PRESS RELEASE

[testo in italiano]

The third Stefania Galegati exhibition by pinksummer is made up of two videos, an installation of writings projected on a wall, some pictures taken from things often found in art galleries and then from a small book, around which, as Galegati explains in the following text, the whole exhibition is based: it’s a love story between an artist and a collector exchanged through e-mails; an intimate story. They are works that move from an attitude that could be defined as the pathology of the delay that a tourist imposes on daily life, a sort of neurosis in registering things so as to prolong the enjoyment of holidays on returning back home, when in intimacy he is finally able to live by extending life's images. The concept of intimacy is developed by a prismatic project, whose faces are connected by subtle references that move from the individual to reflect the collective. The self seems to end up in the manifestations of the world, and the world finds a unique body in the vibrations produced by people and with it its essential metaphysicality.
The method of using notes and “ spontaneous work”, constitutes the coherent dynamic made lighter by the a-priori of the structure. With regards to the press release, we have chosen to simply present some e-mails that we exchanged with the artist during the preparation of the show: a press release that will constantly change according to the show.

Tell us quickly something about the show you have in mind for pinksummer.

In the pinksummer show I would like to present a series of random notes. It is a direction that the work has taken in the last two years and that until now I have refused to show as a real work… material that I used more for events or evenings. It has a different weight, in the sense that are notes taken from here and there, but slowly it becomes an essential part of the work, I have probably been influenced by my gipsy behaviour, but also from the necessity to assimilate the world in a maniac way and to give it back being a filter. In a word, what I considered real work gets so near to this attitude, and what is born as notes shifts so near the real work that now I am no more able to distinguish them from each other.
The project will take on different forms, I also started on some paintings, but then I understood that I need only present the book (see below)… The Canvas should divert the attention from the “reality” of all other things. The video and the photos will be useful in giving context and veracity to the book.
However, I will tell you about the works: they are videos that I record 24 hours a day everywhere I am and, in general, I assemble them every 4 -5 months and then I put them to music. Every video acquires its own character, that changes in relation to my filter of the world, in relation to the situation I find myself in. I should state that most of the videos are set in Argentina (but also in Italy, new York and Berlin). The title is “L’ora del Sud” (The Southern hour) and its theme is that of situations in which one the need to confide in somebody or something.
I’m now finishing the editing a video entitled “Implosion”, it’s very ironic, almost a bit stupid. They are situations linked to collective ritual and habits, a kind of surface that wraps the world. There are many scenes regarding Italian football, I have picked up all t-shirts with the 'Italia' written on them from across the world, and many absurd churches. In all of this you can feel the heat.
It’s difficult to describe these videos without watching them. (maybe one showed on the screen and one projected)

I would like to show the photos of the writing as slides. You can see them on my web site. I have many writings, I have to select them well.

I will take particular care of sorting the small book: it is also a random work, because a friend gave it to me, I changed the names and places… however it’s a collection of series of emails that form a love story between an artist and a collector. I have attached it. (be careful, those who read it, as you will not be able to do anything else all day).
As I won't give the style of book, I will print it on A4 format, punched. I would do a large distribution in a low cost (I have also found an English translator, and the 'Printed Matter' representative liked the idea a lot, but this is another matter…)
I do not want the small book to be displayed in the gallery, it’s something to bring at home and read later.
This is almost it. I’m a bit scarred about how to use the space. And furthermore, please send me a plan of the gallery as soon as possible … I need simply to know the metrical dimensions.
I would like the exhibition to jump out as almost an overstatement full of exaggerated images and songs, but at the same time I want it to be made of lightness.
What do you think?
Ah, then I was thinking about the invitation, I would use a picture of Garibaldi, and another thing that I started is a collection of images of Garibaldi monuments around the world. I have one very nice of the one outside your space… I have attached it lightly.
Hugs to both of you

In the show therefore, there are two video “L’ora del sud” (“The Southern hour”) and “Implosion” (seen yesterday) one on screen and one projected, then there is a carousel for the writings and pictures of the signatures and albums of the galleries (They are 10, 27x36 cm, I did a print proof yesterday to see them hung and I think it is a good size) and then the small book containing the love story between collector and artist. I cannot wait to see it installed, and for me to install it!! I haven't slept for ages because I've been thinking about this show. We like the idea of the foam rubber seat, how do you think you will present the small book? Do you need a stand?

I still don’t know… it also depends on the effect on the rest of the space and to how everything interacts, but we can decide at the last minute whether to put them all on the ground and maybe one print hanging on the wall in a way that someone can read some of the phrases here and there as a preview… or on a table… in any case I was thinking that we need someone for the opening a person that can distribute them… if Nelda wanted to do it… in any case I would keep it at the centre of the space. It is the intimate fulcrum around which all the show turn and through it all the other things get connected. I am giving you some of the writings as written down, as gestures of freedom, they make a connection between the book and the videos that are instead more open to the world and less specific but they have many connotations.
In the other direction there are the pictures with signatures, that are like a smile, the irony of the small and unconscious art world, the need and the search for gossip but also the need to leave one's own name as a presence and also as a sort of limit between reality and fiction, you will see as they are many subtle piss-takes of the system as it is. I stole everything, in this case, I simply put everything together. What I said the beginning was that the book is the centre whilst being the most delicate: you take it away and it takes you into the intimacy of two real people.

