Rä di Martino – The Day He Swims thru Marrakech
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We are pleased to announce an exhibition of sculptures and photographs by Rä di Martino.
Cinema as sculpture is a historically complex theme that has emerged as a central focus in the research of this artist in recent years.
For her first solo show in Milan, she delves into the fertile territory shared by these two media which are only apparently separated by a series of oppositions (stillness/movement, material/immaterial, second/third dimension...). But the stakes are raised by the fact that the artist goes deeper, along the fine line between backstage and film footage, raw material and its editing, protagonist and body double, reality and fiction, original and cover. The exhibition explores the relationship between the sculptural object and the image in motion, through a sequence of photographs and hybrid objects (stands from film sets that support natural elements, with stage lighting). Not just cinema, not just sculpture, the selected set of works springs from the same narrative source, namely "The Stand-In" (slated for release in September 2017), the first feature-length film by Rä di Martino. The film is freely based on the feature film "The Swimmer" from 1964, starring Burt Lancaster. Di Martino takes her cue from both the story and the film to capture the suspended atmospheres of this famous surreal tale, in which a middle-aged man swims from pool to pool to cross the city to return home, re-living his life through a metaphorical voyage. In the re-enactment of the film di Martino chooses to set her version of the story in an equally metaphysical Marrakech, a contradictory city, ancient and modern at the same time, true and false, and in any case the reflection of a bourgeoisie in search of new motivations.
The photographs and stands are two apparently contradictory instruments of a single narrative. Room after room, the viewer is prompted to observe the scenes from the inside and from the outside.
These hybrid objects refocus the attention on the making of the image, on cinema in cinema, and on the analysis of the film devices themselves that make it possible to construct new meanings of History.
Paola Nicolin
Rä di Martino (Rome, 1975) studied at Chelsea College of Art and Slade School of Art in London, before moving to New York from 2005 to 2010, while she now lives in Turin. She has shown work in institutions like Tate Modern in London (2007/2013), MOMA-PS1 and Artists Space in New York (2006/2007), Palazzo Grassi in Venice (2008/2016), Quadriennale, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (2008/2016), GAM (2015) and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin (2012), MACRO (2006) and MAXXI in Rome (2014/2017), Museion Bolzano (2014-2015), NIMK Amsterdam (2007), MCA Chicago (2009), MALI in Lima (2013), Magasin in Grenoble (2010), Hangar Bicocca (2009/2011) and PAC in Milan (2014). She has been invited to Manifesta7 (2008), the Busan Biennial (2006), and the Turin Triennale (2005).
Her videos and films have been screened at important festivals, including Torino Film Festival (2002/2003), Locarno Film Festival (2006) and the Venice Film Festival (2014) with the short "The Show MAS Go On", winning the Premio SIAE and the Gillo Pontecorvo prize, as well as a Nastro dArgento for best docu-film in 2015.
IMAGE: Rä di Martino, The Swimmer #1, 2017 archival pigment print cm 20 x 30
