FRANKO B / ZHANG HUAN:
DEPOSIZIONE E POSIZIONE
(Deposition and Position)
Curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti(FAM)
OPENING: Tuesday, April 15 2008 from 6 to 9 p.m.
EXHIBITION DATES: From April 16 through June 15 2008
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday through Saturday from 1 to 7:30 p.m.
Galleria Pack is proud to present Deposizione e Posizione (Deposition and Position). Zhang Huan and Franko B, two of the most important performance artists on the contemporary art scene, are set to dialogue with one another for the first time ever through a series of recent artworks, some of which have been created especially for this event.
Deposizione e Posizione (Deposition and Position) is a theoretical project that presents the work of two artists in a dimension that places the accent on the natural spirit of their images. Body and power – religious and political – the body and politics of power.
These images by the two artists are striking for their incredible calm and composure, counterbalanced by pain as a strategy for loss of identity, as an insult to the calm solemnity human life is relegated to. It is a dimension that is poetic even before it is political, and defines an individual autonomy in which the exhibition of self makes language, communication and possible dialogue burst forth from the missed relationships between beings with existences separated by conventions, choices and references.
Both these artists seem capable of suspending time, crystallizing language. All their energy is concentrated on a redefinition of the world, starting from communication between living beings.
These images by Franko B and Zhang Huan seem to want to reactive the metaphorical power of art. Deposizione e Posizione presents the connections between the two artists and Western religious iconographical art, presenting the body as a landscape of emotions. In a society based on the principle of reality, the artwork by these two artists bursts forth like a conscious, potential laceration that renders the possibility of symbolic exchange real. Here the artwork – its “giving over,” “opening up,” “putting itself on display,” its transformation of the body into an investigation of being – is an extreme attempt of the value of exchange. That which is being given, opened, displayed is none other than uniqueness of emotion and authenticity of passion; the contact between individuals who know how to intuit the sense of complexity in which action lies, and within which a quotidian battle is fought.
The exhibition is curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM), one of world’s foremost authorities on performance art and the body/art relationship in contemporary art. She is author of such books as Identità Mutanti (Mutating Identities) and Nessun Tempo, Nessun Corpo (No Time, No Body).
She founded and directed the magazines Intervallo/Incidenti and VIRUS Mutations. She was a member of the committee at the Biennale of Visual Arts in Venice in 1993, and member of the committee at the Venice Theater and Dance Biennale in 2005 and 2006.
Franko B was born in Milan and has lived and worked in London since 1960. He has presented performances in the most important museums in Europe, including: Arnolfini, Bristol Palais des Beaux - Arts, Brussels; National Review of Live Art, Glasgow; South London Gallery, London; Tate Modern, London; Circolo de Bellas Artes, Madrid; galleria Kapelica, Ljubljana; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. His most recent solo exhibitions include: Love in times of fear, Ruarts Gallery, Moscow, 2007; The Black Period, Galleria Pack, Milan, 2006; Long Live Romance, Galleria LipanjePuntin, Trieste, 2005; Volume 2: Franko B, Galleria Pack, Milan, 2004; E-FEST, Great Eastern Hotel, London, 2003; This Is For You (selected works from 1997 through 2003), Luke & A Gallery, London, 2003; Poverty Is Not A Crime, Neon Gallery, London, 2003.
Zhang Huan was born in An Yang City in China in 1965. He lives and works in both Shanghai and New York. Some of his major solo exhibitions include: Zhang Huan: Blessing, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2008; Zhang Huan: Altered States, Asia Society, New York, USA, 2007; Zhang Huan: Seeds of Hamburg, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA, 2005; Zhang Huan: Seeds of Hamburg, Norton Museum of Art, Florida, USA, 2004; Zhang Huan, Bochum Museum, Bochum, Germany, 2003; Zhang Huan, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, 2002; Zhang Huan, Museo das Peregrinacions, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2001.