Officine Saffi is pleased to present LOREDANA LONGO 'CREATIVE EXECUTIONS'

Officine Saffi is pleased to present

LOREDANA LONGO

CREATIVE EXECUTIONS

13 November – 20 December 2019

Opening: Tuesday 12 November 2019, 18.30-21.00

Creative Executions is the final act, the witness of the three performances that #loredanalongo held with #officinesaffi during the year.

Those who have studied her artistic experimentation know that #loredanalongo is a disruptive artist. In each instance, she is able to relate with discordant materials and creative processes through a singular presence, which dialectically combines vigour and #design, physical strength with materials that are both soft and energetic. As the images of her performances reveal, her creative process includes the contemplative role of the participating public.

On each occasion, #loredanalongo was able to committedly relate to the context in which she acted, dialectically conversing and altering details and staging in each instance, because her work is also a theatrical machine, a process of constant transformation of her own practices. Last summer, the artist also expressed this within the prodigious setting of the Trulli in Itria Valley, where she projected her paradigmatic word "Victory" on the exciting tangle of smoke, an instant after the explosion of dozens of fresh clay pipes created by a craftsman.

Longo renounces the images and the verbal expression that characterised much of her earlier works, here experimenting with the self-sufficient structure of form, its abrasions, its concave and convex parts, the abrasions and penetrations of the material into the same material of the artwork.

The constellation of ceramic fragments that is composed after each performance shows the post-war aftermath of a battlefield: fragments retreating into themselves, pierced and violated by an explosion with unexpected and - above all - unpredictable results. "My true problem - as the artist herself stated - "is that I do not want to know exactly what will happen, I love that inscrutability of form that will eventuate, like life". New shapes are born from the primordial chaos.They are relics of a destroyed world that, despite everything, breathes and endures.

With this performative act, the artist wants us to reflect on the aesthetics of violence, a theme that has characterised her work for over twenty years. The rumble of an explosion, the physical disintegration of the ceramic objects made for the occasion, a material that has always been a focus of Loredana Longo’s artistic research, lead us to reflect on what violence, whether experienced or perceived, leaves in all our lives.

And this is perhaps the most disruptive element in the work of #loredanalongo: because none of the violence that surrounds us is literally proposed.

The pyrotechnic explosion is not didactic: we do not see an execution before our eyes, on a quiet afternoon in the centre of Milan. Yet we do see an explosion, we do hear the detonation, we do see fifty cylinders collapsing in front of us, arranged in regular rows.

In Loredana Longo’s performance, the cylinders fall and shrivel up before our eyes. The fresh earth returns to close in on itself. We are spared nothing, even though it shows nothing. We do not see images, we do not support the spectacle of violence spoken of by Hal Foster. On the contrary, we breathe it.

And no further images are needed, no real bodies or physical flags are needed. The violence of the act and of our time speaks to us through that absence. The smoke leaves us with only the remains, the sound forces us to actively participate in the explosion. Violence is no longer deferred, hatred is no longer "courteous" yet.

In collaboration with FPAC- Francesco Pantaleone #arte Contemporanea (Milano, Palermo)

The show comes with the curatorial essays by Irene Biolchini and Lorenzo Madaro

The exhibition is open through December 20^th 2019

BIO

Loredana Longo, multitalented artist and performer, creates installations with different media: video, photography, sculpture and scenography. For many years she has been working on the theme of “Aesthetics of the destruction“. In 2005 she makes a work series: The Explosions, real theatrical sets where she builds middle-class interiors to let them explode and then perfectly rebuild them. After that, other series as “Floors” follow; they are cement floors where she incorporates different objects as a complaint of the massive use of the impoverished cement in Sicily. In the last years her work is oriented through social and political issues with performances and installations, documented by videos and photographies. Her favorite medium is fire with whom she writes and digs every surface.

Selected exhibitions

2019/ Second Life, Sahrai flagship store, London / Biennolo, Ex Pastificio Cova, Milano/ La vita materiale, Palazzo da Mosto, Reggio Emilia/ Ardente, Fondazione Sicilia, Palermo/ 2018 She Devil remix, Museo Pecci, Prato/ Piedediporco Francesco Pantaleone, Milano/ Same same but different, Kunst Merano #arte, Merano 2017/ Victory, La Mattanza, Consolato Generale d’Italia a New York/ Due South, Delaware Contemporary Museum, Wilmington, USA Victory, Francesco Pantaleone #arte Contemporanea, Palermo, 2016/The Mdina Cathedral #contemporaryart Biennale, Malta, 2015/ Nel mezzo del mezzo, Palazzo Riso, Palermo, 2015/ My own war, GAM, Palermo, 2014/ Un été sicilien, Chateau de Nyon, Svizzera, 2013/ Violence- XV Biennale Donna- PAC- Ferrara, 2012/ Secret Gardens,Tent, Rotterdam/ WUunsch und Ordnung, Ausstelungsraum Klingental, Basel, Svizzera, 2011/ Festarte Videoart Festival, MACRO Testaccio, Roma, 2010/ Inmotion 2009, Biennal Internacional de Performance i Arts Visuals Aplicades, CCCB, Spagna, 2009/ AIM, International Biennale, Marrakech, Marocco, 2009/Tina B., The Prague #contemporaryart Festival, Praga, Repubblica Ceca, 2008/ Abracadabra, Italian Institute of Culture, Madrid, Spagna, 2008/ Gemine Muse International, Benaki Museum, Atene, 2004/ XIV Quadriennale,Anteprima, Palazzo Reale, Napoli/ Echigo Tsumari Art Triennal, Tokio, Japan, 2003.

Monday-Fridayì10–13, 14-18.30
Saturday 11-18
Sunday by appointment
Free entry

Info:

+39 02 36685696

info@officinesaffi.com

press@officinesaffi.com

www.officinesaffi.com