Stefano Romano
dal 22/3/2012 al 12/4/2012
Segnalato da
22/3/2012
Stefano Romano
The office contemporary art space affair, Tirana
Memoria collettiva. Microgallery is a space for thought offered to artists to enable them to compete with a space with which have never been involved before. The challenge is to create an artwork that is fully part of the artistic research of the artist invited and at the same time surprised him.
Microgallery is a portable gallery in miniature that has no great pretensions, but expects great ideas.
The space is built and designed as a white cube (50x50x50cm), a space which by its own definition does not have an identity, but in this case the identity is symbolized by its size.
Microgallery is a cube, a window, a space for thought offered to artists to enable them to compete with a space with which have never been involved before. The challenge is to create an artwork that is fully part of the artistic research of the artist invited and at the same time surprised him.
Memory is inevitably subjected to a postproduction process by us, it depends on our moods, on the importance of certain details or specific moments; memory is what we strive to preserve from our lives, and yet it is ever evolving.
The new artwork by the Italian artist Stefano Romano, “Memoria collettiva”, specifically conceived for the microgallery, could be linked with the postmodern concept of meta-narrations, such “narrations” that unify people which in different moments in history were in the form of Religion, and Politics; and which in our times have been replaced by personal “stories”. So it is the union of these personal stories that builds the collective memory of today.
The work talks about the tension that is embedded in every choice we make in our life. A choice brings you inevitably to the loss of something else: “So when my life was separated between two countries (Albania and Italy), in an irreversible way, time built such dynamics of life that could not be embraced by simply deciding where to live, because unavoidably, with the choice, I would also lose something”. The tension that developed between these moments is symbolized by the microgallery’s walls; the space between these two borders one in front of the other is a metaphor of the flow of life.
The artist asked some people close to him in different ways (from family to acquaintances), to remember for him a moment from his life. Every person spoke of an episode or a series of episodes related to the artist’s life, a memory, which inevitably was also the history of the relationship between them.
Having collected the memories from the people, Romano wrote them on red pieces of cloth (a color which is very present in his recent works), re-appropriating in this way these memories through writing. The pieces of cloth were sewn together creating an entire fabric, which was fixed to the gallery walls, rolled up in a way that it’s impossible for the audience to read those personal stories, and stretched to the maximum point of tension that the fabric can sustain, after which it will simply rip apart.
Opening march 23rd 6 pm
The office contemporary art space affair
Rr. Pjeter Budi, 4 Pall. Classic K - Tirana
By appointment