BOOTH 1D

Contacts:

Federica Forti | federica@database-carrara.com ; +39 347 0955010

Eleonora Lombardi | eleonora@database-carrara.com ; +39 349 7252647

MIA&D Photography and Design Fair inaugurates its opening to the Eastern market with its first edition in Singapore, to which DATABASE will participate in partnership with Carrara’s Duomo Gallery. 

The booth will display a curatorial project by Federica Forti, conceived as the presentation of the city of Carrara through a series of photographs by selected artists.

The marble sculptures of Silvio Santini – one of the artists represented by Galleria Duomo – come face to face with a selection of photographic pieces specifically designed by an array of artists invited to Carrara by DATABASE during the 2010 – 2014 period. Santiago Morilla, Robert Pettena, Stefano Canto, Nadja Frank and Juan Pablo Macías are the artists chosen from the DATABASE collection, whose works will be showcased as an example of the work carried out by the Ars Gratia Artis cultural association (which also manages DATABASE) in support of contemporary art and of the promotion of local heritage.

Silvio Santini’s sculptures are inspired by natural elements, to which the artist applies his know-how in artisanal marble-working, which Carrara is known for across the world. Galleria Duomo supports and promotes manual marble-sculpting, which by nature is unique and cannot be mass-produced. In this sense, the works of this artist have been chosen both as a symbol of the gallery’s mission, and for their connection to other selected pieces, which are linked by the shared subject matter of the relationship between man and nature.

The photographs of Santiago Morilla were produced during a 2013 performance designed by the artist within the setting of the marble quarries of Colonnata: silhouettes of free-falling bodies projected against the white backdrop of the quarries, and part of the larger project Index Falls, devoted to the iconography of contemporary symbols of power in relation to financial oligarchy. The exhibition features two photographs and a video.

 

The exhibition will also include two photographs designed specifically for the fair by Robert Pettena in 2014: as counterparts to each other, the photographs depict the opposition between male conflict and female embrace, both partially camouflaged by the natural environment of the surrounding quarry. The natural fissure in the marble mountainside undergoing processing marks a fracture between camouflage and reality, playing upon the cross-reference between natural mountains and those seized by man.

Stefano Canto’s project, which was displayed at the Marble Museum of Carrara in 2012 within the group show “The Stones are My Ideas of Imagination”–  curated by Mike Watson – features videos and photographs selected from the archives of Istituto Luce. The subject they describe is the extraction of the largest marble slab ever quarried: the monolith from which Mussolini’s Obelisk was carved, to be placed in the Foro Italico in 1932. Two photographs and one video from this project will be showcased. 

The photographic projects and editorial project (Tiempo Muerto) and the video by Juan Pablo Macías which will be displayed were produced during his residency in Carrara in 2013. Setting off from the Campocecina (Apuan Alps) mountain refuge, the artist sought out the ideal location to develop a site-specific project tackling the relationship between man and nature from the perspective of Anarchist ideology.

The final artist, Nadja Frank, intervened in a Colonnata quarry in 2010 with a pictorial project meant to camouflage the quarried mountainside as a way to conceal man’s exploitation, as well as an attempt to transform and re-map the quasi-sculpture that the quarried mountain in itself represents.

 

 

MIA Art Fair

MIA – Milan Image Art Fair, is an international photography fair born in Milan in 2011 under the aegis of Fabio Castelli. In just a few years this yearly event has grown, attracting up to 20.000 visitors during the spring 2014 edition. This autumn 2014, the fair will broaden its international horizons even further, moving from its quarters at Superstudio+, in via Tortona, Milan, to the famous Marina Bay Sands skyscrapers of Singapore. From October 24^th to the 26^th, the event will spread out across the 3.500 square metre exhibition space of the Marina Bay Sands, a resort complex made up of three skyscrapers surmounted by a Skypark, and will coincide with the 4^th International Photography Festival of Singapore, which attracts collectors and experts in the field to the new world capital of finance.

Rather than just of a fair, this event should be considered as a platform including curatorial sections – such as the proposed MIA section and the Mekong section that will feature artists from the Far East – alongside art galleries, artists, promoters and collectors. The entire event will coincide with the International Photography Festival of Singapore (SIPF), therefore further enhancing the level of intersection between cultural and economic offerings.

The fair is promoted by the Italian Embassy and the Institute of Italian Culture of Singapore.