Exhibition curated by Vincenzo Estremo, 23.04 – 13.06.2015, Galleria Più, Bologna.
Not in the subject of the picture or in the technique of the painter is the difficulty of the puzzle, but in the wisdom of the cut, and a random cut will necessarily produce an uncertain difficulty, oscillating between an incredibly ease for the edges, the details, the light stains, the well-defined objects, the brush strokes, the transitions, and an annoying difficulty for the rest: the cloudless sky, the sand, the meadows, the cultivated fields, the gray areas. [G. Perec. Life A User’s Manual]
Within the context of narratives of the past, the formation of identity (or identities) represented a control instrument and an object to define and redefine. to Disconfirm highlights the ways to deny and to tell the stories about the plurality of identities. to Disconfirm is an attempt to use visual art for questioning the plural identities buried under the weight of historiographical institutions.
In recent years, the narratives that helped to create what we call “history” have been enriched with a number of short stories. Identity has become something that can be said in time (measuring), an historical object that can be related to a geography (location).
Nowadays visual art has acquired functions and properties of contemporary narratives in order to have at its disposal cultural tools able to produce and to develop an adequate analysis of history and identity. Art rewrites pieces of history and re-questions commonly accepted assumptions related to identity, but above all its function is to deny what has been already taken for granted. When Perec chooses to tell the difficulties of the painter, or rather the artist, in defining the instructions for use puzzle he does it starting from a denial. Within the network of narratives artists look for the possibility to deny (they implement the action to Disconfirm) with their attitude and their perseverance. Here we go back to Perec and to determination with which Bartlebooth chooses to carry on his arbitrary life plan. While apparently useful only to the project itself, his plan makes us understand how artistic research is something unnecessarily indispensable. In its uselessness lies the gift of denial, the gift of fragmentation, which often is the set of practices that enable artists to corrode everything that apparently seems unique and indivisible, as the granite imaginary of history and identity.
To Disconfirm will be an opportunity to shape different researches and to make them coexist: studies on interfaces by César Escudero Andaluz, critical documentary film practices by Matteo Guidi, Giuliana Racco and Amanda Gutiérrez and installative works by Massimo Ricciardo.
