sleep / create / collect · ciao matte, ti scrivo in modo da mettere giù qualche riflessione più...

sleep / create / collect

This book was conceived, designed and produced by the Numeroventi Curatorial Team in Florence, Italy.

A limited number of 99 copies was printed.

You are holding copy no. /99

Summer 2020 Art Catalogue Artists reimagining the city of Florence

Which positive habits cultivated during quarantine would you like to keep?

04 05SUMMER 2020

Palazzo Galli Tassi, 1510

Unpacking our lives Sheila Lam

This historical residence has been the home of several institutions and public figures throughout its history: from the palace of the Governor to Ministry of Economics, a syrup factory, and now artist residence.

From the facade, Numeroventi stands together with the rest of Florence. Weathered walls, and classical accents, faded and drenched under the Tuscan sun. Our courtyard and grand staircase are home to antique sculptures and have a more traditional accent.

But inside our walls, is a meld of two time periods. Our contemporary lofts are paired back with white walls and towering windows, some rooms with rich frescos and touches of our history. The bright available light accentuates the furnishings and art. Most pieces have either been collected over time or created for the space by our artists in residence.

Each of our loft apartments is designed specifically to be a conducive environment for reflection and exploration. With unique interiors for every loft, no two spaces are the same. We encourage independent contemplation and social exchange of ideas in our communal spaces.

And as with our artist’s work, Numeroventi too is always evolving. New spaces are being added and existing ones are being remodelled with new purpose, bringing new energy with every piece of art or furniture that is acquired.

I’ve often thought about a quote from Joan Didion, “you have to pick the places you don’t walk away from.” I always attributed it to a sense of home, a sense of knowing. But at a time when I am displaced and grounded at once, what does home mean?

I have spent over a month here at Numeroventi. Some days I work from Loft 2, leading discussions on video calls or taking in a digital yoga class. Other days I read downstairs in Loft 4, periodically glancing up at the resplendent fresco above. I sprawl ingredients across the kitchen counter when cooking and sometimes leave the dishes in the sink until the next day. Completely empty, I’ve had unfettered access to this space as I move about freely from loft to loft. It is of course, empty because at the time of writing, the world is experiencing a tremendous standstill.

“You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from.” The irony now is that I cannot walk away from this but I also didn’t choose this. So this is surely not what Joan meant. “You have to pick

At its core, home is a comfort, a salve. It is for me, a place where I have the space to unpack, both literally and metaphorically.

the places you don’t walk away from”, I repeated this to myself for days. I would mull it over in bed. I would let the words drench me in the shower. I would fill my thoughts with them over dinner. Until finally I realised that though I have no sense of belonging to a place because home is but a concept of my making, I can make sense of it anywhere.

For some, home is a sense of familiarity, somewhere that reminds them of a place they’ve been before or a place where you can lay roots. “I can live here for the rest of my life.” Time and again I’ve attached the concept of home to people. Letting my connections be the woven net of a supported swing that I rest in. But at its core, home is a comfort, a salve. It is for me, a place where I have the space to unpack, both literally and metaphorically. A locality where I am at ease with my body and where my thoughts and feelings can come out freely. Bridging both a physical realm with my mental and emotional one. Perhaps, nowhere more than here at an artist residency do I find that idea of home.

Florentine resources and its analogic horizons

Anna Rose

Bloc Studios

Duccio Maria Gambi

Angus Ogilvie

Bask

Edrev

Masa

Sasha Ribera

Mattia Papp

Filippo Anzalone

Ilaria Bianchi

Lorenzo Brinati

Pietro Franceschini

Justin Randolph Thompson

What are the positive habits cultivated during quarantine that we can enhance and maintain?

How can our restricted local resources best inform and dictate the future of art and design?

How do we contemplate borders and inclusivity in the post-pandemic age?

How can we act quickly to put our local resources to use, and take actions with a new speed and decisiveness?

