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Prometeogallery is pleased to present two solo exhibitions:
Antologia de la violencia en Guatemala by Aníbal López
(A-1 53167) and Global Education by Giuseppe Stampone.
Aníbal López examines the situation in Guatemala, his
homeland, with the greatest attention, mainly using sculpture as his
artistic medium. The starting point for the artist's anthropological
considerations is his awareness that when modern man replaced religious
beliefs with legal principles and farming property with profit as a symbol
of power, industry took the place of military resources and the functions
of art were profoundly transformed. While the work of art originally aimed
to preserve collective ideals, protecting them from criticism, with the
passing of time art gradually lost its moral and educational function and
retained only that of criticism. In so far as it is a means of production,
technique has maintained its subjective value as ornament and as an
expression of individuality, ultimately transforming itself into monetary
value. Aníbal López attempts to solve this problem by showing
a sort of traditional craftsmanship that, in all its crudeness, illustrates
the daily death of the people of Guatemala, a country where human beings
are often violated as a category, as are human rights, by a state apparatus
that is a coercive institution based on the administration of violence. The
artist thus recalls the importance of the way in which every nation-state
recognises the fundamental rights of its citizens, or fails to do
so.
The distinctive feature of Stampone's exhibition is an
underlying thread which reveals the shift from the spoken to the written
word through to an interactive experience. From Gutenberg's invention
onwards, the concept of education was based on the fact that every word
corresponded to a letter and that in turn, it referred to an image, and the
shift from the spoken to the written word took place by means of an
alphabet primer. Stampone's reflections start out from the consideration
that this form of education intrinsically requires a coercive type of
policy, and thus an education that is imposed from above, West-centric, and
divorced from the world of experience. Global Education, on the contrary,
is based on the experience of each human being. Significantly, the artist
draws on immediately recognisable popular images, to which he contributes
new meaning. Reassuring symbols and omnipresent icons of the most popular
imagination, which satisfy the expectations of the standard consumer, are
revisited from a critical and ironic point of view, thus destabilising the
viewer's perspective. From the manual skills of the Renaissance to a
neo-dimensional, interactive mentality, Stampone's aim is to highlight this
shift in the mentality of man and in the shift of power from being at the
centre of the community to the centre of a connectivity that is digital but
also experiential and emotional.
Aníbal
López (A1-53167), was born in 1964 in Guatemala, where he currently
lives and works. He presented a solo exhibition at the Centro Cultural de
España in Guatemala City (2011) and has put on numerous performances
over the years. Group exhibitions at the international level include the
Bienal de Pontevedra (2010), the biennale in Porto Allegre (2007), the
Prague Biennale (2003), and the Venice Biennale (2001), where he was
awarded the Golden Lion as Best Young Artist. In June 2012 he will be among
the artists selected for dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel.
Giuseppe
Stampone (Cluses, France, 1973) lives and works in Teramo and New York. His
works have been shown in prestigious museums such as MACRO (Museo d'Arte
Contemporanea Roma) and GAMeC (Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea) in
Bergamo. He won the 2011 Maretti Prize and his work was shown at the Havana
Biennial in Cuba. He participated in the Gwangju Biennale (2012) and the
Liverpool Biennial (2010). For some years now he has been working on the
Solsitizio project, funded by the European Union, in collaboration
with institutions, associations, NGOs, artists, curators, critics, and
other professionals.
*Images above:
Top:
Aníbal López (A1-53167), Antologia de la violencia en
Guatemala, 2012. Earthenware sculpture. 24 x 57 x 36 cm. Courtesy
prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan/Lucca.
Bottom: Giuseppe Stampone,
Global Education, 2012. Drawings installation (detail), blue and red
Bic pen on paper. 40 x 34 cm each. Courtesy prometeogallery di Ida Pisani,
Milan/Lucca.
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