In response to media coverage of group exhibition MEDIATING LANDSCAPE
curated by flip Project Space (Federico Del Vecchio & Ala Roushan)

Media attention swirls out of control due to the misjudgment of a cleaning lady disposing of a few artworks that were still to be installed. The loss is minimal in comparison to the scale of our exhibition, (which includes work of 59 artists, writers, and curators), the majority of which were unharmed.

What has become shocking to us, in light of this event, is the scale of media attention it has attracted and added exaggerations around this incident.

Through this entire event and the reactions that have resulted, we have realized and witnessed the fascination with the ‘Lost Object’, specifically the lost art object. Psychoanalyst and writer Darian Leader elaborates on this subject in his book Stealing The Mona Lisa, What art stops us from seeing, where he argues that our fascination with the loss of an artwork surpasses our interest in the work itself: “Most things become more interesting once we’ve lost them. We can start looking for them, and then, perhaps, realize their true value.” (Leader; 2002, 7)

And so we now begin to understand that the reason for this attention is beyond the occurrence itself. Perhaps as Leader says these lost objects are “a metaphor for human desire: a vast congregation of people searching for a tiny object that offers some unspoken, enigmatic promise.” (Leader; 2002, 5)

Fortunately we were able to reproduce some of the lost work or reincorporate another work in collaboration with the artists effected; thus the exhibition Mediating Landscape was successfully realized as scheduled.

Leader, D. Stealing the Mona Lisa. What art stops us from seeing. Faber and Faber Limited. London, 2002. 




   


d      i      s      p      l      a      y 

MEDIATING LANDSCAPE 

Bari, Italy.Opening Feb.19.6:00pm. 19-28. 2014 (11am-1pm.5-9pm closed mon.)


Kitty Anderson. Laura Barreca. Jennifer Bailey. Riccardo Benassi. Andrew Berardini. 
Xenia Benivolski. Lupo Borgonovo. Paul Branca. Willie Brisco. Simon Buckley. 
Carson Chan. Paolo Chiasera. James Clarkson. Michael Dean. Federico Del Vecchio. 
Giulio Delve’. Sonia Dermience.  Aideen Doran. Olivia Dunbar. Sarah Forrest. 
Maria Fusco. Alberto Garcia del Castillo. Francesco Garutti. Ilaria Gianni. Nicola Gobbetto. 
Lena Henke. Helena Hladilová. David Jablonowski. Ilja Karilampi. Jan Kiefer. Jacob Korczynski. 
Lucia Leuci. Luca Lo Pinto. Francis McKee. Jacopo Miliani. Maurizio Nannucci. Francesco Pedraglio. 
Jorge Peris. Gianandrea Poletta. Gianni Politi. Filipa Ramos. Caterina Riva. Andrea Romano. 
Ala Roushan. Max Ruf. Margot Samel. Namsal Siedlecki. Davide Stucchi. Jenna Sutela. 
Fabio Santacroce. Yves Scherer. Marco Tagliafierro/Paolo GonzatoPaul Teasdale. Philipp Timischl. 
Joey Villemont. James Winnett. Pedro Wirz. Gregor Wright. 

                                                                     image contribution by: Jacopo Miliani

a group exhibition. curated around a formal mediator:
                                                                          the display landscape

This project presents a display landscape situated within the envelope of Sala Murat’s expansive hall. The display object provides dynamic surfaces accommodating new modes of presentation, relations between exhibited artwork and spatial conditions. Participants include, artists, writers, and curators whose works are formally incorporated within the display landscape as a unified installation, blurring the boundaries of their practice. We are interested in the unpredictability of the narratives that arise from this type of organization specifically in the way individual artworks are mediated through the formal display. 

The relations evoked between varying works of art, pragmatics of presentation, and existing spatial condition is the initial premise for this project 'MEDIATING LANDSCAPE'. To mediate and accentuate the intricate layers of relations, a series of tangible display objects are designed and constructed as part of the exhibition. These objects occupy a formal position, intervening with the displayed artwork to provide micro spaces to inhabit. 

