Gian Maria Tosatti arrives in Foligno with environmental intervention, a walk in the fog

Another exhibition for Gian Maria Tosatti (Rome, 1980), at the same time as the one at Hangar Bicocca in Milan. In fact, the Roman artist is now in Foligno at the Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea (CIAC) where, from April 22 to July 2, 2023, the solo exhibition Spazio #09 - Mi ricordo is being held, presenting a site-specific work for the CIAC’s large hall. The exhibition is organized by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Foligno, and curated by Italo Tomassoni, while exhibition services are provided by Maggioli Cultura, which will also take care, together with the curator, of thematic insights and guided tours.

Space #09 - I remember is a single immaterial environmental intervention that traverses in the fog the CIAC space dotting it with lights, whose presence in the author’s intentions should refer to many intimate meanings that the visitor is called to evoke. Something similar to the last part of Tosatti’s intervention at the 2022 Venice Biennale. The title is a reference to childhood, a time in life when the perception of physical and inner reality sometimes coincide and overlap, creating a poetic confusion. Art allows for a specific time and in a specific space - that is, the boundaries of a work - to experience the same rapture even in adulthood.The work is part of the project The considerations on the intentions of my first communion remain a dead letter, a cycle of works that began in 2009 and follows the artist’s path, collecting reflections related to the relationship between man and his existential track.

Tosatti himself explains, “This exhibition is not ascribable to an idea of consumable and consumable art. This work helps us realize that current art is not meant to be looked at, evaluated, understood, but rather to be ’used.’ It is a tool for generating experiences, emotions and reflections. Never ask what contemporary art means. What does it mean? Nothing. It is like giving a kiss, it can mean nothing or many things, but nothing specific. It rather activates something else. This work can be for everyone a different experience and the possibility of an exit from the system in which each of us lives and a return to something greater that is within ourselves.”

“The call to memory,” explains Italo Tomassoni, “is in the title. But it is difficult to say how memory materializes. There is no employment here for either form or formlessness. Neither order nor disorder. The space is insubstantial. No color, no matter, no structure. Nor fullness and emptiness, volume and surface. And even time, having crossed the curtain that separates us from the work, eludes measurement. Even the ash has evaporated. In the circumspection of a path made uncertain by fog, consciousness refers back to being-there, to the boundary between the first and last of identity that besieges reason. In the other, among the vapors, the eye glimpses bright dots, the only orientation to penetrate a circular path that leads back to the starting point where everything repeats itself. Inside a semiotic system that hides what it shows or reveals what it hides, the indescribable happens: a work without corpus mechanicum, blinding entity, is released.”

The exhibition opens Thursday through Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3:30 to 7 p.m. For info: tel. 0742.357035 - 366.6635287; e-mail: info@ciacfoligno.it, www.ciacfoligno.it

Pictured is a glimpse of Tosatti’s talk. Photo: Anton Giulio Onofri

Gian Maria Tosatti arrives in Foligno with environmental intervention, a walk in the fog

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