The show involved Tuscan-based artists and designers in a conversation between the city and its local

communities to raise questions in the post-COVID era:

PALAZZO GALLI TASSI – FLORENCE, ITALY 03–12 JULY 2020

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

10 11SUMMER 2020ART CATALOGUE

Ciao Matte, ti scrivo in modo da mettere giù qualche riflessione più ordinata:

Come ti dicevo, il mio punto di vista di partenza e quello che sto cercando di stimolare attraverso la collaborazione con Martino è una riflessione sul contesto; su come il contesto generi un potenziale che altrimenti

rimarrebbe inespresso. L’occasione del coronavirus è stata provvidenziale da questo punto di vista per innescare una ricerca sul territorio.

È chiaro che il mio è uno sguardo che che sconta i limiti della mia conoscenza del panorama, che non può essere esaustiva. Credo però che sia necessario

attivare una ricerca sul territorio per dare consistenza e coscienza alla qualità diffusa, che da queste parti non trova stimoli né terreno per evolversi ad un

livello globale e inserirsi nella ricerca contemporanea. Per me, almeno, è importante strutturare un processo che generi un forte stimolo alla ricerca, unito ad un contenitore per raccontarlo.

Ci sono designer spinti dall’ambiente in cui lavorano, e dall’altro lato energie di valore sprecate da un contesto che non riesce a farle progredire creandogli

un orizzonte. Per questo sono felice che tu e Sasha facciate parte della mostra. Pur conoscendoci ancora poco, percepisco un valore nella tua cultura, nel tipo di design con cui ti relazioni e nelle ricerche che porti avanti.

Un abbraccio,

Duccio

There is an African proverb that states the fact that it takes a village to raise a child. This understan-ding of the profound need for the acknowledge-ment, care and interest of all members of a com-munity towards each other in order to produce a healthy environment for growth, imagination and aspirations should not be lost to those of us who, instead of focusing on raising children, are reflecting upon our collective needs as a society. Months of social distance, the abandonment of physical contact and a rising fear of the other’s potential contagion have left us more fragmented as a community than in the past. When coupled with a neoliberal indoctrination that has led us to believe each other as focused on self-interest, we can begin to appreciate the growing distance from community mindedness which has rooted our va-lue systems in a sort of telescopic vision, framed and fixed with an idea of all that is out of reach, yet incapable of seeing what is all around us. This period’s radical isolation and social awakening has also produced in many of us creative strategies for overcoming, new ways of being together and sha-ring, a reassessment of our values and long-term goals, new expressions of our care for each other and a desire to share space.

Un territorio comune From an email conversation

between Duccio Maria Gambi and Matteo Salvadori

Re-engaging in the labor of community building

Justin Randolph Thompson

Benedict Anderson wrote about the elaborately constructed fiction of ”imagined communities”. If we think about the ways in which so many of the social constructs that structure and enforce our relationship to each other have been in lar-ge part imagined, we can come to appreciate the fact that our feeling of connection to each other is a product of imaginative perception. We can also, however be cognizant that this fact renders this relationship no less valid and no less profound. Our imaginations are fueled by broadened fields of knowledge and our ability to shift perceptions and to appreciate that which may seem most basic or intrinsic. If the current community of artists involved in this exhibition is yet a figment of our imagination, then perhaps it is through this sha-red experience of vulnerability, misjudgment and collective first steps towards re-engaging in the labor of community building that we can begin to fuel a more inventive understanding of our obligations towards each other. In a city which, when not looking to the past, is too often looking abroad perhaps we can anchor a focus in the con-temporary moment while building the imagina-tion and active attention towards a true care for every single voice and a future that is not rooted in a mechanized, standardized or un-imaginative individualisms.

...COMMUNITIES ARE TO BE DISTINGUISHED, NOT BY THEIR FALSITY/GENUINENESS, BUT BY THE STYLE IN WHICH THEY ARE IMAGINED...

BENEDICT ANDERSON, IMAGINED COMMUNITIES


Anna RoseAnna Rose (b. 1982, Massachusetts, USA) has lived and worked in Florence since 2004.

She received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2014. Her work spans video, photography, and installation with a sensibility towards the relationship between body, space and ritual, entering into conversation with historical, psychological, and cultural mythologies of place.

