A knife on the moon

Artist: Dario Guccio
2020.03.18 – 2020.05.01

Editorial Contacts:

Jiannan Hu

+86 185 1062 2663

hujiannan@kwmartcenter.com

KWM artcenter is pleased to announce a collaboration with Italian Milan based artist Dario Guccio entitled ‘A knife on the moon’ (Milan-Beijing 2020).

Dario was scheduled to make an exhibition at KWM artcenter between March 12th and May 1st 2020, however due to Covid-19, we have had to postpone it until a later date. Presently, by a twist of fate, Dario finds himself in quarantine in the capital of Lombardy, Milan.

Dario has agreed to curate a new project under self isolation in his hometown. As the host artist, he will invite various Milan-based artists to collaborate with him on works and send to Beijing from their quarantine spaces. They will be presented weekly across all the KWM artcenter digital platforms.

Each component of the exhibition is called a “Chapter”. It will be like a book that records the Covid-19, continuing the tradition of Italian storytelling during periods of the plague most famously demonstrated in The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), which is a combination of text and visual images. Chapter 1 is a collaboration with Italian artist Alessandro Carano (b. 1984).

Alessandro wrote the text for chapter 1, while Dario juxtaposed his own photographs with screenshots of the famous Japanese doomsday animation “Neon Genesis Evangelion” (1995). These animated screenshots are from the “Neon Genesis Evangelion” episode 25: “Do you love me?”, which reflects human beings searching for the meaning of survival and human loneliness after disaster. The photographs are constructed in an absorbing way by the artist from his collection of miniature plastic sculptures.

 

Chapter 1

A world of your own that you have no control over.
You mean a world where everything is decided for me, right?!
No, it’s not.
It’s a world where you make the decisions. It is a world where your heart decides how things will be.
THAT IS REALITY the will to go on living. A heart that wanted to die.
Those are things that you yourself wished for. This darkness and this strange world…
You’re saying that I wished for this?
That’s right. You wished for a closed-off world that’s comfortable for you and only you. To protect your fragile heart. To protect your pleasure.
This is just the natural outcome. People can’t live in a closed-off realm. In a world all their own.
But you wished for the world, for the world around you, to be closed off. Driving away everything you dislike, you wished for a lonely world.
Your own heart did this. It culminated in this tiny world of peace of mind for you alone.
The shape it’s taken here is one possible ending.
This is the end of the world that you yourself brought about.

Text by Alessandro Carano

 

Chapter 2

“That’s what’s scary about conspiracy. They seduce you with those kind of nice words… And when they have made you a prisoner of the fantasy of love… What they do is smash that fantasy to bits. The psychological damage you suffer will probably be immeasurable. You’ll be unable to trust… any woman…any human being at all… And you’ll become incapable of ever going out again. You’ll have to… Lockdown yourself at home forever. Lockdown at home forever. Lockdown at home forever! Lockdown at home forever!”

Text by Alessandro Carano

 

Chapter 3

The selection has been chosen by Daniele Milvio (1988, lives and works in Milan).

“He was strictly forbidden to go out in the street. But when he looked through the doorway, and saw the churchyard gate, he heard the children playing there. He had no longing to be with them, for he feared children; looking down the street, he saw the Clara lake and the drawbridges. That looked novel and mysterious, but he feared the water. On quiet winter evenings he head heard cries for help from drowning people. These, indeed, were often heard. As they were sitting by the lamp in the nursery, one of the servant-maids would say, “Hush!” and all would listen while long, continuous cries would be heard… “Now someone is drowning,” one of the girls said. They listened till all was still, and then told stories of others who had been drowned.”

