I was there yesterday: Gino D'Ugo's work that addresses passersby triggering doubt

A new stage for the Aurelia→SUD project, curated by artist Gabriele Landi in his studio at Via Aurelia Sud 19 in Arcola (La Spezia), where Gino D’Ugo ’s (Marino, 1968) intervention entitled C’ero anche ieri (I was also yesterday) is on view from April 16 to June 18, 2023. The title is what can be read in theflashing sign, and it is meant to be a temporal dislocation for those passing quickly in their cars, focused on driving but with the possibility of receiving fragmentary input beyond the confines of the roadway.

The work, with its flashing red light, reminiscent of that of a siren, suggests an idea of alarm. This idea, explains Gino D’Ugo, "is alienating from the normal daily cycle of events, it calls attention to something sudden that indicates a breakout, while you have your mind engaged in something else it says ’hey, clear everything, I’m here.’ In the specific case of this project, where the sign is read from the road driving, perhaps by someone who every day repeats that route, but also from the occasional transit so with a quick pass where while you are focused on driving your mind has its flow of thoughts, in your own intimacy it can as much be an invitation to look at something you have not considered before, such as the very place that hosts these site specifics. A reference to the specific place that is highlighted but also an intimate slippage, with oneself, to one’s memory, a sudden recall to a memory, to a flow of events, I was there while I am. I am interested in observing boundaries, limits, also looking for loopholes, opportunities for more open fields, where intimate and outer space meet, shuffling papers recreating connections."

A sign is an instrument clearly intended to express a slogan or indication for commercial purposes-this is what is expected, but according to Gino D’Ugo it is also what can be evaded. “This place,” he explains, “breaks a set of expectations and habits on the part of both the art user and the person passing through. I think art has to trigger doubt, to create a state of poisedness, and in this place it can do that with anyone and unexpectedly, with its anonymous, usual passing structure, which could be as much where it is as anywhere else, I mean, if you don’t expect it, it can be a right and compromising place.”

Gino D’Ugo was born in Marino (Rome) in 1968, has lived and worked between Lerici and the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines since 2014. A graduate in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he has developed an approach to the arts that increasingly slips towards form as a space of interrelation and concept using image, word, space and interpretive relationship with people, with implications in the existential or political, through the gesture of everyday sacredness and with an openness of interpretation to free will. Since 2016 he has been artistic director of the Fourteen ArTellaro contemporary art observatory.

The Aurelia→SUD project is a material place to encounter Contemporary Art and is located at Via Aurelia Sud 19 in the City of Arcola (La Spezia). It is is a light box of the dimensions of 350x 70cm visible to anyone who happens to pass by that place 24 hours a day. The project involves, with the creation of interventions created a doc, a series of artists, each intervention remains visible for 2 months, and by its very nature does not include inauguration or finissage. So far Mario Consiglio, Loredana Longo, Luca Pancrazzi, Serena Fineschi, Iginio De Luca, Luca Quartana, Fausto Gilberti, and Luca Scarabelli have participated. Gino D’Ugo’s is the ninth intervention in a project that began in September 2021.

I was there yesterday: Gino D'Ugo's work that addresses passersby triggering doubt

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