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30/11/2007

Rituals, Gods and Sacrifices

MC Gallery, New York

curated by Gabriela Galati

Rituals, gods and sacrifices have always existed and/or had been created by men in all ages and cultures. In this exhibition for MC Gallery, three artists show their own version on each of these concepts through video and photographs.

Labor and effort are recurrent themes in Paolo Bertocchi’s work as references to atone for one’s body. He builds his visual poetic language based on several types of relationships: sometimes that of his personal and intimate living space in relation to the larger exterior surrounding space; sometimes on the interaction with architecture and urban spaces; sometimes on the interaction with nature and on strong physical effort inflicted on his own body, as depicted in the video Lettera dura.

The video Lettera dura, shoot by Bertocchi in San Francisco, USA, is a document of a very long walk through the woods for fourteen uninterrupted hours, a performance he developed while participating of the artist residence at the Djerassi Foundation. He carries a camera fixed to his waist, alternately documenting each foot step he takes along the road, while reading passages from Dante’s Inferno that refer to the path.
Working on different media such us painting, video and photograph

In Martin Larralde’s works, every element has been carefully chosen from real models and are displayed in the composition to reenact quasi ritual situations: Monochrome paintings where a certain male character, generally a young boy or a man, interact with different objects, often a piece of ancient furniture or animals.
The ritual is also an important part of his videos where the reproduction of nonexistent rituals emptied of any significance turns the body of the people seen on the screen (not to call them “actors”) in these automata, mere enactors of a series of instructions.

Limpida fluit is inspired on the idea of making a documentary of a series of guidelines followed by autistic characters. Corpse-rituals temporarily resuscitated in order to be registered for an impossible audience. Decorative visions persistently monochrome designed to describe senseless situations.
Sebastiano Mauri uses in his work the pictorial genre of the portrait to talk about subjects such as identity and subjectivity in rapport with universal concepts and feelings.

In the same way he explored the individual relation and the clichés about love in a previous video (The song I love to), in I believe in god the artist shows different representations of gods (portraits of gods) belonging to different times and cultures, giving at the same time the idea that anyone can have his or her personal pantheon by just buying the same figures.

Mauri created this video starting from his own personal pantheon of little gods carefully accumulated during the 10 years he lived in NY. Each god turns around on itself with a bright and colorful background, and when it reappears it is already the next deity. So it is that the artist turns this work into an exploration about the private rapport with the gods.

Gabriela Galati, curator

Technical details:

Title: LETTERA DURA
Duration: 53' 10" 00'''
Format: mini DV
Copies: 5 copies signed and certified by the artist/gallery.
Year: (c) 2005.
Artist: Paolo Bertocchi


Title: LIMPIDA FLUIT.
Duration: 26' 10".
Format: DVD.
Copies: 5 copies signed and certified by the artist/gallery.
Year: (c)2005.
Artist: Martin G. Larralde


Title: I BELIEVE IN GOD
Year: 2007
Duration: 25' 11''
Format: Color Video
Copies: Unlimited signed and certified by artist/gallery
Artist: Sebastiano Mauri

Image: Paolo Bertocchi, Still Frame 14 Location 2007 digital print on fabric 1/5

MC Gallery
549 West 52nd Street, 8th floor - New York
Admission free

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