'Painting Extravaganza'
Richard Aldrich, Markus Amm, Davide Balula, Kees Goudzwaard, Jacqueline Humphries, Sterling Ruby, Scott Short, Charline von Heyl
1st October – 7th November 2010

Cardi Black Box opens the new season with a double appointment: besides its usual activity it will present more experimental projects, focused on emerging art, dedicating the first floor of the gallery to monographical projects by young artists.

In the main spaces of the gallery, from Friday October 1st to Sunday November 7th, the group show PAINTING EXTRAVAGANZA will be on display : eight international artists, from different generations, confront themselves with the theme of painting, triggering a topical comparison and    visual dialogue on pictorial contemporary language.

Richard Aldrich, Markus Amm, Davide Balula, Kees Goudzwaard, Jacqueline Humphries, Sterling Ruby, Scott Short, Charline von Heyl through their works make a reflection on painting, interpreting shapes and contents in an abstract way. Each of them seems to fight against the compelling and “extravagant” need to paint; in fact, as well as painting, or better ‘against painting’, they use scanners, spray paint, photocopies, serigraphs, collage or photography in order to create contemporary images that don’t solely exist in two-dimensional space, but are reinvented through their installation in space. 

Painting Extravaganza presents twelve “abstract works” which seem unfinished, or better, voluntarily provisional, as if the artists feel the need to leave their work in fieri; it is as if they feel unable to decree the success of their pictures and thus decide to simply interrupt their production. This tendency derives from a shared background scepticism, from an impulsive rejection of the idea of permanency and eternity linked to painting. Through a calculated amount of casualty, the artists question the value and success of their works. However, these interventions are not just auto reflexive, post-modern exercises, but are born from the questioning of the definition of painting, opening up to new issues, in which the artist’s hand is not annulled but becomes the necessary link for sampling different signs.  

The exhibition investigates on the meaning of painting today, figurative or abstract, combining the passion for the pictorial media with an ironic and sharp look at its history. The pictorial gesture itself is remixed and reinvented through the matter of the works presented by the artists who are able to manipulate traditional codes and explore the limits of painting, adapting them to their sensibility.

The extravagant dialogue between the exhibited works seeks to offer an insight in the state of contemporary painting through a dialogic practice that does not deny the aesthetic outcome of the pictorial practice, being, however, aware of the complex genesis of images in today society.  

In conjunction with the opening of the show, Cardi Black Box starts its new project dedicated to emerging artists:  LevelOne#1 will take place in the large room on the first floor of the gallery, with works by young artists invited to produce site-specific projects.

The first LevelOne  will be opened by Francesca Anfossi, (1980) with the project “Petrified Paper”.
In her works this young Italian artist, Londoner by choice, investigates the transformations of matter without, however, focusing on its documentary and scientific aspect but rather operating like a crazy scientist that tries to trigger a sort of uncontrollable entropy which has the power to put everything in relation and contradiction, creating a continuous short-circuit between images obtained from the microscope and kitsch memorabilia.