26 Sep 2012

Fabrizio Giannini at i2a international institute of architecture, Vico Morcote

After the inauguration of the suggestive installation by the architect, urban planner and landscape architect Frédéric Bonnet set in the garden and interior spaces (on show until spring 2013), i2a istituto internazionale di architettura in Vico Morcote will present Wednesday 26 September 2012 at 7 pm a new installation entitled 'Let's call the whole thing off' curated by the artist Fabrizio Giannini who will be taking possession of the exhibition gallery. Giannini's work is the 14th event of the 'positions in space' series – the cycle entrusted alternately to architects and artists.

Today's world lives to the fullest the sense of progress thanks to the new technologies of consumer electronics. However, this might be occurring for the first time in an environment imbued in a crisis atmosphere. Fabrizio Giannini reflects on ambiguity and meaning of images that surround us, bringing the spectator to discover news aspects of these, at times mysterious or slightly worrying.
The installation's title is a direct quotation of a song written by Gershwin, notoriously performed by Louis Armstrong. The title's literal meaning is complemented by the clear reference in 'to call off' to the way things are named. The song's lyrics are a play on the pronunciations (English 'potato' vs American 'potato'): people with different accents (like the Greek one and the Italian one) have in common the need to eat and to overcome the crisis.
Giannini uses therefore a simple, yet useful in crisis conditions, vegetable like the potato. Its sprouts are a sign of the living beings' capacity to reproduce themselves and transmit their own genome; they are also 'objects' of great aesthetic power, to the extent of seeming synthetic and unnatural.

On the occasion of the vernissage, Riccardo Lisi, curator and contemporary art critic, but also director of the rada – contemporary art space in Locarno, will be presenting Giannini's installation.
This will be followed by a conference in English and projections by Andreas Angelidakis, utopian architect, artist and designer, based in Athens, who will be concentrating on the relationships between real and virtual, art and architecture, ruin and construction.

The inauguration of the installation 'Let's call the whole thing off' curated by the artist Fabrizio Giannini, the presentation by Riccardo Lisi and the conference by Andreas Angelidakis will be held Wednesday 26 September 2012 from 7 pm onwards at i2a istituto internazionale di architettura (Portich da Sura 18, Vico Morcote, Switzerland).
Their will be complementary drinks.
At the end of the event, those who wish can meet our guests during a standing dinner (CHF 30.- per person all included, reservations until Monday 24 September by telephone at: 0041 91 996 13 87 or via e-mail: events@i2a.ch).

The installation can be visited daily in i2a's ground floor gallery (Monday to Sunday from 10 am to 8 pm, free admittance) until the finissage scheduled Wednesday 24 October 2012 at 8.30 pm during which Laura Solari and Stéphane Robert of Edizioni Dasein (Paris/Lugano) will hold a conference.

The events will be broadcast via live streaming on www.i2a.ch.

With the support of the SWISSLOS Fund of the Repubblica e Cantone Ticino.


Fabrizio Giannini
Class of 1964, Giannini studied in London and Paris. He has taken part in many exhibitions since the 90s', between Neuchâtel and Geneva, Milan and Turin, Paris and London, Uppsala and Tampere (Finland) and South Korea. His exhibitions include 'Young, Neue Fotografie in der Schweizer Kunst' at the Fotomuseum Winterthur (1999); 'Backlight02. 6th International Photographic Triennial' held at the Photographic Centre Nykyaika (Tampere, 2002); 'In diesen Zeiten. Incontro con la giovane scena artistica svizzera' at PasquArt (Biel, 2003); 'Julia Kaelin and Fabrizio Giannini' at the AP4-ART gallery (Geneva, 2005); 'Che c'è di nuovo?' at the Museo Cantonale d'Arte (Lugano, 2006) and, again in the Museo Cantonale, 'Sguardi sulla collezione. Ricerche artistiche in Ticino dal 1970 ad oggi' (2008), and his personal exhibition 'Live without dead time' (2010) presented in the Museo's eastern wing.
In 2001, Giannini won the federal fine arts prize.
He currently lives and works in Lugano.

Riccardo Lisi
Curator and contemporary art critic, from 2001 to 2007, he coordinated the cultural events of the la fabbrica centre in Losone (Canton Ticino), organising around sixty exhibitions and offering space to emerging Swiss, Italian and other artists, but also to world famous names like Enzo Cucchi, Mario Giacomelli and Miltos Manetas.
He then became assistant and executive producer to Vanessa Beecroft, Marco Poloni, Chiara Dynys, Al Fadhil, managing the organisation of performances and the filming of videoart.
Since 2012, he is the director of the rada in Locarno and will also be curating the artistic events at the palazzo Lomocubes in Lugano. He is, in addition, resident curator at the Quattrocentometriquadri gallery in Ancona, where he staged the season of encounters on Gino De Dominicis 'Il peso dell'assenza', but also exhibitions of young contemporary art.

Andreas Angelidakis
Architect of Greek and Norwegian origin, he studied initially at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (Sci-ARC) in Los Angeles and then at Columbia University in New York.
Angelidakis moves at the intersection between the 'systems' of art and architecture, of virtual and real, nature and artifice, ruin and construction. He is also dedicated to design, interactive communication, video, writing, teaching and exhibition projects (Athens Biennale; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León; Färgfabriken, Centre for art and architecture, Stockholm).
Angelidakis has been invited to exhibit at the current architecture Biennale in Venice, in the Greek pavilion, with other Greek architects and artists, to challenge Athens's urban and social structure. His work in Venice is organised in a series of installations, collages, prints and videos.

'positions in space'
This is a series of events created and curated by Ludovica Molo, director of i2a, with the assistance of Debora Bonanomi, for which architects or artists are invited to create an installation and, in turn, invite one or more relevant figures of their creative process. The goal is to trigger the public debate on architecture and art.

i2a: la casa dell'architettura (the house of architecture)
i2a istituto internazionale di architettura of Vico Morcote is a cultural centre that promotes conferences, exhibitions, installations and didactic activities (including for children). It has taken on the task of increasing the knowledge of architecture's instrumental role in the observation and comprehension of contemporary phenomena, in a spirit of openness and dialogue, as suits a true house of architecture.