Core Gallery (Rome, Italy) and Art Yourself Gallery presents 6 italian artists

The Core Gallery

The Core Gallery was born in September of 2015 from the meeting between the gallerist’s experience of Raffaele Soligo, whose cultural association – Studio Soligo – was among the main promoters of the Italian Pop Art in the 70s and in recent years has begun to deal with Neo-Pop[1], and critical experience and curator of Giancarlo Carpi, who since 2005, the time of his degree thesis[2],  worked as a critic and independent curator  focusing on cuteness aesthetic and art in the Italian and European context. The line of the gallery (whose logo is a fake of the Organization Nerv of the anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, 90s) intends to realize exhibitions with a group of artists engaged in the development of the European and Italian version of the cute aesthetic, trying to link the influence of styles and reasons for the Japanese Superflat and American Pop Surrealism. This also born from the need to create a vision and a aesthetic linked to cuteness, Pop Surrealism and Superflat, supported by a comprehensive theoretical and critical level, since these trends in Italy but often abroad are deprived of a theoretical consideration and knowledge of the direction taken, merely a repetition of certain formal patterns and stereotypes, such as the revival of painting in contrast with conceptual art. Essentially, therefore, the programming work, curating and critical writing that is produced in the gallery and exhibitions abroad follows and investigates some cardinal issues: 1) The concept of cuteness in its various incarnations, materials and formal, and its link with the Kindchenschema. 2) The relationship between the artist and the artwork understood as the author’s alienation into the artistic object, in the sense of a human being commodification into the artwork, an alienation that mentalize it. 3) The appropriazionistic practices of artists than media, commodity and cultural icons that negotiate the identity of the artist, in most cases also through the practice of the mash-up. The corresponding appropriation by the curators of art materials through the methodology of the curatorship and the intrusion in the work itself of the artists in order to desacralize it. All this in the name of a close and regular cooperation between curators and artists aimed at producing an aesthetic shared clear transdisciplinary perspectives. The exhibition path (2012-2016): The Gallery is placed strategically and geographically a double objective: to value in Rome and in Italy a conscious Neo-Pop European current, and extend, in a spirit of critical comparison and discovery, the exhibition projects with other European nations. For this reason the exhibition program considers to be closely interconnected exhibitions taking place in the Rome gallery and other exhibition spaces, public and private, in other Italian cities and abroad, as in the case of this exhibition at the Art Yourself Gallery, that curators thank for their interest and availability. Can be counted among the exhibits of this aesthetical research path and exhibition, the first solo exhibition of Paolo Gabrielli (Gabriels) at the Pietro Canonica Museum of Villa Borghese in Rome (2012), successive exhibition at the Naval Heritage Collection (Tivat, Montenegro 2013), exhibitions at the Hybrida Contemporanea Gallery of Rome (2014), and those at the Muzeul de Istorie Nationala si Arheologie of Constanta (Romania) and at the City Art Gallery, Varna (Bulgaria) in the same year [3]. Up to the exhibit “European Cuteness Art” this year at the Constantin Brancusi Exhibition Hall in the Palace of Parliament of Bucharest, with the presence of artists from the Art Yourself, and at the Italian Culture Institute of Bucharest,  the four exhibitions held in the Core Gallery (2015-2016) and the exhibition “Popism” at Taormina (Italy). In particular, the itinerant exhibition “European Cuteness Art”, will have a second stage in September at the National Museum of Contemporary Art – Arsenal of Sofia, and comes as the summary task of the working spirit that animates the Core Gallery. Finally, the gallery makes use of structural cooperation with Lantana Publisher of Rome, through which it intends to give voice to the aesthetic line even beyond, or rather in relation to the exhibition format: therefore, not only the production of books and catalogs on the topic, but also of experimental works that subvert the usual relationship between the visual documentation and the critical and between visual artists and critical writers. For example, the book Bestiarium, published by Lantana, catalog of the exhibition at the Museum of Zoology (Rome) was conceived by one of the artists of the gallery, Omino71, and welcomed a Giancarlo Carpi text in reversed roles (author) focusing on the theme of the mash-up.

Giancarlo Carpi and Raffaele Soligo

[1] As “Massart”, Centro Culturale Elsa Morante, 2014, curated by Raffaele Soligo and Mauro Tropeano.

[2] “Le trasformazioni del cute 1890-1990” – “The transformation of cuteness 1890-1990” (Sapienza University of Rome) an historical path from the XIX century root of Kindchenschema to contemporary art.

[3] Gabriels and the italian cute nymphet (catalogue Mazzotta, Milano), curated by Giancarlo Carpi, and the others (“From futurism to the contemporary”, 2013, “Gabriels/Morimura” 2014, “Under the Cuteness” 2014 at Hybrida – Contaminazioni 014, 2014, “Pseudo 1” and “Pseudo 2”, and “Katja Tukiainen Luna Park Abbandonato” at Core Gallery – curated or co-curated by Giancarlo Carpi with the organization of Raffaele Soligo. Montenegro, Constanta and Taormina with catalogues published by Lantana, Rome. In all this exhibition – except personal show – there was the cooperation of two artist Gabriels and Elio Varuna, and in most of the others: Katja Tukiainen, Lucio Fabale, Esteban Villalta Marzi, Cristiano Petrucci, Stefano Bolcato, Omino71.