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Bloc StudiosBased on the emerging vision of marble that involves re-thinking functional design out of industrial excess, Bloc Studios is built on the ideas of international collaborations and in-house designed pieces.

The brand was founded in Carrara in 2014 by Sara Ferron Cima and Massimo Ciuffi with the intention of transforming raw, natural stones into thoughtful everyday objects while preserving the inherent qualities of the marble. Following the philosophy that every pieces of marble contains a unique story waiting to be revealed, each piece is a unique one.

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Duccio Maria Gambi

After years living in Milan, Rotterdam and Paris, Duccio is from 5 years back in his hometown Florence.

He works in a branch of the design on a border between design and sculpture, designing and producing one off works for private clients and design galleries. His work is an endless research focusing on matter space and storytelling.

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Angus OgilvieCurrently based in Florence, Ogilvie’s work spans a variety of different processes and materials, the overlapping point being an interest in architectural forms. Working as part of Bask, he has exhibited across Europe and South America.

Ogilvie seeks to remove the idea of authorship from the work, the content coming from the form and process. Constructing a set of geometric proportions and then generating variations within these parameters often presenting multiples. He creates sculptural elements that are simultaneously a fragment and a singularity. What makes these fragments important is the way they describe the point at which building becomes culture. These modular sculptures create a dialogue between architecture and sculpture in which familiar forms and materials verge on the ritualistic and totemic.

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Bask

Bask is a collective of three artists, Jim shepherd, Dominic Mchenry and Angus Ogivie currently based between London and Florence. Bask explore a collaborative approach to making sculpture. Often working in series individual works come together as notes in a harmony.

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Edrev

Edrev (1995, Florence) recently completed an MA Fine Arts at City and Guilds of London Art School (2019) after a BA in Milan at Accademia di Brera (2017).

Her multidisciplinary work goes across painting and installation, constructing a narrative about human beings. Her interest in the collective unconscious researches what makes us part of a whole; using social and cultural means of communication. Edrev currently lives and works in London.

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Ma_Sa

Born somewhen between the Years of Lead, Ma_Sa holds himself fully accountable for everything that has ever happened since then.

First an Illustrator, then a wannabe painter, eventually he turns to be a contractor in the construction business. After a few years he moves to the countryside and joins the Freeshout Collective with whom, to the cry of “Rien ne se perd, Rien ne se crée, Tout se transforme”, works transversally in art, fashion, design. Defying any attempt at definition par excellence, Ma_Sa eventually sets up his own workshop practice in Florence, working as set designer, toy technician, product and interior designer.

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Sasha Ribera

Sasha Ribera was born in Florence in 1988.

After studies of Sculpture at the Academy of fine Arts and Design at ISIA, he has grown up in woodworking, decoration and restoration workshops. Since 2017 he has started a project of research, restoration and trading of historic design, in parallel with a production of his own furniture-sculptures. His work is focused on the material ‘wood’, fascinated by the signs that the time leaves on it, by pure and clean shapes, by the combination with other materials and by the introspection of its processing.

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Mattia Papp

After graduating high school in the Art Institute of Porta Romana he moved to Den Haag to study at the KABK where he graduated in July of 2017.

His work takes classical elements of Italian tradition, its streets, its smells, old shops and architecture, and translates them into a contemporary language using different media, from paint to ceramics and videos. With his graduation work in KABK he won the Jan Roede award, award and eventually got invited to various exhibitions and other awards, including the Piket prize. He has been working with theatre, painting and installations since then, aiming to engage Florence and the Netherlands in a creative and active dialogue. In 2019 and early 2020 he held courses at the academy of art in The Hague.

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Lorenzo Brinati

In Lorenzo’s Brinatis practice, we can perceive the depth of Renaissance Florentine Craftsmanship expanded by the vision towards eastern cultures. He developed the techniques for his paintings working for more than two decades as a restorator in the traditional workshops. With his pictorial works Lorenzo transforms the old master’s skills into a modern yet timeless language. As a sculptor his language derives from the attention toward the nature’s law and for the acceptance that man is at the center of universe just as observer. Lorenzo Brinati (born 1978) He currently lives and works in Florence, Italy.

