Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is proud to present
SWERVING the apocalyptic angle into hope
Stefano Cagol (IT), Mary Mattingly (US), PSJM (ES)
Opening: Tuesday, February 13th 2024, 6.30 PM
From February 14th through to March 30th 2024.
From Tuesday to Saturday, from 3 PM to 7 PM
Curated by Stefano Cagol
Hope is a muscle that allows us to connect (Björk & Timothy Morton).
Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is pleased to present the group show Swerving the Apocalyptic Angle into Hope, curated by Stefano Cagol.
The title, taken from a conversation between Björk and the philosopher Timothy Morton, refers to the role of art in influencing society away from paralyzing immobility. A coherent sense of commitment distinguishes, indeed, the practice of the artists exhibited, Mary Mattingly (Rockville, 1978), the Spanish collective PSJM (Cynthia Viera, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, 1973, and Pablo San José, Mieres, 1969) and the Italian Stefano Cagol (Trento, 1969).
Mattingly, whose research was defined by the New York Times as “optimistic”, when one of her works pushed the city of New York to establish the first public edible park in the metropolis. The New York Times continues “The artist’s work addresses future climate crises while attempting to make the urban environment a better place to live right now.” The exhibition displays the photographic work from the House and Universe series (2013), among her most famous, published on the cover of the book Art in the Anthropocene. Encounters among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. The other photographic works belong to the Ebb of a Spring Tide Salt Moons series, created by allowing the salt component of the ocean to accumulate on large steel disks. She shot them as the salt formations changed with the tides, highlighting the strength of nature.
The PSJM collective based in the Canary Islands, included among the hundred most representative artists of international socially engaged art in Art & Agenda: Political Art and Activism (Gestalten, Berlin, 2011), founded the Sala de Arte Social in 2018 in Las Palmas and the Biotopias project for art and ecology in public spaces. In Milan, they present paintings on linen and tempera on paper from the Clean Future series. They are minimalist compositions based on statistical data, defined as “social geometries”, works of great simplicity and immediacy but profound density of meaning. This new series, expressly made with locally produced eco-paints, takes on an optimistic tone, describing encouraging future projections, such as the increase in sustainable vehicles or waste treatment in the European Union from the 1970s to 2050, thus symbolizing hope for a clean future.
By Cagol, who participated in the 59th, 55th, and 54th Venice Biennale, on display, we see sculptural, video, and photographic works. Through research strongly based on the process and the ability to go out from the spaces of art, Cagol has developed a multi-site, multidisciplinary, and generative method, which has given life to We Are the Flood, a platform for the MUSE Science Museum Trento, “the project of a scientific museum to address the environmental crisis through contemporary art”, through which he involved over fifty artists of different generations, philosophers, poets, and gave life to the Anthropocene MUSE Collection, the first of its kind in Italy, awarded the PAC – Piano Arte Contemporanea 2023. Now, as the winner of the Italian Council for the second time, he has evolved this same project into expeditions in the desert of Egypt, the tropical jungle of Malaysia, the ice of Greenland, and the steppes of Kyrgyzstan, between shamanic solitude and interaction with the specific cultural environment.
Stefano Cagol often refers to Timothy Morton: their research and theories come together in a synchronic way from the publication of Hyperobjects in 2013 to the spectacular meeting at MUSE in Trento in October 2023, focused on Morton’s next book, Hell. The apocalyptic Cagol believes, to the core, in the artist with a social and spiritual role.
A selection of works by these socially engaged artists is presented in Milan, including photography, video, sculpture, and painting.
