Darren Almond - IF I HAD YOU

IF I HAD YOU In the monumental space of Palazzo della Ragione, Milan, the Nicola Trussardi Foundation presents a new video installation by British artist Darren Almond. The exhibition, on view from November 4, 2003 will transform one of the historic treasures of the city into a crisscrossing tapestry of geography and history. Darren Almond, one of the most original voices in contemporary British art, is a tireless traveler. For his recent projects he has explored his own native country in search of memories and personal experiences: he has plunged himself into Kazakhstani mineshafts to capture remote landscapes and ancient rituals, stretched time by ploughing the waves of the ocean with an enormous digital clock, and brought into a museum environment the white visions of the Antarctic. For this new project, his first solo exhibition in Italy, Darren Almond will bring to Milan the melancholic atmosphere of the small seaside town of Blackpool: the lights of the dance halls reveal the landscape of this old-style amusement town, while old women dancing in Almond’s video inspire slow and moving reflections. Palazzo della Ragione in Via dei Mercanti is one of the most important medieval buildings in Milan, and over the centuries, it has become a living depot of memories and stories. For his ambitious project produced by the Nicola Trussardi Foundation, Darren Almond personally chose this spaces, stratified with personal and collective dramas. An ideal sequel to his world-famous video ‘Traction’ – in which fragments of his familiar adventure are recomposed in an historic fresco – Darren Almond’s new installation IF I HAD YOU presents a series of video-projections. Framed within Blackpool’s oldest dance halls, Darren Almond portrays lonely dancers in an intimate tale, a sentimental journey into the past, a monument to melancholy, a struggle against time. With the exhibition IF I HAD YOU, the Nicola Trussardi Foundation continues its adventure in the public spaces of the city of Milan. Searching for a synthesis between tradition and research, the Nicola Trussardi Foundation explores the city and discovers forgotten spaces by opening them up to the energies of today’s art. Darren Almond’s exhibition follows the successful project SHORT CUT, by Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, shown in the Ottagono of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele (May 2003), recreating an imaginary and fantastic world free of the imposed boundaries of time and space. Pressetext

Darren Almond - IF I HAD YOU