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Pietro Franceschini

Pietro Franceschini is an architect and designer based in New York and Florence.

He was educated in Italy, Portugal and United States. After receiving his B.Arch cum laude from Università degli Studi di Firenze and his M.S.Arch with 1st class honour from Pratt Institute, he collaborated among others with Leeser Architecture in Brooklyn, Claudio Nardi in Florence, Laisné Roussel in Paris and Carlo Ratti Associati in New York. His latest project – PF|Studio – was born in 2020 as an interior and furniture design practice.

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Justin Randolph ThompsonJustin Randolph Thompson is a new media artist, cultural facilitator and educator born in Peekskill, NY in ’79.

Living between Italy and the US since 1999, Thompson is Co-Founder and Director of Black History Month Florence, a multi-faceted exploration of African and African Diasporic cultures in the context of Italy now 5 years old. Thompson is a recipient of a Louise Comfort Tiffany Award, a Franklin Furnace Fund Award, a Visual Artist Grant from the Fundacion Marcelino Botin, two Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants, A Jerome Fellowship from Franconia Sculpture Park and an Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park. His life and work seek to deepen the discussions around socio-cultural stratification and hierarchical organization by employing fleeting temporary communities as monuments and fostering projects that connect academic discourse social activism and DIY networking strategies in annual and biennial gatherings, sharing and gestures of collectivity.

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Permanent Collection

Duccio Maria Gambi

Malgorzata Bany

Tycjan Knut

Angus Ogilvie

Yoon-Young Hur

Guglielmo Profeti

Alexis Christodoulou

Aesther Chang

Lorenzo Brinati

Carla Cascales Alimbau

Rich Stapleton

Marco Guazzini

Over the years, Numeroventi has had the honor to host a global network of artists. We strive to enhance the exchange

in between international artist and local creatives.

A selection of works from our long-time friends.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RESIDENCY PROGRAM

42 43SUMMER 2020

When I moved back to Florence four years ago, I started developing an artist residency. My first task: to find creatives.

My curiosity allows me to navigate the creative process by creating conversations, materializing thoughts, and evaluating motivations. Our conversations are shaped by current events. This is essential to

connecting with the artists in our community.

For many, the light at the end of a tunnel these past few months, created a valuable opportunity to reflect and ask questions:

How can we reevaluate our local resources and the pace in which we choose to live our lives?

Organizing Numeroventi’s fourth-anniversary exhibition is a thrilling process: I’ve selected fifteen artists of diverse origins

and practices in three weeks to showcase their stories inside the space. Each room represents an artist and their

unique point of view on the subject.

I hope that this exhibition will not only stimulate ideas at a local level, but provide a springboard to create in a better, more decisive way. It is a clear path that Florence’s artists are slowly marching on.

Rediscovering Florence Martino Di Napoli Rampolla


(01) (02)(03)

Aesther Chang

Marco Guazzini

Carla Cascales Alimbau


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(05,06,07)

Yoon-Young Hur


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Angus Ogilvie

Rich Stapleton


(16)(15)

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Duccio Maria Gambi

Lorenzo Brinati


(23)(22)

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Malgorzata Bany

Tycjan Knut

ART CATALOGUE

Guglielmo Profeti Alexis C

hristodoulou

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SUMMER 2020 60 61ART CATALOGUE

Martino di Napoli Rampolla Founder & Creative director

Daniele Civetta Venue manager

Viktoria Mahrberg Digital manager

Pietro Giovanardi Visual designer

Dinesh Warnakulasooriya Venue assistant

Marina Denisova

Daniele Civetta

Olivia Lopez

Raffaella Rocca

Francesca Morino

Laura Rysman

Numeroventi Curatorial Team

Photography credits

Special thanks

Luca, Maurizia, Matteo

Luciano Giubbilei

Andrew Trotter

Printed in June 2020

Art direction and graphic design by Pietro Giovanardi www.pietrogiovanardi.com

sleep / create / collect · ciao matte, ti scrivo in modo da mettere giù qualche riflessione più...

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