Valerio Carrubba / Curtis Mann

Curtis Mann presenterà in contemporanea a Milano e a Torino, nella galleria Luce, una selezione di nuovi lavori. Nella project room saranno, invece, in mostra le nuove opere di Valerio Carrubba.

Comunicato stampa

We are pleased to announce the exhibition by Curtis Mann Medium and Materaility, held simultaneously at the galleries Monica De Cardenas in Milan and Luce in Turin.

The works of this young American artist, who has gained international acclaim at the Whitney Biennial of 2010, are photographic images partially modified or erased by means of a technical process developed by the artist. In Medium and Materiality Mann displays several new groups of lens-less photographic works. Through a series of bleaching, cutting and folding techniques, Mann continues to engage in the delicate, purposeful effacement of photographic paper. Mann “unbuilds” the photographic materials as a paradoxical means to comprehend their structural potential.

His early works are composed by found images, taken from the web, showing current events of historical importance. Curtis Mann covers certain parts of the images with a transparent protective varnish and then sprays them with acids that alter the colors, at times almost completely erasing them. The original photographic image is thus transformed. Some parts remain visible while others vanish, covered by an almost painterly layer. After the process the photographic paper becomes dense and materic, certain parts of the image are reinforced while others are partially concealed or disappear completely. But unlike in digital manipulation, in this case the physical procedure that leads to the final result is clearly visible.

In some of the more recent works, the reworking of the photographic surface is reached through the direct manipulation of the photographic paper, introducing rips and cuts to achieve an almost sculptural three-dimensional effect. Inspired by the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978), who often cut and removed entire sections of abandoned buildings, Curtis Mann “destructures” the photographic materials to gain a better understanding of their structural potential.

The artist’s curiosity explores the physical nature of photography, probing it deeply through its material breakdown. With erasures, ripping or folding of the paper, or through direct etching into the layers of emulsion, Mann creates different techniques with the intent to enter inside the photographic image, prying into the innermost character of the medium.

Born in 1979 in Dayton, Ohio, Curtis Mann lives in Chicago. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (2009), the Whitney Biennial (2010) and the Metropolitan Museum in New York (2011) and in solo shows at the galleries of Kevi Gupta in Chicago, Almine Rech in Paris and Brussels, and Kuseneers in Antwerp. His first solo show in a museum is currently in progress at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem (NC).

Project Room: Valerio Carrubba

In the Project Room we will show new paintings by the Italian artist Valerio Carrubba, born in Siracusa in 1975.

Valerio Carrubba’s practice is rooted in the paradoxical relation between himself and the modern flux of images: through a process of affectionate collection and obsessive modification, the artist exhausts and negates the image and our possibilities for interaction with it.

The core of the artist’s practice is represented by his paintings, whose starting point is a found image, reworked by the artist to achieve a more pathetic and melodramatic result. Valerio Carrubba’s attention is often focused on XIX Century anatomy manuals’ illustrations and antique portraits, that are chosen and reworked by the artist to be dramatized with the adding or changing of details, colours and context.
After this process of selection, the image is painted on a steel box. The industrial appearance of the support is mirrored in the anti-romantic process in which the work is executed: the whole painting is in fact painted twice, one layer covering the other. Valerio Carrubba constantly reworks the image, “lives” with it, until he feels that it has reached its peak of exhaustion. By doing this, the artist negates any romantic approach on the image obtained, negates its original context but also any possible signifier. Every detail is treated by its own, as for the artist any layer of paint just exists through a replication of signs. By doing this, the final image communicates nothing else that itself in all its precision.

It is through a process of “discovery”, when the work’s process details are communicated, that the viewer realizes the need to explain every visual input through a meaning, labelling it in relation to its context and its corollary. By deliberately challenging and negating this possibility, the artist investigates the ability of the image to stand by itself.
Through repetition or pointless visualization, Valerio Carrubba exploits commonly-found but potentially evocative images to transform them into something different, to recreate their lost identity, to reinvent one; at the same time, he negates this possibility through paradoxical combinations.

This Fall Valerio Carrubba will take part in the group show “Fuoriclasse” curated by Luca Cerizza at Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan. In 2010 he participated in “Ibrido”, curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Francesco Garutti, at Pac in Milan, in 2009 at the Praga Biennial and in 2008 at the Triennale di Torino "50 Moons of Saturn" curated by Daniel Birnbaum.
His work has been exhibited at Pianissimo Gallery in Milan (2006, 2009) and at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York (2012).