Art forgery as
a class weapon?
water-based paint, linen canvas, wooden frame, coffee, dust, tea, paper, ink, rust accelerator, mordant, baking soda, staples
2024
The work consists of two canvases by Emilio Vedova, from the De America series from 77', made with the help of an art forger who, in order to have a stable income, has been forging artworks for merchants and galleries for years, alongside his artistic practice. The encounter with this person has highlighted the subtle and ambiguous area of coincidence between the figure of the artist and that of the forger: the same technical skills and inventiveness that usually contribute to the production of an original work can also be used in the production of a fake: from the emulation of the pictorial style to the reproduction of the signature, up to the ingenious ageing of the paint.
The idea of creating two fake, identical paintings, by Emilio Vedova was born from the assignment, between 2023 and 2024, of a studio at Palazzo Carminati, the same one in which the Venetian painter worked during the 1960s. Vedova's painting has been welcomed from the beginning as a form of political and aesthetic resistance to the alienation of the industrial world, contrasting it with the artist’s authentic, expressive and unrepeatable gesture. Creating two fake Vedovas, identical to each other, instead raises the suspicion that painting has not been spared from the commodification imposed by the market and that its saving promise has, in the end, been absorbed into serial production.
The title “Art forgery as a class weapon?”, taken from the sensational title of an unrelated Youtube video, opens up the possibility of thinking about the forgery of works of art as a tool of class struggle with which established, emerging or unknown artists can take revenge against an oppressive and elitist system by undermining the market that supports it.
Diptych
Real time video
monitor
2023
The two screens show real-time footage from a camera positioned outside the building, in conjunction with a window closed during the exhibition period. Spectators only see a cable leading from the work and exiting the building, suggesting that the images they are looking at come from the outside. The tip of the recorded tree goes beyond the frame of the small monitor, extending the shot towards the large main screen. The expansion of the image beyond its borders, driven by the tension inherent between on-screen and off-screen, does not add any effective content. There is no further vision awaiting the viewer, but a monochrome plane in which swallows and clouds can occasionally be glimpsed.
if we were to die
Video CGI
5’ 42”
2023
The video is projected inside a van parked at the entrance to Villa Sucota. The central compartment of the vehicle hosts the projection while the seats, placed on the ground infront of the screen, act as seats for the spectators.
Perspective study
nylon cable
variable dimensions
2023
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“Since the Renaissance, every artist should make at least one study of perspective.”
- Mark Manders, 2013
If the city is the space cut out from the perspective grid and built along its lines,
the forest remains a place impenetrable to the laws of perspective, organized and articulated according to its own rules and methods. In Perspective study these two dimensions are short-circuited and made to coexist one inside the other.
The thin white lines, which appear dashed or intermittent, trace virtual lines of flight
that abruptly dissect the natural space with the claim of ordering it geometrically; at the
same time trees, leaves and bushes continually betray this organization by introducing discontinuities, curves and out of place elements that seem to totally ignore the possibility of orderly arranging itself according to a unique vanishing point.
I saw
A4 100gr paper sheets
variable dimensions
2023
In the way the list is displayed, no distinction is made between works seen live, printed reproductions and images seen online, underlining the general ambiguity within which artworks are experienced in an increasingly mediatized culture in which images precede reality.
How many works of art have I actively chosen to see? Will it be possible for the public to find in this list the artworks that inspired me in the creation of my next works?
Camera
real time video,
surveillance camera
monitor 27”
variable dimensions
2023 - ongoing
Anyone who visits the studio, in order to enter, will have to sign a privacy policy, agreeing to be filmed for the duration of their stay. All things said and done within the studio will be public and potentially audible to anyone.
1:1
digital print on blueback paper
680 x 400 cm
2023
The work consists of a detailed scan of the floor of a famous contemporary art gallery.The scan, which included dust, stains and fallen hair, was then printed at 1:1 scale and gluedonto the floor of the exhibition space, completely covering it.
Will the gray floor of a famous gallery make the works displayed above it better?
dataset
video
45’ 35”
screen 6”
variable dimensions
2023
How to manage the proliferation of images and the bulimic culture that feeds on them? When does the quantity and speed of content to which we are exposed exceed our perceptive and cognitive abilities? How do the thousands of works suggested to us by algorithms influence us?
CCTV
sculpture
real time video,
monitor 6”
variable dimensions
2023
Without coordinates of any kind, the viewer is required to take a leap of faith to believe that what is shown to him, in real time, through a screen, is true. The sculpture exists only in relation to the image that the video camera produces, continuously, 24 hours a day, for the entire duration of the exhibition. At the end of the stream, the sculpture consequently ceases to exist.
Faciality
Machine(test )
Computer Generated Video
Face recognition system
2022
The video presents a slow transition between hundreds of faces generated by an artificial intelligence trained on 70,000 images of real faces; at the same time, a facial recognition system modulates the video playback speed, slowing to almost a still frame when the viewer is present, leaving him/her in front of one of the infinite faces that could be generated. On one hand, each real face recognized makes the images produced more and more realistic, on the other hand, the accuracy of the recognition system increases.
In this visual loop, the observing system (the viewer) and the observed system (the work) collapse on each other and, only then, the viewer can operate within the image.