ALESSANDRO QUARANTA works

Alessandro Quaranta, 27/04/1975. Lives and works in Turin.

Education:

2008: Workshop Via Farini, Milano. Visiting professor Kim Jones.

CSAV Fondazione A. Ratti, Como. Visiting professor Y. Friedman.

2006: Workshop Via Farini, Milano. Visiting professor A. Paci.

2005: Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’arte contemporanea, Poirino. Visiting professor A. Garutti.

2001: Proposte XVI, Torino. Visiting professor A. Muntadas.

1998: Academy of Fine Arts, Turin.

Residencies:

2011 Townhouse Gallery,Cairo Egypt.

2008: Karl Hofer Gesellschaft, Berlin, D

2000: Pépinières Européennes pour jeunes artistes, Terra Nova Arts Centre, Copenhagen, DK

Awards:

2013: Premio Local Art, Fondazione CRC per l’arte contemporanea, Cuneo, IT

2010: Premio Città di Treviglio (1st price), IT

2003: Nuovi segni 2002/2003. Il Sole24Ore, Milano, IT

2001: Movin’Up, (Mobility funding sponsorship in Art), GAI, Torino, IT

Solo exhibition:2012 Campo Volo, e/static, Torino (curated by Carlo Fossati)

2011 ProIezioni, Sala Crociera Centro Civico Culturale, Treviglio (curated by Sara Fontana)

2010 Traccia01, Galleria Martano, Torino (curated by F. Comisso)

2007 La soglia del conosciuto, Spazio Boccioni, Milan, (curated by Gabi Scardi)

2005 www.gagio.org/stare sul confine, C/O CareOf, Milan, (curated by L.Parola & G.Scardi)

2003 Via Vai, Porta degli Angeli, Ferrara (curated by A. Andreotti)

Da gadjò, Luigi Franco Arte Contemporanea, Turin, (curated by a.titolo)

(selected) group exhibition:

2012 Sotto la strada la spiaggia, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino (curated by

B. Antille, M. Fiedler, A. Parshikov,)

Roma, Sinti, Khalé, ABP Autograph, London (curated by Gabi Scardi and Mark Sealy)

Press Play, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino (curated by Irene Calderoni)

2011 Living, Lousiana Museum of Modern Art, DK (curated by Kjeld Kjeldsen)

Insolite parentele, Spazio Dogana, Genova, IT (curated by Francesca Busellato)

2010: Private Garden, PAV Parco Arte Vivente, Turin (curated by Claudio Cravero)

Fare Museo, CeSAC Filatoio Rosso, Caraglio (curated by a.titolo)

Esiste ancora la nebbia? Museo Civico, Treviglio (curated by Sara Fontana)

Route tournante en sous bois, Upload project, Trento (curated by S. Conta and

F. Mazzonelli)

2009: Xth Biennale de Lyon- le spectacle du quotidien, - Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon

(T.A.M.A. is a platform conceived M. Papadimitriou, Lucy Orta and curated by Gabi Scardi)

Hydromemorias, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, Venezuela

2008: Public Improvisation, DOCVA - Fabbrica del vapore, Milan (curated by L.Cerizza e A. Daneri)

PaesaggioZero, Cascina Le Vallere, Turin. (curated by Ostellino, Caretto/Spagna)

Superfici sconnesse, Palazzo Barolo, Turin (curated by L.Parola)

2006: Loading a selection from...Torino, Palacio de la Moneda, Santiago, Cile (curated by Lorena Tadorni)

2003: Arte pubblica in Italia, lo spazio delle relazioni. Cittadellarte Fond. Pistoletto, Biella. curated by A.

Detheridge)

Località, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemp., Castel San Pietro (BO). (curated by a.titolo)

2002: Versus VIII, Velan Arte Contemporanea, Torino (curated by V. Tomasinelli)

2001: Forum europèen de la jeune crèation, Les Subsistances, Lyon (curated by Pèpiniéres Europèennes pour

jeunes artistes)

Chaos & Communication, Biennial of Young Artist of Europe and the Mediterranean,

Collegium Artis ticum, Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Proposte XVI - Pubblico-Privato, Galleria San Filippo, Torino (curated by a.titolo)

website

http://www.alessandroquaranta.it

MADDALENA CANYON

Fascinated by the layering construction of the city of Genoa and the consequent displacement

of different social cultures that inhabit it, I imagined the very narrow streets of the central district

of Genoa as deep urban canyons. In these performances I covered the city vertically, with the help of

the inhabitants, climbing down from the roofs of the buildings to the pavement, and broadcasting a

video of the descent with a mobile phone.

