Biomega Multiverse, the new site-specific solo exhibition by Cosimo Veneziano

From July 19 to September 15, 2019, Cosimo Veneziano (Moncalieri, 1983), one of Italy’s most promising young artists, is on view at Tenuta Cucco - Chiesa di San Sebastiano in Borgo in Serralunga d’Alba (Cuneo) with his solo exhibition Biomega Multiverso, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa, former director of the Villa Croce Museum in Genoa and current artistic director of Artissima. Biomega Multiverso is a site-specific project organized by Fondazione La Raia - arte cultura territorio as part of the Biomega project: it is an installation composed of silkscreens and embroideries on fabric in dialogue with an unprecedented marble pyralid, a butterfly of the species Ostrinianubilalis whose caterpillar is a devastating pest of corn. One of the goals of the project is to prompt visitors to question how aesthetics and the application of neuroscience studies can influence their consumer choices.

The project combines traditional artistic techniques, such as screen printing and embroidery, with new technologies. It is in fact through the use of theeye tracker, used by neuromarketing laboratories to track automatic and continuous eye movements, that Veneziano leads the viewer to new readings of the visible. The tracking of automatic eye movements, called saccades, is reproduced in this installation through embroideries on fabric. Each embroidery constitutes the mapping of the eye points of people invited by the artist to undergo the test while observing stock photographs. These images(stock photos) are generally used by communication agencies to create advertisements for food products, specifically fruits and vegetables visually perfect for conveying the idea of quality. After stylization work, Veneziano reproduced these images in his screen prints.

“In a condition of globality of the image, photography and its related history are part of a larger visual and perceptual regime in which the production, circulation and distribution of photographs constitute an iconic representation that reveals how knowledge is conveyed by images,” say the artist and the project’s curators. “The focus on technology and neuroscience leads the viewer to investigate the image in its grammar, in an intriguing attempt to understand what lies behind the visible and the representable, through the representation of the invisible.”

The project analyzes the cultural expression of photography by studying its codes. Photography reveals those emotional and biological forms that guide, orient and sometimes influence knowledge. “Above the installation, behind the screen-printed and embroidered fabrics,” says Ilaria Bonacossa, “stands out as a memorandum (and warning) a black marble disk engraved with the butterfly Ostrinianubilalis. Aesthetically perfect, healthy, delicate and harmless, it hides a threat to agriculture: it is the metamorphosis of a caterpillar, a parasite responsible for the destruction of wheat crops and, above all, corn.”

Through the exhibition, Fondazione La Raia continues in its mission to suggest critical reflections on the landscape, its transformation, and the ability that the arts, the most diverse, have to make us grasp its peculiarities, inducing us, even as consumers, to make choices always in favor of future generations. The Biomega project was born from the meeting, during the artist residency at Guilmi Art Project (2016), between Cosimo Veneziano and Filippo Racciatti, a “farmer by choice,” who has been collecting and selecting seeds for several years to create an archive of non-genetically modified plants. Connecting to topical issues and practices such as collective farming, urban gardens and community reorganization of agricultural production, Biomega interconnects contemporary art, neuroscience, anthropology and earth sciences in an articulated journey that touches on cultural, sociological and politico-economic aspects of our society.

In addition to the Biomega Multiverse exhibition, Cosimo Veneziano’s work will be exhibited in October as part of Matera European Capital of Culture 2019, as part of the group exhibition Ka art. For a choral cartography of Basilicata, curated by Katia Anguelova, a project co-produced by the ArtePollino Association and the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation. Also, from January 16 to February 16, 2020, the work will be presented by Walter Guadagnini and curated by Beatrice Zanelli (Arteco) and Vincenzo Estremo in the Project Room of CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, Turin. An artist’s book, edited by Arteco, dedicated to the entire project will be published by NERO in November 2019.

Cosimo Veneziano lives and works in Turin where he co-founded the international residency Progetto Diogene, established in 2007. His practice is characterized by extensive research and workshops related to the reading of archives and focuses on the development of sculpture and drawing in close correlation with the places that inspired them. Solo exhibitions include: Break the window and steal the fragments! AlbumArte, Rome, 2018; Petrolio, MEF - Museo Ettore Fico, Turin, 2016; Verso occidente l’impero dirige il suo corso, Galleria Alberto Peola, Turin, 2014; Monochrome, Villa Straüli, Winterthur, 2015;Los contrabandistas copiaron una escultura de mucho valor, Lugar a Dudas, Cali (Colombia), 2013; Cathedral, Careof DOCVA, Milan, 2013; The Age of Sad Passions, Tirana Institute for Contemporary Art, Tirana, 2011. In addition to having also participated in numerous group exhibitions, his production has developed towards the conception of works in public space, including the monument dedicated to Pinot Gallizio and Constant in Alba (2016), projects for Nuovi Committenti in Rovigo (2017) and Dencity in Milan (2015).

Fondazione La Raia - arte cultura territorio was founded in June 2013 with the aim of promoting in Italy and abroad a critical reflection on the landscape, through contributions covering multiple fields of investigation. It develops artistic, cultural, educational, scientific and research activities also aimed at promoting specific knowledge of the Gavi territory. Fondazione La Raia, directed by Ilaria Bonacossa, was created by Giorgio Rossi Cairo and Irene Crocco, creator of the Nel Paesaggio project, which traced, with the creation of the first works and a series of public meetings, the Foundation’s direction of investigation. To date there have been permanent works by Remo Salvadori, Koo Jeong A, Michael Beutler and Adrien Missika (visible to the public), Francesco Jodice’s exhibition “Il Corsaro Nero e la vendetta del Gavi” at the Forte di Gavi, a publication with Elio Franzini published by Corraini, and numerous public lectures dedicated to the reflection on landscape, protagonists, among others, Gilles Clément and the French group Coloco, Paolo D’Angelo, Adriana Veríssimo Serrão, Francesco Jodice and Francesco Zanot, Stefanie Hessler and Franco Farinelli. The Scientific Committee consists of Flavio Albanese, Marco Galateri di Genola, Vicente Todolì, Stefano Baia Curioni and James Bradburne.

Pictured: Cosimo Veneziano, Biomega_Multiverse (Pyralid), preparatory drawing for marble sculpture, 2019

Biomega Multiverse, the new site-specific solo exhibition by Cosimo Veneziano

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