Eva Giolo
Becoming Landscape, 2024
video still

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH EVA GIOLO

A landscape is a state of mind, but the phrase is the feebly felicitous one of a fable dreamer. A landscape is a landscape and therefore cannot be a state of mind. To objectify is to create and no one says of a finished poem that it is a state of thinking about writing a poem. To see is perhaps to dream, but if we use the word ‘see’ rather than the word ‘dream’, it’s because we distinguish between seeing and dreaming. It would be more accurate to say that a state of mind is a landscape; that would have the advantage of containing not the lie of a theory but the truth of a metaphor.
(Fernando Pessoa The Book of Disquiet, 1982)

Untitled, 2020
digital print, 10 x 10 cm (framed 33 x 30cm)

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH SERJ

Notes:
“Nothing is without a sign” (Denn nichts ist ohne ein Zeichen)
“I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past”
“every rite contained real action and not mere ‘ceremony’”
“It aims at some satisfaction, and does achieve it, too. or rather, it does not aim at anything; we act in this way and then feel satisfied”
“Domenica […] I dined at Bronzino’s house on some quite admirable crespelli”
“the fold […] as a severing but a severing that casts forth each of the divided terms next to the other”
“The millstone around the neck of painting is beginning to crack”

Matter Temple 02_Palermo, 2014
Cappella dell’Incoronazione, Palermo
Materiali trovati, impianto di irrigazione
dimensioni determinate dall’ambiente
Installazione per la mostra Meteorite in Giardino, Museo Riso, Palermo
courtesy: gli artisti
photo credit: Caretto/Spagna

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH CARETTO/SPAGNA

We experience art making as an experience of self-education through which we experience different ways of being in the world and other possibilities of cohabitation.
In recent years, we have tried as much as possible to be faithful to our desire, following it, trusting it, to the point of sometimes reaching the edge of absurdity.
And it is precisely near this edge that a sudden glow may occur, a fleeting glimpse into those nuclei of incandescence of being that are otherwise difficult to access.
Stubbornly we attempt to confront the irreducible complexity of the world, sometimes dragged into chaos; on the edge of the abyss, leaning out, we observe carefully, filled with curiosity.

Imagine, 2024
shaped brass flat bars
variable dimensions
exhibition view: MART | Galleria Civica di Trento
courtesy the artist and Galleria Studio G7, Bologna

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH JACOPO MAZZONELLI

[Imagine only one dreamer.
A brotherhood of greed.
Above us only possessions.
Sharing all the hell.]

Setting out from the notion that language is not to be understood as a set of conventional codes but that rather as a phenomenon that – as recent studies show – highlights rich hidden links between sound and meaning, I repositioned the words to one of the most iconic songs of modern history (‘Imagine’, Lennon, ‘71), attempting to maintain the original phono-linguistic sonorities, yet featuring a new sense of complementarity between subject and object, metrics and contents. Manually transferring the curve of a font designed by myself onto a thin layer of brass, I allowed the words to be recomposed on the ground, as if emerging naturally from the surface.

Marzia Migliora
Lo spettro di Malthus
2020
Disegno di progetto digitale
Courtesy: l’artista; Galleria Lia Rumma, Milano / Napoli

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 PAROLE CON MARZIA MIGLIORA

My work method can be compared to an attempt at excavation: progressively removing layers of history to reveal what is hidden or barely visible, and bringing to the surface what is submerged, connecting it to the present in an effort to spark new reflections.

Francesco Pedrini
Alrededor de un suspiro
2024
Assemblage: disegno 50×70 cm su carta cotone 220 gr, pigmenti, grafite, carboncino
Stampa su carta fotografica 21×29,7 cm
Courtesy: l’artista

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH FRANCESCO PEDRINI

Quetzalcōatl is venerated as the god of wind, merchants, the arts, crafts, and knowledge. He had a shell carved into his chest, highlighting its star-shaped outline and spiral interior, symbolizing the wind, the afterlife, and the earthly realm. Ehcātl (the name of Quetzalcōatl in his form as the wind god) fell in love with a woman, but the world lacked love. So, to be loved in return, he breathed his spirit onto the world: the rains, the sun, the stars, and everything we know came into motion. The universe of events shifted so that she would love him.

Louis De Belle
Chiuso per ferie
Agosto 2024
Dimensioni variabili
Courtesy the artist

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH LOUIS DE BELLE

I have always been fascinated by hidden doors, secondary exits, and secret passages. Perhaps because they lead to something yet unknown. More than crossing these thresholds, I am interested in the way they fit into their context and the paradoxical fact that they are designed to remain unseen. Photography might be their antagonist, precisely because it proves the existence of what it captures. This image is from a series I am creating in Florence and aligns with the Italian August theme: closed for holidays.

Anton Giulio Onofri
Lido di Pesaro
23 giugno 2024
iPhone 15 Pro
Photo credit Anton Giulio Onofri

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ANTON GIULIO ONOFRI

Summer has arrived. In the photo, you can see the beach of a seaside resort in Pesaro, taken two days after the solstice. The sea is the Adriatic, so this photo captures a sunrise. I took it with my iPhone after an all-nighter spent chatting about the past and future with some friends from the International New Cinema Festival, which had wrapped up a few hours earlier with a big party on the rooftop terrace of the hotel where I was staying. The sunrise convinced us all that it was time to go to bed. As of now, this is my most recent photo.

Claudia Losi
Amuleti, 2020
Argilla, pigmenti e mani amiche
Courtesy l’artista e collezione privata
Photo credit Andrea Rossetti

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH CLAUDIA LOSI

So many words fit in a hand
A hand that grips to a choke

So many words gather in the wind
Wind that moves to emptiness

So many words die on the lips
Lips that kiss to whiteness

So many words flow through the teeth
Teeth that bite to rend

So many words we would like to repeat
Ever so slowly, a blow to the death

So many words we could repeat
Ever so slowly, a blow to the death

Elisa Montessori
Senza titolo
2022/2023
Tecnica mista su carta catramata
449 x 100 cm
Prospekt, 2023, a cura di Cecilia Canziani e Marta Roberti
Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Cracovia e Varsavia

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ELISA MONTESSORI

“…Venturing into the forest,
or rather getting lost.
Knows it from every side
and has winged flight,
unfolding while migrating
slowing down while returning.
Feels free on the hook of the branch
among its shadows and half-lights
the green twisted arches
in the enveloping descending silence
and shatters at every moment…”