Albissola Marina, three artists repopulate Casa Jorn by living there and exhibiting

In Albissola Marina, Casa Museo Jorn is hosting from July 1 to Sept. 17 the exhibition A casa. A situation fiercely opposed to the degradation of everyday life, a collective that brings together the three artists David Adamo, Giacomo Porfiri and Wolfgang Staehle, who spent a period of residence in the museum that was Asger Jorn’s home. Indeed, the house-museum aims to be not only a museum space, but also a place that, thanks to its history and its international, interdisciplinary and experimental vocation, allows artists from the contemporary scene to pursue free artistic and poetic research.

After the success of the past residencies, which have seen artists such as Karin Andersen, Salvatore Arancio, Anders H. Ruhwald, Alessandro Roma, Loredana Longo, and Arianna Carossa (just to mention a few) work and exhibit at Casa Museo Jorn, in 2023 the museum is ready to welcome three personalities with different artistic paths but who, in Berlin, are united by friendship and common visions, sharing projects and working spaces. The project A casa was born in the summer of 2020 when the museum’s curators and the three artists met and discovered convergences of paths, both physical and conceptual, that eventually led David Adamo, Giacomo Porfiri and Wolfgang Staehle to explore Casa Jorn and hypothesize a common experience, a “situation fiercely opposed to the degradation of everyday life.”

The three artists conceived of a project that led them to experience Asger Jorn’s house collectively at different times of the year, using the living spaces as a laboratory of experience and construction of situations through which they would like to demonstrate the possibility of living and creating in alternative ways through various means, free from mercantile pressures and media overexposure. The artists enthusiastically immersed themselves in the “situation,” enchanted by the changes in perception caused by the change of light during the hours of the day, attracted by the variety of materials used by Jorn for his art, seduced by that perfect union of nature and free creation that only Casa Jorn can offer.

The result of the project consists of an exhibition, curated by Paola Gargiulo and Cecilia Nastasi, which proposes an arrangement that restores to the public the way Casa Museo Jorn was experienced by Adam, Porfiri and Staehle during their residency: not as a museum space, but precisely as a house that, thanks to their presence was once again repopulated day and night as it had not been since the time it was inhabited by Asger Jorn. Looking at the works exhibited in A Casa will provide insight into the different ways in which the house has been experienced by each of the artists with a common denominator: imagining a continuous dialogue with Jorn’s works that characterize every corner of the museum.

David Adamo has ranged in his use of different materials going so far as to fool the human eye and challenge common perception. His bronze works turn out to be a perfect imitation of reality and take their cues from everyday objects, as in Charlie, where customary elements such as bread and forks become allusions to the 1920s cinematography in which Charlie Chaplin starred. In other sculptures, however, he seems to share Jorn’s fascination with “pure,” unfinished matter. In Green or Drum only the artist’s intervention is barely perceptible: these are stones of various extractions that do not want to deny their nature, but flaunt it.

Giacomo Porfiri has made Jorn’s villa - as a total work of art - the sole protagonist of his works: his paintings make evident, by inserting them within the limits of the painting, elements that, in the overall visiting experience, might go unnoticed and that, thanks to his intervention, acquire a new value. In Shelter #2, for example, tar paper and bitumen mingle and enrich with meaning the black wall that divides the two bedrooms of the house-museum. In the sculptures, too, Porfiri keeps the same poetics intact by making works in which the reference to forms, particular elements and materials present in Jorn’s house is evident.

Wolfgang Staehle wanted to interpret the residence through the lens of his camera. A looped sequence of projected photographs allows visitors to experience Casa Museo Jorn in the artists’ gestures, entering their daily lives, sensing the wonder they felt and the work that followed it. Even the car trip from Berlin to Albissola Marina, which preceded the residency period, became a cue for his artistic reflection: thus A6 was born, a canvas that is also a narrative of a journey.

The exhibition A casa will open June 29 at 6 p.m. and will be on view to the public from July 1 and throughout the summer period, until Sept. 17: an organic, site-specific path that weaves the open spaces of the garden and those inside the domestic spaces seamlessly, respecting the spirit of hybridization between inside and outside, open and closed, that characterizes the total architectural artwork created by Jorn in Albissola Marina.

Opening hours: Tuesday 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Thursday 3-6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday (June and September) 10 a.m.-1 p.m.-7 p.m. (July and August) 10 a.m.-1 p.m.-8 p.m. Info: museo@amicidicasajorn.it - www.amicidicasajorn.it - www.museodiffusoalbisola.it

Image: Wolfgang Staehle at Casa Jorn

Albissola Marina, three artists repopulate Casa Jorn by living there and exhibiting

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