Like a sort of Pompeii in reverse. Salvatore Arancio's site-specific project at Casa Jorn

Casa Museo Jorn in Albissola Marina is hosting Salvatore Arancio’s solo exhibition, titled Like a sort of Pompeii in reverse, which can be visited from July 11 to Sept. 22, 2019. The exhibition is curated by Luca Bochicchio, artistic director of the museum, and is promoted by theFriends of Casa Jorn Association, under the patronage of the City of Albissola Marina and with the support of Semiose Gallery in Paris.

It is an unprecedented and site-specific project and created in situ by the artist. Salvatore Arancio, fascinated by the Situationist matrix labyrinth that Danish artist Asger Jorn created between 1957 and 1973 with his friend and assistant Umberto Gambetta, visited Casa Museo Jorn many times, making several site visits.

Starting from the polymateric and pseudo-organic concretions in the museum garden, Arancio carried out experimental research based on modeling clay directly on the forms, surfaces and volumes of the garden, reflecting on what cannot be seen but exists only in power.

He focused mainly on elements of uncertain origin (natural or artificial) and of ambiguous and ironic authorship (Jorn or Gambetta) in order to establish a relationship of continuity on metamorphosis andimagination; a dialogue developed from the language of ceramic sculpture and based on the complicity and collaboration of the genius loci: the artisan workshops of the territory.

The artist collaborated with Barbara Arto’s New Phoenix for the third-fire finishes, and with Ceramiche San Giorgio for the glazes of the pieces modeled at Casa Jorn.

The title of the exhibition is a quotation from the text Guy Debord wrote in 1973 for Jorn’s book Le Jardin d’Albisola. What for Debord was the situationist element of Jorn’s architectural experience, for Arancio is the possibility of imagining the forms, volumes and surfaces of the garden as casts of a space in the making, initial matrices born from the indistinguishable combined action of time, human labor and chance. The sculptures will first experience an integrated dialogue with the garden spaces, then will be arranged within the studio as archaeological relics of an invisible imaginary universe.

Hours: Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to noon; Thursdays from 3 to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 8 p.m. On weekends in September, closing at 7 p.m.

Image: Salvatore Arancio, Like a Sort of Pompeii in Reverse (detail) (2019; glazed ceramic. Courtesy: Casa Museo Jorn / MuDA, Albissola and Semiose Gallery, Paris. Ph Gianluca Anselmo

Like a sort of Pompeii in reverse. Salvatore Arancio's site-specific project at Casa Jorn

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