Luigi Ontani RivoltArteAltrove

09 october 2011 - 15 january 2012

curated by Andrea Bellini

As part of the Le scatole viventi / The Living Boxes project, the Castello di Rivoli is pleased to present a one-man exhibition by Luigi Ontani: RivoltArteAltrove.

Eclectic and inventive, a pioneer of performance and video art, Luigi Ontani (Grizzana Morandi – Bologna, 24 November 1943) has explored a number of expressive media and numerous themes, from cultured quotations to popular culture. Through the appropriation of a vast repertoire of symbols and visual signs, and resorting to the world of childhood and a playful, free-ranging imagination, Ontani builds a veritable universe of his own of which he is himself the author and actor. The exhibition is formed of a broad range of works that reveal and reconstruct the Italian artist’s entire creative process: from the historic series of photos with applied watercolour, realised in India in the 1970s, which includes his Acquaiolo (Water-bearer) and Davide e Golia (David and Goliath), both of 1976, and his more recent lenticular light-boxes, such as Nara Garuda Singh, 2002.

The selection also includes some of the ceramic herms, a number of colour photographs, including Pinocchio and Dante of 1973, which look forward to the theme of cultured re-reading and transvestism, the wooden masks made in Bali, and Millearti (1985), a historic work of papier-mâché. The exhibition will also display some watercolours, photographs called Grottesche, and some new works inspired by the city of Turin, made especially for this occasion.

The exhibition, which has been planned with the artist himself, will in spring be hosted at the Kunsthalle in Berne.