As part of the curatorial project foreignness, the exhibition Schlosshotel Pension Riviera, by Fabrizio Giannini, opens on November 26th, 2016.
The title of the exhibition is representative of a particular idea of exoticism, which permeated Canton Ticino in the last century and reinvented the landscape, through the imagination of people in the South.
The landscape thus becomes a place of continuous intersection and a new visibility system, reassembled with elements which are both extraneous and intentional. This incorporation does not simply concern the behaviour, or the essence, but also involves both the experience and the subjectivity.
The work of the artist is perfectly inserted into the aforementioned curatorial theme through the accurate choice of elements which are “forced” to interact among each other. For this purpose, Giannini applies juxtaposition and transposition/overlay techniques, performing a delicate process of balancing, de-contextualisation and demystification of society’s endogenous and exogenous factors. The process is intended as an interaction among nature, art and communication.
The artist submits nature and art to a practice which is at the same time conceptual and aesthetic, made of sudden incursions, invasions and adaptations to a fast-moving environment.
In his works, elements such as Mediterranean plants like the palm tree and the agave, which became peculiar components of the exotic natural landscape of Canton Ticino, appear as invasive and extraneous factors, while remaining in absolute but “artificial” harmony with the native vegetation that covers valleys and mountains of the pre-Alpine regions.
Giannini goes further, with ease and courage, to place the extraneous factor in an artistic historical context as a distinctive and visually prevailing element, and he does it with an irony and freshness intent and highly impactful gestures.
Works of extreme interest are created to analyse the relationship between art in its aesthetic forms and art in its more conceptual expressive forms, establishing analogies with the social context, where institutional culture and progress move, and the natural context, where we find the consumer society and the territory, whose equilibrium is threatened by the consequences of an unconditional progress.
The work of the artist can also be considered as a “formatting” and decoding process of our society, which is led back somehow to a virtual dimension with complex mathematical origins, leaked from a perpetual vortex of computer algorithms. With the exhibition, this concept is proposed through an impressive video installation, in terms of a deafening, repetitive, synthetic tune, which simulates a conceptual aesthetic dramaturgy of strong emotional impact.
Opening time: Wednesday to Sunday, from 12pm to 7pm, or by appointment: requests@chocfact.ch Please always write to requests@chocfact.ch
Free entrance.
Fabrizio Giannini. Room 3 (Overview). Exhibition ‘Schlosshotel Pension Riviera’, Fondazione La Fabbrica del Cioccolato. Courtesy of the artist.
Fabrizio Giannini. Channel black, 2016. 6 channel video. 6 x 400x220cm. Exhibition ‘Schlosshotel Pension Riviera’, Fondazione La Fabbrica del Cioccolato. Courtesy of the artist.
Fabrizio Giannini. Room 2 (Overview). Exhibition ‘Schlosshotel Pension Riviera’, Fondazione La Fabbrica del Cioccolato. Courtesy of the artist.
Fabrizio Giannini. Shining white, 2016. Direct Inkjet print on aluminium panel 2 mm. Dimension: 120×80 cm. Stroboscopic lamp Installation. Exhibition ‘Schlosshotel Pension Riviera’, Fondazione La Fabbrica del Cioccolato. Courtesy of the artist.
Fabrizio Giannini (1964), born and raised in Lugano, studied in London and Paris, from where he started his artistic career.
From the ’90s, he has taken part in several exhibitions: from Milan to Turin; from Paris to London; from Uppsala to Tampere (Finland), to South Corea. He won in 2001 the federal prize of art and he has exhibited many times his art works in Lugano.
His artworks’ production is very heterogeneous, but the common theme is the study of the use and excessive use of images in the world of media. Television has always been part of the work of Fabrizio Giannini, and the web has also become part of his work in recent years.
