At Palermo's most exciting contemporary art gallery, Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea, artist Aleksandra Mir, who moved from New York to Sicily in December 2005, has curated an exhibition entitled 'Donna/Woman' with LABORATORIO SACCARDI, a collective of young male artists in Sicily.
LABORATORIO SACCARDI are Marco Barone, Giuseppe Borgia, Vincenzo Profeta and Tothi Folisi, all born in Palermo in the late 1970s. The group was formed in 2003 and takes its name from the fictional Swiss artist Albert Saccardi - a hugely prolific artist who was ruined by the brutal art system and eventually forgotten. The four artists see Saccardi as their guiding spirit, helping them as they break free from the canons taught at the Academy of Fine Art in Palermo. In their early collective body of work they avenged Saccardi through aggressive cartoon-like paintings, which were aimed at various players in the history of art. Nobody, from Canaletto to Cattelan, was spared.
Mir's role as the organiser of 'Donna/Woman' is less that of a curator than that of an older, associated artist - one who is, importantly, female, and who challenges LABORATORIO SACCARDI with her own history and previous artwork on the subject of gender relations. A year of feminist celebrations in the art world begs a variety of questions: What of women today? Has feminism / technology / globalization changed women and their roles in society at all? If so, what have they become as subjects? Finally, how can this change be perceived and reflected back through the eyes of four young, straight, male artists? Men who spend most of their days not in the studio but in front of live internet feeds, masturbating to prancing girl flashers from all around the world, exposing themselves within their dorm rooms, via a screen that separates them completely and brings them closer to others, and us, than ever before.
LABORATORIO SACCARDI's recordings and exhibition of found material gathered from the web make for an intricate composition of roles and power relations. While the work situates itself within the traditional lineage of painting, acting within the construct of the male gaze and the female model, their peeping tom videos present an amazingly dynamic interplay between the girls' initiation of the event on-screen, the artists' roles as passive viewers and active producers, and us, one step removed, viewing them view it. So, what of woman today?
Through LABORATORIO SACCARDI's computer screen, woman seems an exotic animal worthy of study both for the pleasure of her physical form and for her captivating performance, as well as for the most incomprehensible aspects of her behaviour. In their own home videos, they capture their giggly girlfriends as these passionately re-narrate from memory several months of action from their favorite soap operas. The paintings in the exhibition again target public figures worthy of critical scrutiny, featuring women such as Hillary Clinton in burlesque situations and throwing them from their thrones.
LABORATORIO SACCARDI's exhibition makes use of all the gallery's spaces, from the stairwells to bathrooms, creating a sense of a domestic environment in which the mundane analysis of the collectives' relations to women, in general and in particular, will be conducted.
Laboratorio Saccardi: Donna/Woman
curated by Aleksandra Mir
Until 15 September
Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea
Via Garraffello, 25
90133 Palermo
T: +39 091 332482
www.fpac.it
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