There is definite anticipation for tension and dialogue throughout the process of production, display and setup of the works. These are the moments that we hope to elaborate through discourse and writing around the notion of display; touching upon issues of proximity, adjacency, space, form and objecthood as it evolves from reflections and development of this project. 
the emphasis of artmaking away from static, individual objects toward the presentation of new relationships in space and time. These relationships could be purely spatial, but also logical and political. They could be relationships among things, texts, and photo-documents, but could also involve performances, happenings, films, and videos… a shift from the exhibition space presenting individual, disconnected objects to a holistic exhibition space in which the relations between objects are the basis of the artwork. 
One can say that objects and events are organized by an installation space like individual words and verbs are organized by a sentence… rather than art beginning to use language, it began to be used as language -with a communicative and even educative purpose. – Boris Groys  
e-flux journal #29. november 2011. Boris Groys Introduction - Global Conceptualism Revisited
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with the support of Antonella Marino

Special Thanks to: DREI.Cologne  - Galleria Fonti, Naples - Raucci/Santamaria Gallery, Naples - Supportico Lopez, Berlin - The Modern Institute, Glasgow
Fabio Santacroce
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how to make a delicious tea II ART METROPOLE . TORONTO
a project in collaboration with:  Eloise Hawser. Martin Soto Climent. Patrick Tuttofuoco. Per-Oskar Leu. Lena Henke. Andrea Sala















how to make a delicious tea II
flip presents a project in collaboration with:  Eloise Hawser.   Martin Soto Climent.          
Patrick Tuttofuoco.   Per-Oskar Leu.   Lena Henke.   Andrea Sala


ART METROPOLE. Toronto 18.02 - 16.03. 2012.Opening saturday feb.18. 6:30pm. 788 King St W.Art Metropole hosts how to make a delicious tea, an ongoing accumulative project, reflecting on artistic production in terms of subtle and layered processes. It extends from the idea of the print, addressing the singularity of the original and implications of reproduction. 


The project is the re-representation of an image from an existing work transformed through reprint and shift in materiality. Silk is the support; it refers to changes in material perceptions and alludes to notions of hierarchy. It is this small shift that creates a new object, with a kind of conceptual blurriness, as it hovers between documentation and a ‘new work’.


how to make a delicious tea expands with additional artist collaborations contributing specific work to this process.
how to make a delicious tea . ARTISSIMA LIDO . Eloise Hawser. Martin Soto Climent. Patrick Tuttofuoco. Per-Oskar Leu




 



Directing attention to the role of materiality in contemporary art, flip has approached four young, international artists whose practices already engaged with material as vessels for narrative. Recognizing that the material used in the production of art whether pedestrian and industrial or precious and rare are never neutral elements. Flip is curious about how specific materials that have been endowed with value and meaning by way of cultural history can transfer their attributes to the work and objects that they become a part of. Flip has collaborated with the artists in the exhibition How to Make a Delicious Tea  in order to select and reproduce images of each artist's previously exhibited works onto silk-hangings. This gesture is at once a documentation, translation and discourse. Four diverse works are each imbued with the intrinsic value of the storied textile of silk and their three-dimensional forms are experienced as two-dimensional emblems. This change in the configuration of each work continues an ongoing conversation in contemporary art and material culture on how value is determined.

- Denise Ryner . Toronto 2011


how to make a delicious tea
                                            .......



flip presents a project in collaboration with:  
Eloise Hawser  (UK). Martin Soto Climent (Mexico) 
Patrick Tuttofuoco (Italy). Per-Oskar Leu  (Norway)


Sarah Rose (New Zealand) for video screening hosted 
by Artissima Social Club

Artissima 18 – Lido
International Fair of Contemporary Art .Turin
nove. 4-6, nove.3 (preview)                  .......


invited event for independent art spaces                 
located in the mediaeval district of the ‘Roman Quadrilateral 
Curated by, Christian Frosi, Renato Leotta, and Diego Perrone

.......
how to make a delicious tea reflects on artistic production in terms of subtle and layered processes; as well as methods of material accumulation and juxtapositions. The aim is the re-representation of an image of an existing work transformed through reprint and shift in materiality. Silk is the support: it alludes to notions of hierarchy and predisposed value, also refers to changes in material perception and categorization as it forms to create the ‘art object’. 