Excerpted from “The Son of a Servant” by August Strindberg

 

Chapter 4

I look down from my window
To the island where I’m held
Listen while you’re sleeping
Darkness is itself
Tomorrow I am disappearing
’Cause the trees are amplified
Never ending broadcasts
To which I do not despite.
Kid the mausoleum’s fallen
And the perfect avenues
Will seem empty without you
And the pink light that bathes the great leaders
Is fading
By the time your sun is rising there
Out here it’s turning blue
The silver rockets coming
And the cherry trees of Pyongyang
But I’m leaving…
Text by Alessandro Carano

 

Chapter 5

The selection has been chosen by Dario Guccio (1988, lives and works in Milan). 
”Even if you defeat Sin with the Final Summoning, Yu Yevon will live.”
”Yu Yevon will join with the Final Aeon.”
“He will transform it into a new Sin.”
”Yu Yevon merges with the aeon…”
“Then, protected by this new Sin he has created, Yu Yevon continues the summoning.”
“For eternity… huh?”
“But you know, there is no such thing as eternity if you end it, is there?”
”Uh-huh.”
”Yu Yevon lives inside Sin.”
”Yuna, listen.”
”When you fight Yu Yevon, we will help you.”
”Promise me you’ll summon us.”
”I’m afraid your swords and magic won’t be enough.”
”Please, call us.”
”Promise?”
”Yes.”
”But, you know…”
”When it is all over…”
”We will wake, and our dream will end.”
”Our dream will vanish.”
”Yeah.”
”You’ve been dreaming a long time, haven’t you?”
“I’m sorry.”
”I’m grateful.”
Excerpted from Video Game “Final Fantasy X” (2001)

 

Chapter 6

The selection has been chosen by Giangiacomo Rossetti (lives and works in NY,1989, Instagram: @_ggr_89_ ). He chose an extract from a critical essay about Mancini, a painter of early 900, he was fundamental for Giangiacomo artistic path and research.

Mancini had moved to Rome about a decade earlier, and though he rarely painted street urchins again, his commissioned portraits of adults retained the same slightly worried vulnerability and the disheveled settings. In Rome he perfected his eccentric graticola, or grille, painting technique, which left crisscrossing or parallel striations in the impastos of many of his later paintings.

These striations are especially apparent in his full-length portrait of Signora Pantaleoni from 1894, which shows a gentle but efficient-looking matron standing in front of an improvised drape of gold that partly obscures some tall household plants. The striations across her black gown might be more at home in one of Frank Stella’s earliest Black Paintings.

The graticola process involved identical arrangements of thread strung on identical frames that were then placed side by side: one frame in front of the sitter, the other on the canvas. The Irish dramatist Augusta Gregory, who sat for Mancini in Dublin in 1907, described the way the artist would fix his gaze on some part of her face, back up as much as possible and then advance toward her, gathering speed, his paintbrush outstretched like a sword.

“I needed courage to sit still,” she wrote. “But the hand holding the brush always swerved at the last moment to the canvas, and there in its appropriate place, between its threads, the paint would be laid on, and the retreat would begin.” During most of this process Mancini would probably be talking to himself, cursing his name if things were going badly.

 

Chapter 7

The selection has been written by Marco Laudadio, (lives and works in Milan, 1987), he has a graffiti writer background and created a recipe for us by using a font made by him.

“Wash the lettuce well and cut it into uniform pieces, peel the beets and cut into uniform cubes, cut feta of the same shape and size dimension, add the ingredients and salt, pepper, lemon, and oil to taste. Have a nice meal, Marco!”

 

Chapter 8

In a 1928 film by King Vidor, “The crowd”, a man named John Sims believes to be destined to do great things.

Once in New York, he realizes to be just one of the millions of dreamers who crowd the city, and he’s overwhelmed by a sense of loss.

“Poor fool! I bet his father thought he would become the President of the United States! ” Mary says, pointing to a poor clown forced to entertain passersby.

At the end, John renounces his individuality to sacrifice himself to the crowd as if it were a superior entity, described as “An endless column surging forward over roads that were never retraced”.

The video works shown in this chapter are created by artist Marcelo Mosca. The video alternates images of high and popular culture, from the paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Alfred Kubin and James Ensor to the comics of Jacovitti, Magnus, Basil Wolvertone and Martin Handford, from auteur cinema to old Disney cartoons.

The images were chosen by Alessandro Carano.