MADDALENA CANYON - 2012video stills, HD, colour, sound, 16:9, 4’

edition of 4

MOSCA

Here as in other previous works, the motif of the observer is dominant and recurrent. “The ob-

server” meaning a reversed point of view, where the observer happens to be observed, unbeknownst

to him, and where establishing hierarchies (if there actually are any) starts to get difficult.

Who is the true subject of the action? The internal or the external observer? And which role

does the so-called audience have, in this particular context?

The audience entering the room could see a wide video projected on a wall of the gallery, repre-

senting the outer space. The video itself has been realised with a camera video mounted on a flying

drone.

MOSCA - 2012video stills, HD, colour, sound 16:9, 13’

edition of 3

LA BOÎTE DE SARDINE EN VOL

This video draws inspiration from an anecdote told by Jacques Lacan ina chapter of the XI book

of the psychoanalysis seminar. Lacan describes his memory of a day spent fishing in Brittany as a youth

in the company of a fisherman, which focused on the glare produced by a sardine can beneath the

surface of the water. This memory provided him with the narrative pretext for explaining certain

mechanisms of vision to his students. For the psychoanalyst, the seemingly marginal detail at which

we gaze becomes a central detail in terms of our focus on it, acquiring a sense of entirety and repre-

senting a vacuous and indefinite zone to be filled with desire.

In this case the floating object is a double side golden/silver rescue blanket, where I to make it

flying with the help of the wind.

LA BOÎTE DE SARDINE EN VOL - 2011video stills, HD, colour, sound, 16:9, 4’05”

edition of 4

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD - 2011/2012video stills, HD, colour, sound, 16:9, 14’

edition of 4

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

The video has been commissioned from, Conseil General des Alpes de Haute Provence, in France.

I used the landscape of a valley in the French alps as an open and wide observatory, working

on surveillance from fortresses and army bunkers that were active during the 2nd World War,. The

place of the sentinel has been taken in this case by different small group of teen-agers, studying in

a small city in that valley, but almost all of them were coming from the Marseille’s periphery. They

had to watch down in the valley and waiting for something coming or appearing. In the meanwhile,

the students concentrated in their role, were in turned filmed by different men with video cameras,

hidden somewhere behind bushes and greenness in the surroundings of the spots where students

themselves were gazing.

THE HANDY HOLES WATCHERS PARADE

As a product of a residency experience in Cairo, in a time characterized by a great tension and

epoch-making upheavals for the Egyptian nation, the video offers an apparently actionless image, an

event that takes place off-screen: an entity that is invisible, and yet captures the attention of a group,

who are busy filming it with their mobile phones. The absence of a visible event, however, generates

what we may call an iconic image, shifting the focus from the uprising itself to its modes of repre-

sentation and communication- which is the true peculiarity and novelty in what has been called the

Arab Spring.

The video emphasizes a dimension that is peculiar to our time: the transformation of agents

into spectator, and of the public sphere into a fragmented universe of virtual relations: in fact, the

look of people is not directed towards the actual event, but its digital reproduction. It is not directed

towards Tahrir square and the united demonstrators, but focuses on the small screen of each person’s

mobile - the powerful, symbolical space of an evolving notion of modernity.

THE HANDY HOLES WATCHERS PARADE - 2011video stills, HD , colour, 16:9, 4’05”

production Resò/ Fondazione CRT per l’arte contemporaneaedition of 4

WELCOME TO EGYPTI will see you again somwhere inshallah

Walking randomly for 6-7 hours in many different areas of the city in Cairo. Whenever some-

body stops me, or shouts at me, trying to attrack my attention, instead of running away I stop myself

and start to talk with the person encountered on basic matters. When the conversation gains in confi-

dence I ask him (or them) if we can have a photograph taken together by a passer by. The picture shot

during the encounter, is printed out and framed.

The next step is to try to find the places where the picture has been taken and than giving the

framed picture to the person met a few days before, asking him to hang the picture on the shop wall or

in the place where the encounter happened.

While I am carrying back the pictures, I keep being stopped by someone welcoming me.

