LdM Gallery is very pleased to present Romance, an exhibition project by Giovanni Longo proposed for the gallery, which represents the artist’s recent research, curated by Spela Zidar. The word Romance is described as the feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness. It presumes a relationship, or rather, a very personal expectation of a relationship. Starting from the assumptions of Gestalt psychology, the artist recounts different conditions of proximity between forms which also become a pretext to address the dynamics of connections between living beings.

Giovanni Longo’s artistic narration consists in carefully choosing the expressive language that will then be used in the creation and condition of the message conveyed by the work. His work begins with the recovery of the wooden materials found in the riverbeds or on the beach and prefers his native Calabria region as a collection place. By thus accumulating and archiving forms, data, and information, the artist creates skeletal structures or anatomical reminiscences with which he narrates stories related to memory, history and identity.

For the Artist, this narration is not the chronological description of the events that follow one another, but a meticulous and patient organization of the pieces that compose them. It is the selection and layering of these elements that write a new story every time, and it is the relationship between them that makes the story realistic. It’s as if the memory was imprinted in the bodies/objects, sedimented within them and could only be perceived by observing and analyzing these traces and the relationships between them.

In some works on display, relationship is imagined and sought even if it is difficult or sometimes impossible to achieve. As in the artwork Romance (osteoderms) in which two cylindrical identities, armored with osteoderms, seek a precarious balance by leaning on each other on the only point in which a non-painful contact between them is possible. The work Beside (carpals) has two rods that are too short to reach the ceiling from the floor and therefore need to be supported by the wooden carpals that sustain them but at the same time make them coexist in a perpetual balance.

The work These are not my Legs (goat) investigates more dramatic relationships, which get under ones skin, affecting the bones, changing the physical and mental balance, leaving us fragile, passive spectators in need of support. The goat on stilts remains motionless, leaning against the wall as if it had to redeem itself for having tried to take longer steps and now tired and forgotten it is looking at the world from a perspective that is not its own.

The installations are linked together by the drawings that represent traces that compose and decompose the forms. They illustrate how a relationship upsets or even destroys the balance and its ability to then readjusts and resembles itself, even if it sometimes implies the changing of the essence of the subjects involved.

Romance / Giovanni Longo
curated by Spela Zidar

LdM Gallery
Via de’ Pucci 4, Florence

Vernissage Thursday, October 19th from 5pm to 7pm
Opening from Oct 19th to Nov 10th (Mon 10am – 2pm, Tue – Fri 4-7pm)
Info ldmgallery@lorenzodemedici.it, http://www.ldminstitute.com