Galleria Franco Noero, Turin
6 July – 15 September 2010
The Concrete Show arises from the use that several artists make of concrete, a raw, flat
and bare material largely employed for building purposes, borrowed by contemporary art
for its sculptural qualities, for being adaptable and ductile, for its familiar and yet very
strong visual impact. The exhibition unfolds in a visual path in which the background and
research of different artists meet because of the use of concrete, for its tactile qualities and
the ever changing consistency of its surface help to create always a peculiar tension.
From the sculptures of Gabriel Kuri, who uses concrete and everyday objects as
multicoloured umbrellas to convey the attention only on the visual features of the object
itself denying its evident functionality, to Damiàn Ortega's sculpture in which, despite its
apparent fragility, a straw mat shapes and impresses the surface of a conspicuous amount
of concrete poured inside of it.
In Sarah Lucas' work the concrete is functional to the representation of shapes that
materialise signs of a feminine universe in competition with men's one, while through
rarefaction and formal essentiality Isa Genzken explores the links between art,
architecture, design and collective experience. One of the masters of Italian contemporary
sculpture, Giuseppe Uncini, has transformed the reinforced concrete in his stylistic
hallmark, granting it a new expressive dignity through a continuous experimentation on the
materials, assembled so as to appear like fragments of industrially generated items.
From Rob Pruitt's ?organic' sculpture in which poured concrete replaces the soil in a plant's
pot, suddenly interrupting its natural life once hardened, to Lara Favaretto's work where on
a small concrete wall gets eternally fixed a very familiar gesture like looking out the window
leaning on one's elbows.
From Daniel Sinsel who increases and distorts the dimensions and formal qualities of a
pair of round glasses combining the weight and the superficial roughness of the concrete
with glass recalling bottle bottoms; to Oscar Tuazon that works on the basic essentiality of
wood and concrete, building constructions that come across as weight-bearing structures
suspended between solidity and frailty; to Michael Dean's sculptures which look like
archaic monoliths containing hidden indecipherable signs and languages, elaboration of
short written texts which letters get melted in the shapes and volumes of the object itself.
Artists on show: Michael Dean, Lara Favaretto, Isa Genzken, Gabriel Kuri, Sarah Lucas,
Damián Ortega, Rob Pruitt, Daniel Sinsel, Oscar Tuazon, Giuseppe Uncini
1. Aniel Sinsel, Butzenbrille,
2007
2. Gabriel Kuri, Untitled,
2010
3. Giuseppe Uncini, Cementarmato,
1960
4. Lara Favaretto, Boring, 2010
5. Michael Dean, Forget, 2010
6. Oscar Tuazon, Papercrate,
2010
7. Rob Pruitt, Untitled, 2010
8. Sarah Lucas, Plop!,
2005
The Concrete Show
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- Giulia Guzzini
- 23 August 2010