I'm back - and Santa is free!!!

I was not the only one being relocated in Rotterdam this month :) Paul McCarthy's Santa Claus found a new home as well.

The sculpture was at the center of a debate from a few years and appearently could not find its own proper position in the city. Until one day a group of shop owners, the Binnenweg Association, asked to adopt him and gave him a new place to stay in Eendrachtsplein, right in center of the city.

The statue, a six-meters-tall hybrid between Santa Claus and a garden gnome, who holds in his hands a bell and a giant buttplug/christmas tree, is meant to represent american's consumerism and commercial success. This huge kind of "devotional image" had its celebration day on November 28th, with a whole afternoon of events dedicated to "him".

The program included a more "formal" part: the screening of Paul McCarthy's "Painter" in the early afternoon and a lecture by Ton Bevers (Professor in Cultural Sociology at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University) on the history of the sculpture.

Then, the celebration became some kind of folk event: a parade with children and music followed the sculpture on its way to Eendrachtsplein. Of course SinterKlaas and Father Christmas were attending the event as well.

It was incredible to see how a controversial based on a contemporary art piece could become a social event bringing together many different kinds of people, mostly not connected to the artworld at all. The celebration went on and on with music, free food and champagne and some screenings of Paul McCarthy's videos much longer after the final installation of Santa Claus in the square.

Will we ever see something similar in Italy?

playlist list :)

so, I LOVED the playlist event on thursday night and really had a lot of fun.
the title for my playlist was "homage to" and I chose a series of videoclips, videoart, movies and cartoons that represented any kind of homage to our visual heritage.

this is the list (soon it will available and clickable on Neoncampobase.blogspot.com)


Douglas Gordon 24hours Psycho
Be Kind Rewind
Beastie Boys – Sabotage
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can't Stop
The Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight Tonight
Luca Lumaca – Set the world on fire
Vanessa Beecroft – VB61 in Venice
Gus Van Sant's vs Hitchcock Psycho
The Simpsons + The White Stripes
Weezer – Buddy Holly
Baustelle – Charlie Fa Surf
Matthew Barney Cremaster 3
Johnny Depp vs Charlie Chaplin
Tim Burton – Ed Wood
Quentin Tarantino – Death Proof
Frida Kahlo Movie
Foo Fighters – Big Me
Across the Universe – Hey Jude
Sofia Coppola – Marie Antoinette
Pop goes my heart!
Blur – The Universal

I hope everyone in the gallery enjoyed it and had fun :)

PLAYLIST @neon>campobase - thursday, october 23 from 7.30 p.m.

I was invited to take part to an super interesting project called PLAYLIST which will take place on thursday night @neon>campobase in Bologna. I have the possibility to choose my own visual playlist and I have to tell it's a really chalenging and funny project (at least for me). I decided not to choose videoart only, but instead to mix popular culture and high culture...so for those of you who might come I hope will be a nice surprise...and for those of you who are too far to come, stay tuned and I'll post my playlist on friday!!!!!!

wishlist

I wish the young curator was a REAL JOB in italy

one more work I love

I saw this work last winter and I LOVED it. it's the kind of picture that tells everything without need of explanation. and so, I won't tell anything more about it. I like it when a work speaks for itself and I had the feeling that these pics know very well how to speak.
Suzanne Opton, Soldier portraits.

I know I know...

This was supposed to be a daily practice but it's not at all.
Luckily, a few things are happening and my schedule is a little packed sometimes.
And this one will not exactly be a news, but it's something that caught my attention anyway.
I was in Milan for START last week and had the chance to see a really interesting place called Brown Project Space, which is born from an online magazine that later became a physical space. The Project Space will not only be the office to work on the magazine, but will host an exhibition program, revealing itself as a new way to think about curatorial practices today.
Artists-run-spaces are not that popular in Italy, and this is why I feel the choice of artists Luigi Presicce and Luca Francesconi was so interesting.
They probably have to face lots of troubles that other similar places in europe do not have to, but anyway they are doing a really good job.
The place itself is really interesting, as it is an underground, almost hidden couple of rooms.
The space opened with a double-solo-show from artists Jacopo Miliani (ita, 1979) and Richard Clements (uk, 1983) and the two exhibition work so well together as they play on echoes of shapes and colors.
They both play very well with the space, creating a sort of stage and playing with the interaction with the spectator (Miliani) and reflecting on shape, colors and materials (Clements).
Brown represents a breath of fresh air to the local and national scene and I can't wait to see what's next.

70.545.100

This is the amount of £ that were payed yesterday for the first day of auctions at Sotheby's for Damien Hirtst's pieces. Some of them were sold for three times the expected prices of the quotations. And this is already considered a historic event, even more if you think that there's still many pieces that are going to be sold tonight.
Not bad if you consider that even TG5 (italian people know what I am talking about) was talking about it today :)