Incontri - Legàmi

The three artists Gea Casolaro (IT, FR), Michael Hirschbichler (GER, AUT, CH) and Via Lewandowsky (GER) meet for the first time on the occasion of a group exhibition at artQ13 in Rome. While discussing the exhibition theme and concept they discovered that connections between them already existed which they had not been aware of. Already in 2013 Gea Casolaro took a photograph of a sculptural structure composed of shipping containers at the architecture faculty of Addis Abeba without knowing that it had been realized according to Michael Hirschbichler’s designs. Moreover, both Via Lewandowsky and Michael Hirschbichler were residents at the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo, however at different times, and, without having met before, collaborate with the same gallery, Galerie Karin Sachs, in Munich.
Such preexisting links between the three artists can also be uncovered in their respective bodies of work. Their research orbits around and gravitates towards common topics, such as different modes of perception and construction of reality, cultural and physical questions related to borders and the analysis of architectural space as a realm of political and social contestation. These topics and many others interlink Casolaro, Hirschbichler and Lewandowsky in their exhibition at artQ13 and heighten the signification of the three individual artists’ bodies of work by entering into dialogue.
 
Gea Casolaro (Rome 1965), live in Rome and Paris.
Since 1994 her works investigates through photography, video and writing, our relationship with images, current events, memory, society, history. Her research aims to enable an on going dialogue between experiences and people, to broaden our analytical skills and knowledge of reality, through the viewpoints of others.
In 2009, Gea Casolaro was artist in residence at the Cité International des Arts in Paris to work on her project Still here on the relationship between cinema and daily life in the French capital. In 2013 Gea Casolaro was artist in residence at the Italian Cultural Institute in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where she made a collaborative artwork with a group of students to the Alle School of Fine Arts entitled Sharing Gazes. That same year she made two photographic missions: the first in the Principality of Monaco (Monte-Carlo Forever has been exhibited at The Forbes Galleries in New York) and the second in Luxembourg at CNA, Centre National de l'Audiovisuel, where she made a portrait of the complex facets of the country titled Send Me a Postcard, a site aside, inside, in between, away.
In 2015 she has been artist in residence at the Italian Cultural Institute in Lima, Peru, for a participatory art project at the Centro de la Imagen.
 
Michael Hirschbichler (Graz 1983). He studied architecture at ETH Zurich and philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin. His solo exhibitions include ‚Around the Island‘, AB Contemporary, Zurich (2016); ‚Jenseits der Küste Utopias‘, House of Architecture, Graz (2015/2016); ‚Toward the Vanishing Points‘, AB Contemporary, Zurich (2015); ‚Fragments from Utopia‘, Artifact Gallery, New York (2015); ‚Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’, Gallery Karin Sachs, Munich (2014); ‚architectures of salvation, architectures of damnation’, MARIA HIL F, ETH Zurich (2013). A selection of his group exhibitions includes: ‚Villa Massimo in Berlin‘, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2016); ‚Finale‘, German Academy Villa Massimo, Rome (2015); ‚City of Zurich work and studio grants‘, Helmhaus, Zurich (2015); ‚Premio Combat‘, Museo Civico G. Fattori, Livorno (2015); ‚side effects‘, side effects art space, Basel (2014); ‚Das Modell vom Modell vom Modell vom – ist die Welt‘, artspace –ion+, Zurich (2014); ‚You are here‘, Zollhaus, Lucerne (2013). He was a finalist of the Arte Laguna Prize 2012, the Swiss Art Awards 2012, the Lisbon Triennale Début Awards 2013 and the City of Zurich work and studio grants 2015.
Michael Hirschbichler was awarded with the Premio Combat 2015 as well as the Rome Prize 2015 at the German Academy Villa Massimo.

Via Lewandowsky (born 1963) grew up in Dresden, where he studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste from 1982 to 1987. Shortly before the Berlin wall was torn down he moved to West Berlin, where he currently live, and in 1991, he received a scholarship from the Berlin Senat to work at PS1 in New York.
His work for documenta IX (Kassel 1992) had already begun to examine the theme of remembrance and memory, which he revisited ten years later in Roter Teppich (Red Carpet), a hand-tufted rug in the Federal Ministry of Defense replicating an aerial image of a bombed-out Berlin. In 1995 his often critical and provocative works earned him the Art Prize of the Leipziger Volkszeitung; in 2005 he was awarded the Critics’ Prize for Visual Art and in 2011 for the residency at the Villa Massimo. Although he does not consider himself a politicized artist, futility and failure inform his works, such as in his current solo show Hokuspokus (2015/2016, Kunsthalle Kiel, Museum of Visual Arts Leipzig), which explores issues related to faith and belief.

Opening: Thursday May 26/ 7 pm     

Vai alla guida d'arte di Rome