DEPART Foundation Presents
GIORGIO ANDREOTTA CALÒ: 5122.65 MILES
MARCH 10-MAY 7, 2016
First exhibition in the United States, links Venice, Italy to Venice, California
PUBLIC OPENING:
THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2016 FROM 6-9PM
DEPART Foundation, 9105 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069
Los Angeles, CA – Depart Foundation is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of works by Italian artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò, on view March 10 to May 7, 2016. 5122.65 Miles, curated by Luca Lo Pinto, refers to the numeric distance between Italy’s Venice, where the artist was born, and California’s own Venice, linking the two cities from distant continents both literally and figuratively. The exhibition is Calò’s first in the United States, and will feature photographs, sculptures, and film drawn from the artist’s ephemeral and performative practice. Interested in the intersection of architecture, time, and object-based art, Calò creates spatial and experiential interventions, preserving the residual remnants and artifacts as photographic records, or transforming them into sculpture.
In 5122.65 Miles, the artist will present a series of photographic images drawn from an extensive archive documenting his projects and interventions into various urban and rural centers. Like sensory notations or visual notes, the photographic ephemera from these explorations capture fleeting moments and impressions of time and place. Among Calò’s past projects are a series of walks taken over 1,600 miles through France, Portugal, and Spain, and the site-specific transformation of an abandoned parliament building in Sarajevo, which Calò semi-permanently lit from morning until night with artificial light. Calò has also captured images of Los Angeles with an improvised pinhole camera created in the trunk of a car. In this series, the artist captured images of the LA landscape from the confines of a trunk, physically enacting the visual restriction of cinema in which the periphery is always obfuscated. The images are direct exposures onto photographic paper, unmediated by additional time or processing.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Calò will be releasing a photography book published by NERO featuring the entire series of car trunk photographs taken in Los Angeles in 2010.
Time and perception are recurrent themes in Calò’s work. He persistently explores what he calls the “active residues” of materials or objects. His sculptures and images always recall living things, linked, as they are, to intervention, interaction, and the specificity of time and place. Charged with the valence of origin and narrative, Calò will formalize found materials or components extracted from the landscapes and structures he has visited. He has transformed, for instance, the found eroded wood pillars used for centuries to moor boats in Venice, Italy into vertical bronze monoliths, and core samples of earth taken from coal mines into formal sculptural compositions. An undeniable element of alchemy and transformation informs his sculpture, as the artist converts geologic specimens, the leavings of industry, and structural ruins into formal, totemic symbols. These objects, though derived from contextually specific materials, invoke broader associations of impermanence, mortality, and decay.
In addition to the photographic notations, the exhibition will include a selection of these sculptural works by Calò, and a film shot in the south of Sardinia, 400 meters below ground in the obscure depths of a mine. The exhibition will create a dialogue among these varied examples of his explorative work, demonstrating the connection and continuity between his impressions, images, and objects. The works seem disparate and unrelated, but as one travels through the installation, the interconnectedness of the photographs, sculptures, and film will reveal the holistic nature of the artist’s process-driven practice.
ABOUT GIORGIO ANDREOTTA CALÒ
Giorgio Andreotta Calò was born in 1979 in Venice, Italy. He lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands. His solo exhibitions include: La sculpture langue morte, Institut Culturel Italien de Paris, Paris (2014); La scultura lingua morta, WilfriedLentz, Rotterdam (2014); level, Peep-Hole@Fonderia Battaglia, Milan (2014); 08.09.2012- 21.10.2012, SMART Project Space, Amsterdam (2012); 22 luglio 1911 / 22 luglio 2011, Premio Lum per l’arte contemporanea, Teatro Margherita, Bari (2011). Group shows include: Ritratto dell’artista da giovane, Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli (2014);The Volkskrant Art Prize 2014, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Schiedam (2014); Premio Italia Arte Contemporanea 2012, MAXXI, Rome (2012); ILLUMInazioni / ILLUMInations, 54. Venice Biennale, Venice (2011); SI – Sindrome Italiana, la jeune création artistique italienne, Magasin-Centre National d’Art contemporain de Grenoble, Grenoble (2010).
ABOUT LUCA LO PINTO
Luca Lo Pinto (born 1981) works between Vienna and Rome. He is currently a curator at Kunsthalle Wien and is the founder of the magazine and publishing house NERO. His recent exhibitions include Charlemagne Palestine, Kunsthalle Wien/Witte de With (2016); Individual Stories, Kunsthalle Wien (2015); Le Regole del Gioco, Achille Castiglioni Studio-Museum (2015); Pierre Bismuth, Kunsthalle Wien (2015); Trapped in the closet, Carnegie Library/FRAC Champagne Ardenne (2013); Antigrazioso, Palais de Toyko (2013); Luigi Ontani-AnderSennoSogno, H.C. Andersen Museum (2012/2013); D’après Giorgio, Giorgio e Isa de Chirico Foundation (2012); and When In Rome, IIC, Hammer Museum, LAXART, Los Angeles (2011).
Lo Pinto has edited artist books by Olaf Nicolai, Luigi Ontani, Emilio Prini, Alexandre Singh and Mario Garcia Torres. In 2014 he published a time capsule publication titled 2014. He serves on the advisory board of Depart Foundation.
ABOUT DEPART FOUNDATION
DEPART Foundation is an emerging arts organization predicated on the discussion, exhibition and production of art and is dedicated to the development and support of contemporary artists whose work and careers are departing from their previous endeavors or predecessors.
Since its founding in 2008, DEPART Foundation has served as a catalyst for the Italian art and cultural community, strengthening the dialogue between Italy and the international art world. Like multiple outposts in Europe and U.S., DEPART Foundation has actively encouraged artistic production through sponsorship of young and established artists and the provision of spaces and resources conducive to the research, production and exhibition of new work, and to the presentation of educational and public programs.
Some of the most interesting and dynamic artists of our time, from around the world, have been presented for the first time in Rome by DEPART Foundation. They include Cory Arcangel, Joe Bradley, Nate Lowman, Ryan McGinley, Tauba Auerbach, Darren Bader, Louis Eisner, Roe Ethridge, Sam Falls, Mark Flood, Elias Hansen, Brendan Lynch, Oscar Murillo, Sarah Braman, Seth Price, Jon Rafman, Stephen G. Rhodes, Amanda Ross-Ho, Sterling Ruby, Lucien Smith, Valerie Snobeck and Frances Stark.
Image credit: Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Los Angeles September 22, 2010, 2010. Polaroid, stenopeic hole 10 x 9.5 cm. Courtesy the artist.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT
PRESS OFFICE FOR THE EXHIBITION
Lyn Winter, +1 213 446 0788, lyn@lynwinter.com
Jessica McCormack, +1 323 497 9308, jessica@lynwinter.com
DEPART FOUNDATION
Damiana Leoni and Lorena Stamo, roma@departfoundation.org
Photo credit: Jeff McLane
Photo Credit: Eric Minh Swenson