Loredana Longo: Victory
Francesco Pantaleone Gallery presents to the public the fourth solo show by Loredana Longo (Catania, 1967) entitled, “Victory”, curated by Valentina Bruschi and which is accompanied by a text of the Franco-Moroccan journalist Zineb El Rhazoui.
The artist, which involved all the gallery space into a large site-specific installation that connects all the works in the exhibition, presents a series of new works created especially for the occasion, giving the title to the show. The artwork consists of velvet tapestries on which the artist has intervened directly with burns that – through the subtraction of matter – draw the destruction of landscapes that every day give us the media. The word “Victory”, present in all the tapestries of the series, it is repeated – obsessively – even in a group of marble sculptures.
The works aim to denounce the passivity and acceptance of violence. The artist does not scream but burns. The subjects chosen for the tapestries are images, icons of our recent history: moments of tension, often linked to the explosions, images that represent moments of defeats / victories of the other part of humanity.
One wonders, reading Susan Sontag, what is “the appearance that the war assumes when it is seen from a distance, as an image. The victims, the grieving relatives, news consumers – each one has its own closeness or distance from the war.” And yet, “the era of photography, from the reality always wants more. The actual event can not be quite scary, and so should be strengthened; or reinterpreted in a more convincing manner “. Loredana Longo reworks photographic images from which part for the realization of its tapestries, through its own language, using what she herself has pointed out a few years ago as “aesthetics of destruction.” A definition for her work, which began with “Explosions” series, in which she uses gunpowder to blast into the air objects related to the fetishes of bourgeois family Christmas dinner, the room from the conjugal bed, the wedding banquet. These family life scenarios, however, are “saved” in some way by the artist, which reassembles the pieces, moving from destruction to reconstruction, documented by video and photos. The home environment, the private sector par excellence, becomes universal model of social relations.
Since 2011 the focus of her research moves from family to emergencies of our times, such as the drama of migration in the Mediterranean, which has become one of the recurring themes of her later works. The result is a body of work of complaint- the carpet of “Place / No Place”, with over burned the powerful phrases in the world, with the performance “My Own War” and “You first to arise” – that have a strong inspiration ethics. Works that aim to denounce the passivity and acceptance of violence. The artist does not scream but burns. The subjects chosen for the tapestries are images, icons of our recent history become: moments of tension, often linked to the explosions, but not only, are mainly images that represent moments of defeats / victories of the other part of humanity “.