What do you mean “I’m a gipsy”?

It means that I don’t have a house. The only I have is here in New York, is the living room a over crowded apartment, it means that I don’t have any intimacy, not at all in the last two years… and this has probably conditioned my work.
It’s about material that was not born as a work of art, but by which you affirm that it is so near to your work that you decide to make a show of it.
It is stolen material edited by me, it’s more close to the photo attitude… it’s a very subtle limit that perhaps I don’t want to understand. I have always thought about art in a pure way, as something that should be abstract from the world, that should physically make the world image free. Here maybe the result is the same but the method is different.
This show has been my daily life for the last year and half: it’s been the case that everything physically around me has become materials to work on, and the work is made in post-production; it’s like going to pick up apples to make a marmalade or a cake or whatever, or instead picking up the apple in order to look at it and maybe to decide to show it in a museum for some reason… I’m sorry for the stupid example even it doesn't work very well… As instead of stealing the ideas from the world i stole the physicality.
Everything is not yet clear, so you might be confused, I am a bit confused, but i think it’s only because I haven't yet seen the show… but at the end it is the method of the work that i think is lighter, it has become everyday and mixed with life in a way that is almost undistinguishable to me. If I’m around without camera, now I feel bad, as if I have a third eye that follow me always.

When you said that you follow that moments in which there is the need to trust someone or something, do you think that some public phenomena, such as football or historical events as the Giovanni Paolo II funerals produce emotive vibrations like those induced by ritual psychology, and that in this sense they are in some way to intend as metasensible research: that humanity, essentially, looks where it can, where it is able its own metaphysic?

Yes, this is evident. It’s a bit like having a vision in which everything is clear and simple, like what happens if you think the world as a warship or as a Gaia (B. Fuller and Asimov, I always steel from that!)… The fact of staying behind a camera means having this attitude of distance with things. It seems a contrast with respect to “richness” in terms of the quantity of images of the show, but it is like distancing yourself from the things in order to be part of them. The method is the opposite but the intentions are the same for the canvas of the zoo architectures. I have another beautiful quote, now I will find it.
See how beautiful it is “From the neighbours, not distant from Scampia, there were some Visitors. They were called in a square in front of some sheds. I was there, not by chance, but with the presumption that hearing the true whisper, the warm one, the most true possible, we could arrive at an understanding of the basis of things. I’m not sure it’s fundamental to observe and to be there in order to know things, but it is fundamental to be there because things know you”. It’s comes from this book of Saviano on the Camorra, it seems that in Italy he is becoming very famous in recent months…

Often, when you talk about your work you are talk of the absurd, do you mean those strange moments in which a less dense world, but not a lesser reality, reveals itself. We are looking to see the reason of this project, also in relation to what your work is, or at least what we believe it is or what we should like it to be: a sort of evocation, or better, a revelation of a magnetism, of a thin and powerful energy that always arrives in your drawings to make nature stumble, or better, an existence from which the spirituality has been put aside.

This last phrase is very beautiful. I believe that you encapsulate the intentions. I add that I should like give to this show a bit of an abstract shape in which there are some lines that come back to everything with a different focus. There are some continuous references between every work and I would like to discover them little by little. It should be like a second editing, beyond the one of the single work. And there are a lot of references, both for similitude that for contrast: To put together the game park of Saint Land with the North American mother that isn’t able to explain to her daughter what happened to the plaza De mayo mothers. The madness to invent a belief and a faith in sporting events, as much as the jazz man who spits out his soul on the drums, as much as to invent a possible digital love at distance and to live it as if it were true…. I’m not able to find a general idea behind all of this, but if I connect everything together, a clear image opens up. Like a tangle of knots that shape a ball, if you are distant you see a ball, if you approach it you see only a knotted rope…
So I attach the small book
See you very soon
s

One more thing: Garibaldi.

Garibaldi isn’t a work, I don’t know what to do with it, it is by now an invitation. I’m collecting all the images of all Garibaldi monuments in the world. It talks about "italianity” in the same way as the video “Implosion”. I’m interested by the fact that he was revolutionary by chance. He at the end wanted only to fight, but he made Italy. I like to collect things that I don't know what to do with, but that are all things that will take me somewhere else. In the two videos that are in the show there is Garibaldi in Plaza Italia in Buenos Aires and the one of Washington Place in NYC.
In the slide project there is a plate in my village (Bagnocavallo) placed when Garibaldi passed through it, escaping, but acclaimed like a Romagnoli hero.
My friend Marco and I have been thinking for a long time of making some t-shirts like those of Che Guevara.

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