Karina Bisch
Chiaro di luna

opening december 2,  6.30 pm 

Emmanuelle Lainé  /  Merlin James
curated by Luca Francesconi
may 25 - september 19, 2009

The concept of the exhibition is the idea of heat transmission. Heat being a human power, and as energy.  Heat as an object, and heat being a place.

Double Hunchback is an imaginary character, embodying the metaphor for all those forced to an uncomfortable and dysfunctional life. This hunchback is twice an hunchback. This feature can be taken in two ways, one that overemphasizes the character itself, transforming him into something baroque and carnivalesque. The other, like a mirror, the two humps making him a fictional character. A character which does not exist, that nullifies itself.

Something gloomy and anti modern, and for these reasons, extremely up-to-date. In a moment in history where all certainties fail, facing an economic crisis essentially different from all previous ones: supply no longer meets demand.
Double Hunchback is an attempt to create a character – a future character - to describe, through the work of artists from different generations, the situation that has arisen in the Western society - the lack of sustainability and the powerlessness.

The existential dimension that derives from this situation is difficult and uncertain, the exact opposite of what was going on in the 50s and the 60s that the italian writer Luciano Bianciardi, in his famous novel “La vita agra”, set in the economic boom Milan, defined “progress alibi”. This exhibition ambitiously aims to talk about “recession alibi”.

Merlin James’ research follows two fundamental guidelines; the first is linked to the materials used. In his works -  raw canvas, either sewed up or broken – the surface is part of the message and  the feeling of incompleteness that the artist wants to communicate. The second, is the humble and often rural settings; ancestral seaside landscapes are “built” from the color and the gathering organized by the observer’s eye inside the painting, just as the divisionism and De Pisis system between the late 1800 and 1930. James’ chromatic scale is obtained using raw materials, haunting basic and primordial substances.

Leather and skin are materials connected with a rural imaginary, very sensitive to heat. Working with skin, sewing it, cutting it, they are strong acts. The material is something that once was living, and, someway, keeps potentially these reaction properties, the vital spirit of the animal. Leather is an harsh and tough material, but it becomes gentle if in contact with a source of heat, it turns soft and tensile.
Emmanuelle Lainé works with different types of leather, creating sculptures in which the leather is just a medium. The material is for her an aesthetic meaning, a tool for surfacing things. She uses the alcantara, a very smooth skin resembling velvet, or raw leather, as the one used for baseball gloves. In her work, you can always see a resemblance to something already known, but not likely to let the observer focus on something in particular. It looks like this link stays in a subconscious status and it stops there just a moment before being recognized.