Venice Biennale Preview: Masbedo
Exhibiting at this year's 2009 Venice Biennale in the Italian Pavillion curated by Luca Beatrice and Beatrice Buscaroli are new Italian talents alongside established stars such as Sandro Chia. We take a peek at "humanismo technologico" from young artist Masbedo.
Masbedo are a duo of award winning multimedia artists. Mixing their surnames and their different backgrounds, Nicolò MASazza and Jacopo BEDOgni have surfed the wave of success since 1999. Creating conceptual videos and photography not only galleries, they impose their strong aesthetic, on a variety of genres such as reading, performance, theatre and ballet.
Caravaggio's lights mixed with an expressionism approach, film plots appear as "Bret Easton Ellis reinventing Cesare Pavese" (Italian cult big writer), with each short leaving the viewer as if they’ve had "a punch to the stomach".
Nihilism, questions without answers, and one’s daily obsessions. Under the beauty of their suggestive aesthetic however there's a more "a devastating contamination hidden under its plastic beauty".
In 2006, Masbedo created the video "Il mondo non è un panorama" (translated as the “world is not just a landscape”) presented in Paris Gran Palais, and featuring Juliette Binoche as the stunning protagonist.
Written in conjunction with French writer Michel Houellebecq and based on his "La Possibilité d'une île", it's an harrowing reflection on our current society’s situation - No sadness, no love, no war but also no peace.
The artist’s 2007 solo exhibition at Pack Gallery (Milan) entitled "Una costante perdita di magia" is a neurotic representation of opposites: fragility and resistance, self-control and compulsivity.
Masbedo's favourite subjects are the body and its parts – profiles, muscular tension all of which are treated in a deep empathic way and are clearly analytic.
"L'autopsia del tralala" (2008, Marco Noire Contemporary Art gallery in Turin) consists of photography, video and installations that offer an autopsy on a modern man's desires.
Forthcoming work at at the 2009 Venice Biennal are video-installations made of two different videos projected on huge screens. The sea's abyss of Portovenere against the freezing air of Monte Bianco.
Produced by C.P. Company, the music is from historical Italian rock band Marlene Kuntz and actors are from the theatrical dance scene. As Nicolò Massazza and Jacopo Bedogni say, this new project is a
"philosophical pin-pong match between us, using de-saturated colours to describe the decadence of society".
A new step into the artist’s research, another pleasure for our eyes and mind.
Giuliano Federico
Source & Photo Credit: www.masbedo.org
TAGS: venice biennale masbedo.org beatrice buscaroli sandro chia italian contemporary art art luca beatrice c.p. company marlene kuntz nicolò massazza jacopo bedogni sea's abyss of portovenere monte bianco nicolò masazza jacopo bedogni
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