Giorgio Andreotta Calò Prima che sia notte

After completing his diploma in 2004 with a thesis on Gordon Matta-Clark, Giorgio Andreotta Calò attended the KHB Kunsthochschule in Berlin and the sculpture program at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice in 2005. He was the assistant of Ilya Kabakov between 2001 and 2007, and a student of Marjetica Potrč in the Ratti Foundation‘s Graduate Course in Visual Arts. He debuted in 2003 with a series of works that used salvaged materials, abandoned buildings and objects that had been exposed to the weather. The artist uses these elements to produce works that straddle the line between performative action and architectural intervention. Andreotta Calò’s environmental sculptures are almost never completed works, but rather the result of a process that the artist associates with the physical nature of the material. This feature, characteristic of all of his work, is also present in "Prima che sia notte". This work, which won the Premio MAXXI 2012, comprised a camera obscura, set up in the museum’s complex architectural structure and containing a pinhole projection and a pool of water on the floor, and a black and white photograph printed on eight sheets of large-scale photographic paper. The photograph depicts the cityscape surrounding the museum. Through the appropriation of fragments of the landscape and its history, Andreotta Calò created a kaleidoscopic vision of reality. The title "Prima che sia notte" ("Before night falls") refers to the fact that the pinhole projection can only be seen during the day, in natural light.

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M. Ambrožic, M. Pasi, #5 Scolpire il tempo, exhibition leaflet (Rotterdam, Wilfred Lentz), Rotterdam 2010. B. Curiger, G. Carmine (eds.), ILLUMInations, exhibition catalogue (Venice, 54th International Art Exhibition), Venice 2012. M. Ambrožic, C. Italiano (eds.), Prima che sia notte. Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Berlin 2014. G. Andreotta Calò et al., Genoa – Ventimiglia – Genoa, Milan 2014. Sunset Boulevard. Giorgio Andreotta Calò, exhibition catalogue (Los Angeles, Depart Foundation), Rome 2016.

Foto Simone Settimo, particolare

Premio MAXXI 2012

Installation