David Medalla
Locus Solus. Omaggio ad Arthur Rimbaud
Opening Saturday 2 December 2017 at 6 p.m.
2 December 2017 – 18 february 2018
Curated by Lorenzo Bruni
On Saturday 2 December 2017 at 6 p.m. the Galleria Enrico Astuni will be presenting the solo show by David Medalla, an artist originally from the Philippines, titled Locus Solus. Omaggio ad Arthur Rimbaud, curated by Lorenzo Bruni. The show will be rounded off by works linked to the project “Mondrian Fan Club”, a project that Medalla has been working on since 1992 together with Adam Nankervis, an artist originally from Australia. The show was conceived and carried out in September and October 2017 while Medalla was the guest in Bologna for a special residency programme specifically designed for him by the Galleria Enrico Astuni.
The Locus Solus. Omaggio ad Arthur Rimbaud project by David Medalla, curated by Lorenzo Bruni, consists of paintings, drawings, performance photos, and large installations of neon tubes specifically made for the occasion. These works, which are being exhibited together for the first time, represent the summing up of a lengthy inquiry, begun more than fifty years ago, into the dialogue between poetry, literature, and the visual arts. In the show there are brought together memories of Medalla’s journeys to Italy and Europe from the 1970s onwards, the result of his participation in various international shows, as well as his detailed knowledge of literature, from Arthur Rimbaud to Feodor Dostoyevsky and Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia. The various lyrical implications, as well as historical, artistic, and political facts that are raised by the “individual narratives” on show, revolve around two opposed yet complicit poles. One can be found in the large wall installation titled M’ Illumino D’ Immenso, and freely inspired by the figure of the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, and which consists of a luminous drawing in different colours made from neon lights that dialogue with a tactile ceramic composition made by the Bottega Gatti in Faenza. The other pole, instead, is represented by such different interventions by the artist, together with Adam Nankervis, as the Mondrian Fan Club project, undertaken in various parts of the world, among which Bologna. These latter works will be exhibited in a special installation in such a way as to create, not an archive, but a platform for dialoguing in which thoughts about the role of the viewers and that of the artist, and about the idea of a work as a vehicle for ideas and images, can be undertaken without any judgments about predetermined values.