Steve Piccolo
Order
2024
Spontaneous assemblage of miscellaneous waste produced by squatters of a building in Milan, photo and graphic intervention by artist
Photo Credit and Courtesy the Artist
THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH STEVE PICCOLO
In this world of noses
to the ground
sky unseen
In this world
grinding to a halt
crawling on all fours
now makes more sense
In this world of
substitutes for love
how can I make decisions?
In this world of
artificial brains
nothing will change
the chains remain
Can this world of
bold assertive style
raise a smile?
In this world of
systems within systems
how do I know where I stand?
And in a world of
self-fulfilling lies
why should I tell the truth?
How will I know what you mean
if you won’t define your terms?
Janis Rafa
The Space Between Your Tongue & Teeth
2023
3-channel video, 9 min
Courtesy the Artist
THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH JANIS RAFA
In a horse’s mouth there is an area where no teeth grow.
A vacuity of space exists along with the interdental space.
And in this break,
within the gap left in between the incisors and premolars,
there’s an artificial portal,
allowing tame,
imposing control,
forcing discipline.
The bit, this irresistible jewel,
is now hosted by the horse’s mouth,
beholding a system of expansion.
Your back left teeth grew like mountains.
Opened holes in the gums.
You couldn’t eat.
Your body wouldn’t listen.
Your teeth a sign of torture.
Your mouth a proof of resistance.
I betrayed your mouth endlessly.
[Ioanna Gerakidi and Janis Rafa]
Nabuurs&VanDoorn
Revelation 03
2022
Fine Art Print on baryta cotton rag paper mounted on dibond
120 cm x 180 cm
THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH NABUURS&VANDOORN
Exactly at the moment we participated in the residency dedicated to Vincent van Gogh, climate activists from “Just Stop Oil” attacked his work Sunflowers at the National Gallery, London UK. In response, we performed 10 Geoseances in the natural environment around Van Gogh’s birthplace. The landscape where Vincent walked and about which he wrote beautiful letters on nature. In GeoSeances (2022), we present a comprehensive exploration of the significance of Vincent van Gogh’s signature. Through digital appropriation, we projected his signature from the painting Sunflowers (1888) onto the landscape, reviving a seemingly forgotten connection between his signature and nature.
Effe Minelli
These butterflies came back from hell to see you 2023 Mixed media Photo credit: Paolo BiavaTHE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH EFFE MINELLI Things that scares me and things that scares me not. I’m scared of admitting my fears. I’m scared of getting rejected after sharing my feelings for someone. I’m scared when all the love disappears or it mutates into hate and bitterness. I’m scared of gossiping, of banal peoples and their sharp tongues. I’m scared of misunderstanding, judgement, stigmatization and discrimination. I’m scared of loneliness. I’m not scared to embrace my fragilities. I’m not scared of telling the true and always follow my hearth. I’m not scared to receive and to give love. I’m not scared of standing up for human and animal rights. I’m not scared of change of mutation and regeneration. I’m not scared of crying.Renée van Trier
Drawing: Apparently it is about land
Charchoal, paper
23,7 x 32 cm
Courtesy the artist
Photo credit: Sofie Boon
THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH RENÉE VAN TRIER
“THIS AIN’T DISNEYLAND
NO CARTOON CHARACTERS HERE
NO PRINCESSES WHO SAVE THE DAY
JUST STRUGGLES AND LONELINESS IN OUR WAY
BEING EXCLUDED IS THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN
EMPATHY IS HARD WORK
EMPATHY IS PAINFULL
LESS AND LESS ROOM FOR ANIMALS TO CHASE
LESS AND LESS ROOM TO CALL HOME
WE FELL ON DEAF EARS
WE TAKE MORE THAN WHAT WE NEED
NATURE HAS THE LAST LAUGH
YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO RETURN TO YOUR ORIGINAL STATE”
“I WANT THE BEST FOR MY CHILDREN”
Alessandro Pessoli
The Valley, 2021 Oil, acrylic, spray paint, oil stick, oil pastels, and colored pencil on canvas 88 5/8 x 169 1/4 inches (225 x 430 cm) Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery New YorkTHE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ALESSANDRO PESSOLI A world fades within one that begins, the sun is a gearwheel that extinguishes itself, dragging a headless body, an old hero from whom flowers are born. Two creatures, a little boy on the back of an invented tiger and my hands, not much more than a small blue tree to lean on. In the future my face is like a flaming skull with a burning smile on which a cartoon worm walks and a little flower sprouts.Fabrizio Prevedello
Prove di volo (35)
2009
Steel
14,5×44,5×42 cm
Courtesy Cardelli & Fontana
THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH FABRIZIO PREVEDELLO
The studio is an old abandoned house.
In the seventies it was also used as an elementary school in the small village where I live.
It has a terracotta floor supported by chestnut beams. The floor is very elastic, maybe too much… I reinforce it with a beam. My colleague downstairs, a painter, is grateful to me.
To distribute the weights, the materials for the sculptures are placed around the perimeter of the walls. I also started building the sculptures on the walls.
The climate is mild, for almost the whole year I leave the windows open, the swallows come in, they make their nests between the beams in the ceiling… and their physical needs, too.
I cover the finished sculptures with sheets, I protect them from being looked at and from coexistence with the swallows.
A sculpture in the making is positioned very high up, just below the ceiling. Some newborn swallows begin to use it as a springboard.
Chiara Enzo
Situazione con M.
2023
19 x 26 cm
Acquerello, pastello, matite colorate su cartoncino incollato su tavola
Courtesy l’Artista; Zero…, Milano
© Chiara Enzo
THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH CHIARA ENZO
The body mixed with itself and with another (or with others), with itself as with the other, does not enter into an identification or in a confusion, but in a disturbing proximity because it itself is proximity, an approach to a certain distinction and renewal, repetition and rekindling of the gap where the pleasure consists in tasting the measure forever uncertain, ephemeral and trembling. Touching: that is, making attraction and repulsion play together, integrity and break-in, distinction and translation. Making the whole play as such, i.e. the touch of unity and of its detachment, of its disunity.
Jean-Luc Nancy, Il corpo dell’arte
Kaarina Kaikkonen
I was trying to organize my life
2017
Mixed media
Courtesy the Artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen
THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH KAARINA KAIKKONEN
Sometimes and quite often actually there is a heavy feeling coming that tells me that all the things around me are in such a mess and it is hard to control things. I am not very well organized as a person.
Even if I try to organize everything, very soon all is mixed up again. I would love to be a person who can organize everything and keep all the things and surroundings in a beautiful order. I would love to be a better person who can help the whole world to be better.
But unfortunately, it seems that I cannot be that person.
Domenico Antonio Mancini
La periferia vi guarda con odio
2019
Red neon 250 cm, 8 mm neon tube
Courtesy of Lia Rumma Gallery, Milan – Naples
Photo credits Danilo Donzelli
THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH DOMENICO ANTONIO MANCINI
When, during the first days of high school, the teacher asked us what we liked about going to high school, which was a decidedly bourgeois institution in the historic center of Naples, completely misunderstanding the meaning of the question asked, I replied that I loved the journey. The journey that started from the eastern suburbs, the city that changed throughout the battered buses’ windows of the Napoli’s “far east”, that told me about the change in a visual and social landscape that fascinated me. Years later, on a wall in Milan, I found the same voice again, and I thought that collecting and reshaping those voices could bring them to the “centers” of the world.