Curated by Paola Tognon, Elisa Bernardoni

on the occasion of GIORNATA DEL CONTEMPORANEO

For the contemporary art day, The Simple Combinations app by Diego Zuelli, ongoing project by contemporary locus, gives you a drawing directly on your smartphone.
OnThe Simple Combinations app, everyday, the current day, month and year digits are transformed in a mathematical seed that guides the creation of a drawing. An algorithm – a simple combination in maths – composes together various drawn elements forming an animated picture. Everyday a new picture is composed. The drawn element number is limited so overlappings and similarities are possible. The algorithm is designed to create a picture with every past, present and future date, till 31 12 9999.

DOWNLOAD THE APP on APPSTORE for iOS and Android.

October 29, 2016 has inaugurated the fourth edition of the Art Prize “City of Treviglio”, organized by the Municipality of Treviglio for the year 2016.
The reflection proposed to the participants of this edition is “Labyrinths without walls”. The initiative consists of two exhibitions: the “City of Treviglio” Art Prize, at the invitation, and the Young Talent Competition, reserved for under 35, on selection.

99 WORDS WITH ALIS/FILLIOL

ALIS/FILLIOL, ULTRATERRA (DETAIL), 2016, MIXED MEDIA, DIMENSIONS VARIABLE

beginning to start initial the to hatch paternoster primordial to initiate aire be’ to begin enter into starting gazzette start spring initiator at first jaws prepuberty inaugural address infant starter colony pristine primitive advance lanzo to switch on primeval puberty precambrian first predictable promoter commencement luccicone imprendere cretan primigenial hors-d’oeuvre pregnancy debut child whipped Baedeker to demarcate reduced childhood cause enjambement ourfather source carneade preamble Christian dialefe completion surprised inchoate dance to date in order trigger originally termination normally effect baby Middle Ages eventually end flourish lansquenet again bright spell assumption undertake starter incipit ex novo placement germinal connate inaugurate principle departure to open nationalism to found to reopen prothesis sepulchral durative prosthesis conclusion money celebration

Alis/Filliol

99 WORDS WITH NOVA PAUL

NOVA PAUL, THIS IS NOT DYING (FILM STILL), 2010, 16MM FILM TRANSFERRED TO HD VIDEO, 20 MINUTES

There are two Māori proverbs that unravel the capitalist time of labor and colonial constructs: for ka mura, ka muri we walk into the future backwards with our eyes firmly on the past and i ngā rā o mua: the days before us, that places the past in front and the future behind. This time here – te wa, is encompassing and embodied and resists factors of production, holding onto complexity. A floating world drawn from stories that link rocks, to songs, to children, to trees, to spiders, to wood pigeons, to the sky: these stories are the beginning of self determinacy.

Nova Paul

99 WORDS WITH DEIMANTAS NARKEVICIUS

Deimantas Narkevicius, Ausgeträumt, 2010, HD video transferred on 35mm film and Blu-ray disc Colour, sound Duration: 5’35

‘Ausgeträumt’ has no direct English translation but means a state between dream and reality at the point of waking up.
The very first creative attempts by any artist usually are very positive, unaffected by criticism, even naive activities. I do understand “naiveté” as an initial state to be creative for any beginner in any field of arts. Without naiveté any young person, probably, would not choose to be an artist, so to be condemned for very possible failure. Here I would like to refer to myself. I had to be absolutely naive to choose to be a visual artist, in the late 80’s when in the Soviet Union everything was falling apart. There was no precedent of success, or an example to follow in the country which was still isolated.

With ‘Ausgeträumt’ I am re-approaching to the state of mind of “naiveté” which I find quite beautiful and already lost. I have shot young boys performing their very first song as just started indie band. I find it really optimistic to start a band with some ambitions in Lithuania. Pop music here was not really developed as an original form of self expression at any period, besides a few exceptions also known only locally. No musician has made it internationally so far from here.

I have offered to that bunch of idealists, to produce a music video of their first single. The piece as Lux and Independent Cinema commission was printed on 35mm film and was touring around cinemas in England during year 2010 – 2011. So the guys had a virtual tour of their first song around England, the country with a strong rock music tradition, so the address of a desire to any starting musicians.

Deimantas Narkevicius

99 WORDS WITH KEREN CYTTER

KEREN CYTTER, SIREN (video still), 2014, 15′
courtesy Galleria Raffaella Cortese (Milan); Galerie Nagel Draxler (Berlin) and the artist

… I’m sitting at home in Berlin and go on writing. I’m wearing a pink Hello Kitty t-shirt I bought in Japan with white sunglasses.
Even when I just write to myself it’s clear to me that I want some-one to read it, and I want him to laugh or cry.
No one has ever cried from something I wrote except for some nut I met ten years ago in art school.
She told me she cried from some poems
I wrote, it was the first time I thought she’s mad.
I think I’ll pass the coming days unconscious.

KEREN CYTTER, White Diaries, 2011

99 WORDS ABOUT RYAN MCGINLEY

RYAN MCGINLEY, CRIMSON & CLOVER, 2015, C-PRINT, Courtesy the artist and Team Gallery

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate – not a grain more. We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads – and then we can hardly see anything else. A man sees only what concerns him.

H.D. Thoreau – Autumnal Tints

99 WORDS WITH ERIK SAGLIA

ERIK SAGLIA, UNTITLED, 2015, SPRAY, PAPER TAPE, OIL PASTEL AND EPOXY RESIN ON PANEL

I get rid of boredom and monotony in a repeated gesture, going backwards, with the awareness that minimal wastes will return, imperceptibly slips, and unexpected variations, everything without willing it or realising it, in a mandatory and inevitable praxis. Till the end.

Erik Saglia

99 WORDS WITH STEFANO ARIENTI

STEFANO ARIENTI, PUZZLE DI PUZZLE, 2015, PUZZLE ON POSTER

On the occasion of The Blank Benefit 2015, the annual event to support The Blank network activities, Stefano Arienti has created Puzzle di Puzzle.
This work is composed by 48 unique pieces and is recomposable as a puzzle in a unique great image, that will be recreated for the first time in its entirety on 11 December 2015 in the frame of the Spazio ALT.

99 WORDS WITH CUOGHI CORSELLO

CUOGHI CORSELLO, IL TARDIS (DETAIL), 2014, SCULPTURE OF GLASSES AND ROW OF LITTLE STARS, 2014

The Tardis

Tardis is referred to the Police’s telephone booth that navigates through space and time in the longest-running English science-fiction series: Doctor Who.

Into the big factories we occupied, usually when
I was tidying up and cleaning, I used to compose objects; sometimes, while stopping and grasping,
I photographed scenes suggested by motionless actors.

As now I live and work in a former printing press, which is also a warehouse for things gathered during all my working life, space is limited and forces me to compose very sparingly, denying the accumulation of new stuff.

However now and then I can’t hold out against something I meet.

The Tardis consists in an orange glass of the Italian public telephone booths, with a Pinocchio shape above that comes from the crushed mirror of a garden table tipped over by the wind.

Little stars on a semi-rigid thread go from underneath his long nose up to the sky. It seems like Pinocchio is looking at the row of stars in the sky, in the space, from his horizontal
two-dimensionality.

Tardis says it’s not late yet to reach people’s desires. Pinocchio is our oldest Doctor Who, naïve, curious, clever and brave explorer, who has a flair for business, poet and dreamer, just like Italians.
In his orange booth he travels through the stars, imagining times and spaces;
and the Universe is made of imagination since its primordial composition,
so that we will get into the one
of all the worlds.

Cuoghi Corsello