www.artissima.it/frontend/in-citta/artissima-lido/
life jacket under seat - toronto

Alfred Boman. Annabell Chin. Simon Davenport. Federico Del Vecchio. Giulio Delve'.  Luca Francesconi 
Hannes Michanek.  Jacopo Miliani.  Othmar Farré.  Pennacchio Argentato.  Scott Rogers.  Sarah Rose
text by: Giorgio Giusti.  Matthew Gregory 

1Alfred Boman 2Annabell Chin 3Simon Davenport 4Federico Del Vecchio 5Giulio Delve' 6Luca Francesconi 
7Hannes Michanek 8Jacopo Miliani 9Othmar Farré 10Pennacchio Argentato 11Scott Rogers 12Sarah Rose




















opening: wed. sept. 7, 2011. 7pm
september 7 - 30, 2011 (by appointment)


back alleyway of 326 davenport rd.  access from bedford rd.   toronto . canada 


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In a world of constant movement and change, what remains of the life of an object? As we pick it 
up, leave it, move it, transfer it, into new realms and other worlds. Art objects become part of this 
cyclic motion of our contemporary life. As nothing and no one seems to root in a single place. 
Stillness implies the end.

The collection at Lifejacket Under Seat questions and reflects this thought. It presents a series of 
works collected through our personal exchanges. Each object travelling with us or parallel to us to 
form in a single place and depart again from there. The mapped movement of these objects cannot 
be fully controlled or predicted.

Lifejacket Under Seat is not a reminder of an emergency situation; rather it is a reminder of a text, 
not a subject, which seems to be of frequent repetition as we move.

It is also the inherent part of the practice of each individual artist that has allowed this connection 
and exchange to occur. And what remains of these encounters, are objects; objects on the move.
In nature there is no real violence, found there is only brutal growth of quantities and apathetic destruction. Nature adheres only to one principle and that is survival by any means possible – economic efficiency and accumulation of sexual capital. The sole creature of violence is man, created as we were in the image of gods and like theirs our violence knows no bounds. Ours is the reflected violence of divinities. It is the violence of Saturn as he is devouring his sons, that of the Semitic desert-god as he floods the earth or of Shiva the dancer, shining like a thousand suns. Real violence is what nature is not. It is that which has no necessity – the act of doing something purposeless as if it had a purpose. Its principle is concerned with the things that never can emerge from words alone – the rushing of blood and sweat or cries of joy and pain. Animals too, of course, writhes in pain from time to time and some of them even sweat, but unable to affirm these sensations, their violence is but a vulgar shadow. In nature nothing would consume all of its fuel just to watch the fires rise. In nature nothing even fails to reach the perfected, for only man would ever try to venture there. All of our attempts to do so is are abundant luxuries and grandiose sacrifices of all means consumed. In violence we pay tribute to our humanity and we do it by denouncing what is always given – growth and apathy. There is nothing natural in Bomans and Michaneks works, what they do is adding to the friction that is culture. Though not complete apocalypses of their own, they are at least in unprecedented opposition to the natural world. Just as Oppenheimer did when he witnessed the first atomic explosion, they all seem to quote the Bhagavad-Gita “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” They are part of that vast, rolling machine that we constitute as a collective, as a species. It is a machine we should care for most tenderly, keep it muscular, sweaty and beautiful, no matter the costs.


                    Jonatan Ahlm Brenander, 2011
100 % FUEL . Alfred Boman & Hannes Michanek 
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100% FUEL presents two artists Alfred Boman and Hannes Michanek, whose 
works are filled with the same momentum conveyed in the title. In both their 
practice, the paint is the initiating medium, yet the results extend beyond the 
painting.  Speed is a differentiating factor in their methods, Boman’s fast and 
energetic production in comparison to Michanek’s perseverance; both filled 
with adrenalin. Despite the obvious differences in the two works, one important 
aspect linking their practice is the extent of their production and consumption. 
Saturation is a key principle, whether it is saturating the canvas or the occupied 
environment of the installation. There is tension evoked in their production, a 
fascination with the man made and the unnatural versus the predisposed idea 
of the handmade. The works are accompanied by a text from the Swedish writer 
Jonatan Ahlm Brenander, setting the context behind the show.
opening
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