrence, the result of chance or excessive ardor, to give rise to an infinite chain of thoughts expressed as images?
Somehow has torn off the lever of the right front seat. The lever rises into the air, increasingly resembling a strip of land, a suspended island. Strange things start to happen: two women, on opposite sides of the street, observe each other, immobile (they are the same person); a man is closing a garage, a van is stopped in the street, a car in the small driveway with a person at the wheel, six trees stand around the drive, hirsute twins perch on the branches of the first tree; a supermarket cash register on a lawn, a female cashier, a man lying on the street, another pushing a cart.
And then a woman throws herself against a mirror, embracing herself, while the twins plot something, a man lies on the supermarket cash register, the cashier looks elsewhere, a customer holds a flaming lighter in his left hand. In the end they are all senseless.
“To live in a place – says Guatta – where everything apparently functions normally, and then to realize that there has been a break, a separation. To climb a tree and notice that the roots do not penetrate the ground, but are clumsily resting on it… What I want to convey in this work is an idea of uprooting. Just as the lever is removed from the seat, losing its function, so the strip of land removed from the world wanders, suspended in the void, without any mooring.”
For the exhibition a fine monograph has been published, the first on the work of Giuliano Guatta, edited by Luca Beatrice. The volume, with about 180 pages and over 200 color images, contains a conversation between the artist and the curator, as well as two critical essays by Dario Bellini and Paolo Montesperelli.
Giuliano Guatta: Born in 1967. Lives and works in San Felice del Benaco (BS). Solo shows 2002 “Generazioni”, Palazzo Santa Margherita, Modena, curator W. Guadagnini; “Scherzi?”, ES, Turin, curator L. Beatrice; 2001 “1967 – Pietro Capogrosso e Giuliano Guatta”, Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea, Milan, curator L. Beatrice; 1999 “La Ricreazione”, Empty Rooms, Berlin, curator S. Canarutto; 1997 “Retro”, Spazio Tondolo, Milan; 1995 “Mi Beo – Giuliano Guatta e Alberto Baroldi”, Spazio l’Aura, Brescia, curator D. Bellini; 1994 Galleria Silvano Lodi J.,Milan, presentation by F. Porzio; 1993 “Affezioni”, Galleria Santelmo, Salò (BS). Group shows include 2003 “L’isolachenonc’è”, Chiostri di S. Domenico, Reggio Emilia, curator P. Artoni; “Cuore selvaggio”, Galleria Annovi di Sassuolo (MO), curator M. Paderni; 2002 “Sconfinamenti” at Castello di Fiorano (MO), curator M. Sciaccaluga; “Costruire un sogno, Adriano Olivetti e l’arte contemporanea”, San Donato Milanese (MI), curator A. Madesani; 2001 “Storie tese” at Galleria Spazia, Bologna, curator V. Dheò; “Senza mani! Provos e biciclette bianche”, Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea, Milan, curators M. Cingolani and M. Guarnaccia; “Lampi grevi”, Villa Glisenti, Villa Carcina (BS), curators F. Paris and F. Tedeschi; “Frontiere”, Fondazione Cicogna Rampana, Palazzolo S/O (BS), curator M. Panzera; 2000 “Italia due”, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano (SI).Participant since 1996 at three editions of “Il punto” at Galleria Continua, San Gimignano.
