Something that intrigued the artist in residence was that the architecture was changing. Being part of this change as the last person who saw and experienced the original appearance, led him to reflect on the walls, a support he has often used in his artistic work, as forms that change but retain their capacity. He used the plaster from the walls, a material that has always seen the environment from the inside: the relationship between the internal and external façade of the wall exactly matches the one between Mind and Body. The plaster was then mixed with cement and copper sulphate to create the plants.

Proxima Centauri is configured as a monumental photo frame, in all respects similar to a normal photo frame that you can buy in the shops, inside which there is an inscription: festa (party or festivity). The work is presented as an apparition and, despite its dimensions, it does not require a precise reading, instead looking to trigger an immediate contact and a reflection on the continuous progress of events. It refers to its own ancient intimacy, occasionally touching the contemplation of life and death. The object, which by custom is understood as a container of memory, becomes a reminder, and it uses language to question what has not yet been subjected to the limits of our existing knowledge.

In 1814, the German Mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner wrote an important book called “The Nomenclature of Colours”. It represented the first significant attempt at a detailed description of the colour tones existing on Earth, summarised in a chromatic scheme. The book not only gives a description and name to the different colour tones, it also indicates where you can find each one in nature, highlighting the poetry that can come from observation. As this volume preceded the use of photography, it represented a valid tool for the research work of many scientists and artists. Fascinated by this tangible dimension of colour references, the artist decided to use Werner’s cataloging, digitally translating the eleven shades of blue that are listed in Werner’s book, blending one into the other to create the backdrop for this piece. In this space float two white inflatable armbands, which on their surface show the marks of a failed attempt at flight. They are suspended in the absence of a body that would inhabit them. The work takes the title Schwimmflügel, from the term used in German to refer to inflatable armbands. The literal translation is “swimming wings”. Wings-sea, arms-sky: these form an imaginary cross that hinders the ancestral dream of crossing the blue. Hinders, but does not prevent.

Asshole is the name of the artwork produced by Stefano Giuri during the artistic residency at Manifattura Tabacchi. A series of sculptures in mirror-polished bronze derived from the casts of bullet holes. These bullets were fired during the German occupation and the holes that they left can still be found on the walls of the buildings in the Manifattura, remaining to this day as the traces of a tragic past. By highlighting a piece of history that has been cut out, through the almost attenuated distance between this trace and its copy, and interpreting this footprint as the contact of an absence, a gap is generated that lies between re-producibility and a minimum deviation from reality.

A rigid and yet dynamic material transforms. Imaginary places, other worlds. Casts of internal plastic surfaces that become external plastic landscapes, projection of an inner motion. Interior and exterior, universal and yet intimate landscapes. Micro and Macro cosmos meet, converse. Light and shadow, surface tension, projection of intimate landscapes in constant emotional change, external and intimate atmospheric alterations, where the outside and the inside become confused. Part of an infinite universe, which we inhabit and are inhabitants. Subjects of time that transforms things. Lived places or distant and solitary landscapes, unknown territories where you can imagine or hope for new beginnings. Here we meet, on the surface of things.

Venezian was born of a desire to approach painting through repetition. It is a series of paintings of various dimensions, based on an original source image which is then freely replicated. This repetition assumes the central role in the artistic process and highlights the uniqueness of every reproduced ‘artefact’. This method allows the artist to free themselves from preconceived concepts about painting and, at the same time, ties them to the repeated image, establishing a kind of fidelity to it.
To create these paintings, the author took the “source image” (Frank Duveneck, Venetian girl, 1880) with the intention of creating a copy and, during the execution phases, she transformed it into a new entity. Decisions about colour – whether to use an intense or attenuated palette – derived from the immediate emotional reaction that she had towards the painting at that specific moment.
In this series, the colours are quite monochromatic and low-key. The figure in the painting is almost hidden, the viewer has to make an effort to find her. What the artist is interested in portraying is an intimate aspect of this character, going beyond the purely figurative dimension and entering into a dynamic, elusive and lively atmosphere, and thanks to this we are able to understand the vulnerable, often melancholy, state of the subject. These images are like emotional figures, evoking particular moods that can only be experienced profoundly in solitude.