WELCOME TO EGYPT - 2011book: 21 x 14,6 cm.

production Resò/ Fondazione CRT per l’arte contemporaneaedition of 300

CLOUDS OVER TAHRIR SQUARE

A certain condition of pressure and oppression caused by a day of shooting by the army in

Tahrir square where I was living during the Mubarak’s fall, pushed me to take a mental travel follow-

ing all the clouds that were passing over the square by drawing them.

It was a need to take a distance from the place I was standing, and a distance that allowed me

to see things more clearly.

I have chosen a cloud far in the horizon and drew its contour line with a pencil while the cloud

itself was growing and moving in all directions, following ‘possible drawings’.

CLOUDS OVER TAHRIR SQUARE #1 - 2011pencil on paper 29,7 x 21 cm.

original drawing

CLOUDS OVER TAHRIR SQUARE #2 - 2011pencil on paper 29,7 x 21 cm.

original drawing

TRACING THE COURSE OF A MINARET SHADOW

We are not aware of the possible trajectories that we trace crossing each of us, with our pres-

ence and existence, all around the planet.

Do we have to think about passing time or about displacement of objects in the space?

The video itself is the registration of the earth rotation around the sun as a drawing under-

taken on a wide street in a suburb of the Cairo town. By doing so I enact a situation in which I deal

with the continuous flow of the traffic cars, and the passers by.

TRACING THE COURSE OF A MINARET SHADOW - 2011video stills, DV , colour, 4:3, 7’35”

production Resò/Fondazione CRT per l’arte contemporaneaedition of 5

CON LA CODA DELL’OCCHIO

The origin of this video has to be found in the suggestion of my grandfather tales about bil-

berries and raspberries harvesting that the inhabitant of that valley did from dawn, in groups of

people that were in contact each other with songs and calls.

Con la coda dell’occhio (Out of the corner eye) is a recording of an insight, activated by a men-

tal image of the place of my family origin. In the pictures showed in a 2 channels video installation,

the valley appears strewn with a constellation of shines and glows that corresponds from one side to

the other, from bottom to the summit.

I have involved more than twenty figurant volunteers, inhabitants of that region, which had

each one a big sized mirror. By doing so I have turned a part of a Landscape in a widened choreogra-

phy of presences in the wood, opening an inedited net of silent contacts.

CON LA CODA DELL’OCCHIO - 20102 channels video projection, HD , colour, 16:9, 11’35”

installation view production CeSACedition of 5

CON LA CODA DELL’OCCHIO - 2010video stills, HD , colour, 16:9, 11’35”

production CeSACedition of 5

PERTURBAZIONE

Perturbazione acts as an appropriation of the left over entities that come from different im-

portant situation of urbanistic transformation. The action takes place in the night and can be re-

vealed only the day after.

Probably some drivers stucked in the traffic morning will rise their gaze to discover that some-

thing wrong happened to the heap of earth sediments.

In this case the overwhelming mountain of sediments becomes an opportunity to engage

a poetic transformation, by creating what is missing to that heap of earth and stones, to be a real

mountain.

PERTURBAZIONE - 2009set of 3 photos

ink jet printsedition of 5

RACCOGLIMENTI

Many people from east Europe without regular permission of stay, comes out in the city traf-

fic to bring water from public fountain as long as they don’t have it in their fortune shelters.

Raccoglimenti is set as a movie casting. I ask these people to stand in front of my camera video, and

look continuously at the lens camera. As a real movie casting I pay them for the work done. The capa-

city of the water tank defines the duration of the footage. Everything that happens during that time

(questions, dialogues between me, and the filmed person) is recorded without any cut off.

RACCOGLIMENTI - 2007video PAL , colour, sound 4:3, 14’35”

edition of 4

QUELLE MONTAGNE CHE M’IMPEDISCONO DI VEDERE

(Those mountains that hinder me to see) The video, already in the title entangles the mat-

ter of seeing between reality, memory and imaginary. The words that we listen to, comes from an

old woman who tells an event about her migration in youth from the Piedmont Alps as a servant in

a family in Provence. The tale is concentrated in a brief moment of the 2nd World War, when just

before the war declaration to France, the woman gets a letter that announce her mother’s illness. Be-

cause of the impossibility to go back to her village while the borders were closed down, the only way

to get news from her relatives was to organize a dispatch rider game to create that bridge that will

make possible the flow, from hand to hand, in a travel side by side the mountains.

