THE LINE IS THE ARCH OF AN INFINITE HORIZON & S.T.O.R.A.G.E

From one part to the other, the city seems to continue, in perspective, multiplying its repertory of images: but instead it has no thickness, it consists only of a face and an obverse, like a sheet of paper, with a figure on either side, which can neither be separated nor look at each other. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972.

The Agency is pleased to present a group exhibition exploring unseen space and the line with in the works of five international contemporary artists . Featured are paintings, sculpture, collage, and installation by the three Italian artists based in Rome, Flavio de Marco, Corrado Sassi and Stanislao di Giugno, as well as works by the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen and Dragset and the Cuban-American artist Maria Elena Gonzalez.

Italo Calvino maps out his imaginary cities in lines: both on the page and in the mind's eye, he creates a mesh of organic, endless, and overlapping symbolic structures. The line is the basic tool in visual (and literary) art practice, and the starting point for a construction of meaning. But the place where the line does not fall also conveys meaning. While lines appear straight on a two-dimensional plane, in space they must necessarily curve like the globe. Just as the horizon suggests infinity, to the contemporary eye, the limits of space one can see and comprehend inform one's perceptions of space beyond the visible.

Evident in the practice of each artist is the idea and feeling of space beyond the grasp. One looks at the vibrant colour and brash strokes in the paintings of Corrado Sassi, and thinks--what are the shadowy lines I cannot see? Are they words, figures? Flavio de Marco's paintings problematise the picture plane, as in Calvino's two-sided paper, revealing and obscuring landscapes simultaneously so that the mind reads three dimensions. The wall sculpture by Elmgreen and Dragset evokes a perspective that could go to infinity. Stanislao di Giugno makes collages with the detritus of modern consumer society that resemble the horizon-rich landscapes of old master paintings. The architectural lines in the sculptures of Maria Elena Gonzalez are obscured by a sarcophagus of cloudy resin....can one trust one's eyes?

The exhibition joins five contemporary artists who touch on the modernist principle of infinity, as first addressed by Brancusi with his Endless Column (1938), and explored radically in the conceptual art of the late Sixties and Seventies. The different aesthetic approaches of these five artists range from the Surreal (Elmgreen and Dragset's interconnected watertaps) to the formalist (Flavio de Marco's computer screen landscapes replicated on canvas) to the deep architectural sculptures of Gonzalez and the expressionist style of Corrado Sassi, which is reminiscent of the playfulness of Ettore Sotsass' designs. Obscured spaces are important in each piece, sometimes conceptually and sometimes expressively emotive. The works are elegant as well as perplexing, particularly in context with each other.

The Artists

Flavio de Marco lives and works in Rome and Milan. He has just had a solo show at the Palazzo Schifanoia and further one person exhibitions at Care Of, Milan and the European Parliament in Brussels a./o.. In London his work was presented in "The End Begins," an exhibition showcasing important works from the Lodeveans Collection at The Hospital, London.

Stanislao di Giugno lives and works in Rome. He has a forthcoming solo show at Galeria Tiziana Di Caro and has participated in exhibitions at Paris Photo, Care Of Milan the Graphic Arts Biennial, Ljubiliana and at the institutional spaces VOLUME and Zerynthia.

Maria Elena Gonzalez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1957. She lives and works in Brooklyn and Basel. Gonzalez has received numerous awards, including the Rome Prize for 2003. The artist has had recent solo shows at The Project Gallery, NY, and The Bronx Museum. She was included in the Guggenheim's recent collection display, "The Shapes of Space," in New York and Sonsbeek 9, Arnhem, NL. Gonzalez appears courtesy Galerie Linder, Basel.

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset (Norway/Denmark) have had many international solo projects as well as a solo show in the Serpentine Gallery in 2006 and were also presented at Tate Modern in 2004. Their work is presented with a singular poignant loan of the sculpture, Powerless Structures , (Watertaps) (2002)

Corrado Sassi lives and works in Rome has had solo shows a/o in Galerie Valerie Cueto, Paris and most recently at the Museu Muspac , L'Aquila. Group shows include Forse Italia at the SMAK museum Gent, De Chiara gallery New York and Maze gallery Turin.

The Curators Lorenzo Benedetti is from Rome and has curated many successful independent projects. He is currently presenting Carsten Nicolai at the Fondazione Volume! in Rome. He is also part of the curating team at MARTA Herford Museum under Jan Hoet.

Charlotte Artus is an art consultant and curator based in London. She leads private courses on contemporary art and theory. She is an active trustee of London based and international arts institutions

LUDOVICA GIOSCIA

The Agency is pleased to present Ludovica Gioscia, with new wallpaper sculptures in S.T.O.R.A.G.E. Her clustered sculptures made largely of printed paper and perspex are an evolution from her de-collages which she has exhibited internationally as room filling installations. The wall papers and also previous animations take their cue from generic messages of pop and rave culture, both literal and subversive in tone as they promote social unity through hedonistic enjoyment. Hedonism was celebrated in the baroque era as well, which is echoed by her organic, folded and crunched structures with messages densely overlapping each other. Gioscia utilises both her own patterns as well as industrially designed wallpapers, transforming the paper into three-dimensional environments and sculptural pieces.

Where stickers and buttons are the jewellery of today's dance culture, Gioscia takes those and enlarges them into precious objects, which reference structural disorder. Wallpapers containing contemporary symbolism function like a legible language, which in turn is scrambled to become a visual object. We are confronted with defaced posters on a daily basis and have become familiar with reading torn and re-appropriated imagery. Gioscia simulates this effect in a carefully constructed mesh of detritus, whilst adhering to compositional structures of painterly a well as sculptural practice.

Gioscia's sculptures are energetic and colourful, they function like fashion emblems, they are light, funny, on the verge of the decorative yet the also re-capture the spirit of pop art and graffiti culture. Gioscia's work is intensely contemporary in its use of fluorescent colours and symbolic references defined by the post-Eighties generation, whilst also playing with established formalism, taking urban delapidation as a starting point and re- integrating it into a new sculptural order.

Ludovica Gioscia, born Rome 1977 and lives and works in London, has shown widely within the UK and internationally. Recent exhibitions include The Weasel at South London Gallery, Cocktail in Hongkong, the Jerwood Space, London and a group show in Tirana in May 2008.

THE LINE IS THE ARCH OF AN INFINITE HORIZON
Flavio de Marco, Stanislao di Giugno, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Corrado Sassi,
Kuratoren: Lorenzo Benedetti, Charlotte Artus

Ludovica Gioscia - S.T.O.R.A.G.E