PLAY
The artwork "Play" (2022) is composed of tripods, colored lights, and films—materials typically used to create light in film or photo sets, to illuminate an actor's face and create the atmosphere of a story being told. In this installation, there is no narrative, but the tools that create light remain. Decontextualized, they take on a new value in relation to the Platea space and become the artwork itself.
"Play" varies in size and colors, depending on the location where it is presented, becoming a site-specific artwork each time. In 2022, the installation was exhibited in different formations during the artist's solo exhibition "Play it Again," curated by Sergio Risaliti, at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence and the Valentina Bonomo Gallery in Rome. The version proposed for Platea | Palazzo Galeano will be installed with a series of colors that will change over time: every week, there will be a variation in shades, offering the audience the opportunity to discover a different atmosphere each time.
Through an elaborate production comprising photographic and video work, and with the support of a substantial literary and musical apparatus, full of references and cultured connections, Martino observes the relationship that the memory and private mental dynamics of the contemporary individual establish with the low culture disseminated by the media, such as fiction and advertising slogans. This attraction to stories aims to illustrate contemporary living in narrative form, through which the artist reveals the manipulative power mechanisms of cinema and television on our subconscious and our way of interpreting the world.
With the support of young curators Benedetta Monti (Forlì, 1994) and Niccolò Giacomazzi (Florence, 1995), Rä di Martino has also selected four artists under 35: Valerio D'Angelo (Rome, 1993), Martina Cioffi (Como, 1991), Vittorio Zeppillo (San Severino nelle Marche, 1998), and Camilla Gurgone (Lucca, 1997), who, following her, will be protagonists of their own solo exhibitions.
In collaboration with Valentina Bonomo Gallery, Rome
Rä di Martino (Rome, 1975) studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Slade School of Art in London, then lived in New York from 2005 to 2010; she now lives and works in Rome. She has exhibited in institutions such as Tate Modern in London, MoMA PS1 in New York, Palazzo Grassi in Venice, GAM and Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo in Turin, MACRO and MAXXI in Rome, Museion in Bolzano, MCA in Chicago, Hangar Bicocca, and PAC in Milan. She has participated in international film festivals such as the Locarno Film Festival, VIPER Basel, Transmediale Berlin, Kasseler Dokfest, Turin Film Festival, and the Venice Film Festival, winning the SIAE Award, the Gillo Pontecorvo Award, and a special mention at the Nastri d'Argento with the film "The Show MAS Go On" (2014). Her first feature film, "Controfigura" (2017), premiered at the Venice Film Festival. In 2018/2019, she developed the project "AFTERALL," with the support of the Italian Council prize presented at the Mattatoio – Palaexpo in Rome (2019) and in 2020 at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2020). In 2019, she produced a new video, "L'eccezione," commissioned by the Museo Novecento in Florence, which won the first edition of the Lio Capital prize (Milan, 2020). In 2021, she developed the documentary for ARTE titled "Il giardino che non c’è" on Bassani's book "Il giardino dei Finzi Contini" and the experimental documentary on the Teatro di Pontedera titled "Fuori dai teatri." During the summer of 2022, she inaugurates a solo exhibition at Forte Belvedere in Florence and a solo exhibition dedicated to the archive of Carmelo Bene (Museo Castromediano in Lecce and Torre Matta, Otranto).
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26900 Lodi, Italy
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