With the same idea I decided to commit to a film maker the visual translation of the woman

tale, inviting him to do again that journey and to shot freely the places she evokes.

Even here the subject doesn’t reveals itself, except for few seconds at the end of the footage,

and images on screen are suggested by the tale: some vision details of the video works as sort of a

gaze other that lead us in a backward time trip, where, without protagonist, is the landscape that

dominate the vision, but even here with the help of the effect of a legacy: the Sainte-Victoire’s moun-

tain mighty profiles, on which leant almost unceasingly Cezanne’s gaze, become the border where

interweaved imaginaries and take place the history.

QUELLE MONTAGNE CHE M’ IMPEDISCONO DI VEDERE - 2007video stills, DV , colour, sound, 4:3, 8’10”

edition of 4

LA SPARIZIONE DELL’ARRIVORE

(The Disappearing of Arrivore) The video is conceived using five video cameras. In one year I

have filmed the displacement of dwellings inside the camp, depending on the conflict relationships

of dwellers.

Scanning the place following the seasons changing, the video reveals conflict dynamics that

come out in such place as nomads camps where forced habits to dwell are evident. The “scanning” of

the place ends with its disappearing, as decided by the city Hall.

LA SPARIZIONE DELL’ARRIVORE- 2005video stills, DV, colour, 4:3, 7’

edition of 4

KAMES TE PIJAS KAFA?installation view of the exhibition

Sotto la strada la spiaggia - Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo - Torino, 2012.

KAMES TE PIJAS KAFA?installation view of the exhibition

Da gadjo - L.F.A.C. (Luigi Franco Arte contemporanea) - Torino, 2003.

KAMES TE PIJAS KAFA? (VUOI UN CAFFE’?)

I ask a woman that lives in a roma campment to follow her with my camera video while she

is preparing a daily coffee that her family offers me whenever I go to visit them. An ordinary path

through the “camp” it is accomplished. The camera moves itself on the ground level. It records the

soil prodding, while a woman walks through the dwelling place, to get to water source, sugar and

every ingredients.

In the meanwhile all dialogues between me and the girls are recorded without any cuts.

The necessary gestures to prepare the rite, suggests conditions, customs, and hospitality cultures.

KAMES TE PIJAS KAFA?- 2003.video stills, DV, colour, sound, 4:3, 10’

edition of 4

O KER

O ker, (house in the romanì language) it is a large cardboard cube on which the testimonials

of romani persons can be heard from the four sides of it, as they give their ideas of what a house is.

It is a mechanism that upset our preconceptions.

In order to understand the idea of a house as perceived by Gypsy - for us synonym par excel-

lence for nomad - we are forced to trace a physical path around the piece.

This movement can also stand for a circumnavigation of our own conceptions.

O KER- 2003cardboard, wood, mechanical engine, sound; 240 x 210 x 210

cm

O KER - 2003sequence of 6 ink drawing on paper 29,7 x 21 cm.

CHAIN REACTION

In his response to a perceived context of migration and solitude, during his residence in Co-

penhagen, Alessandro chose to develop his project around the theme of the table - a symbol of en-

counter and exchange. So he invited strangers he had met in the street, in grops of two, to share a

meal prepared by him. His guests then found themselves sitting across from two other virtual dinner

guests, who appeared on a screen installed opposite, also eating a meal which had in this case been

served a few hours earlier.

The actors in this arrangement, who were in turn filmed, first exchanged comments on the

dishes offered them by Alessandro, then turned in puzzlement to look at those who had preceded

them at the same table.

Listening to the comments of their predecessors, attempting to identify what had been pre-

pared for them, they seemed to forget the nature of the arrangement and attempted an impossible

dialogue with these virtual fellow diners, who were themselves absorbed in their own experience.

By inviting almost hundred people to share a meal in this way, above and beyond this chain

of virtual communication, Alessandro created a network of human relations formed through chance

meetings in the neighbourhood.

Recognising people seen on the screen, Alessandro’s guests could at last pursue the dialogue

they had attempted, exchange views about the experience and share what they had just lived through,

thus perhaps forming a jumping-off point for new human adventure.

(Patrice Bonnaffé, from the catalogue ‘Artists’ experience’ Pépinières Européennes pour

jeunes artistes 2002)CHAIN REACTION- 2000

videoprojector, videocamera, 2 monitors, stages, screen, ana-logic video source mixer, seats, food.