 

About the Artist

Dario Guccio (b.1988), currently lives and works in Milan. His solo exhibitions include Dario Guccio, KWM artcenter, Beijing, 2020 (forthcoming); Dry clean Calendar, Mine Project, Hong Kong, 2019; Urnas plebeyas, túmulos reales, Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan, 2018; 1-0-2, Eugenio Barbieri presented by Dario Guccio and Davide Stucchi, Armada, Milan, 2017; Referendum sull’aeroplano, feat. Andrea Cleopatria, Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan, 2016; Dario Guccio, Room East, New York, 2016; Hammer, Chewing Gum, Evasion, Destruction, Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan, 2015; ReMap4, Athens, 2013; Thingies, curated by Michele d’ Aurizio, Gasconade, Milan, 2013; His group exhibitions include: Summer Show, Castiglioni Fine Arts, Milan, 2019; I got the Moon in the Morning and the Sun at Night, WallRiss, Fribourg, 2019; Ehi, voi!, XVI Quadriennale d’Arte, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma, 2016; The Crack Up, Room East, New York, 2015,etc.

Alessandro Carano (b. 1984) lives and works in Milan. His exhibitions include “Poltrone d’Europa” at Castiglioni, Milan (2018); “Donkey man” at Mendes Wood DM Sao Paulo (2017); “It might include or avoid feelings” at Hyphen projects, Milan, curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini (2019).

Daniele Milvio, born in 1998. Lives and works between Milan and Ansedonia. His solo exhibition includes: Brache,Supportico Lopez, Berlin (2017); Weiss/Falk, Basel (2016); Cacafoco, Federico Vavassori, Milan (2015); Schifanoia, Hester, New York (2015); Digos Boia, Hadrian, Rome (2014). His group exhibition includes Carpet for a lord, Supportico Lopez, Berlin (2016); Mycorial Theatre, curated by Paolina Olowska & Milovan Farronnato, Pivo, Sao Paolo (2016); Full-Fall, organized by Davide Stucchi and Mattia Ruffolo, Milan (2015).

Emanuele Marcuccio (b.1987)
Lives and works in Milan
His exhibitions include La velocità delle immagini, Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Rome (2016); Life is a bed of roses, Fondationd’Enterprise Ricard, Paris (2016); Puesta en Escena, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (2016); I bought a hyacinth flower with lots of leaves, just to make me feel like spring, Karma International, Zurich (2015)

As a self-taught Graphic illustrator from Milan, Emiliano Fadda has worked for 8 years as a graphic designer and illustrator for various agencies. In 2014 he went to Paris where he started to create self-produced editorial projects. Today back in Milan he collaborates with magazine independent and non-independent, he is the author of children’s books(The Giant arrives in Paris, 2018), and in March 2019 he co-founded the magazine of comics and art Frankenstein Magazine.

Giangiacomo Rossetti was born in Milan in 1989. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and in 2019 graduated from Die Institut Kunst FHNW in Basel. His solo exhibitions include DEEPSTARIA ENIGMATICA, Riverside, Bern (2018), KRIS, Federico Vavassori, Milan (2017) and Bellarmina, Warm, São Paulo (2016). His work has been featured in several group exhibitions such as Techniques of the Observer at Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (2019); Nightfall at Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2018); Tra l’inquietudine e il Martello at Federico Vavassori, Milan (2018). Rossetti’s recent projects include I got the Moon in the Morning and the Sun at Night at WallRiss, Fribourg (2019) as well as the exhibition Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato at Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2019).

 

KWM artcenter

The KWM artcenter opened on 20th October 2016. It is located on the second floor of the WFC centre CBD in Beijing. The art center is supported by the law firm King & Wood Mallesons. The KWM artcenter presents and promotes artists both domestically and overseas as well as building up its own collection. In particular, it acts as a rare art institution at the heart of the economic central area in Beijing. It provides high-quality art educational activities and courses aimed to cultivate art lovers and collectors. It serves to improve the international influence of Chinese Art and become a powerful communicator of Chinese Contemporary Art.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

影像作品由艺术家马塞洛·莫斯卡(Marcello Mosca)创作

The video works shown in this chapter are created by artist Marcelo Mosca

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