Politica dell’esperienza

After his show at Terzo Fronte in Rome, H U M A N O N L Y, Adriano Costa presents his second collaboration with us, ANYBLOOD?, inaugurating our new temporary space in Athens. He is presenting paintings and installations, specifically produced for the apartment.

We propose to the artist the experience of a passage, from Rome to Athens, from a landscape to another. We drove and sail from Italy and Greece, producing a movie, Please Don’t Leave Me Alone, directed by Molly Ledoux, that narrates this passage. The film will be premiered during the exhibition.

He’s not in Athens, I think. Yet I feel that his spirit is with me, unless it’s his sweat exuding from my computer. It is a dream and it is not a dream. I saw strange and disproportionate bodies in the streets around. Some floating, some sitting or hanging on stones. There are so many spirits that we live with, without ever meeting them physically. They are not memories, we are sure.

“I guess Athens is one of the few places I can feel the blood flowing. From the inside to the outside . From the past to the present . From the present to a future we have no fucking idea what it means. It’s wild and concentrated at the same time.”

Beyond the kitchen where we work, beyond our hands pricked by needles when they dip into the toolbox, beyond theory and objectivity, there is a whole world of energies flowing. They don’t need to be named to be felt. It is a dream and no one can understand others dreams. Here we work, as we swallow. Each thing ingested, whether it be words, objects, sensations, liquid or solid plants, make the objects that come out of us grow. We are three, or maybe more, because like in a stomach, many living organisms circulate to constitute what is not a group, but an accumulation of shared knowledge and experiences. When we entered here, La Beauté immediately went to work. She composed some sort of protective figures, spirits of welcome. Was this a way of manifesting herself? Or were she materializing an energy
that was floating in this space? Everything that La Beauté has done in the two months that we have been with her are only signs, translations of passing emotions. We can’t hide anything from her. And yet everything is modesty, nothing
is said, everything is understood. There is in the manifestation of spirits, the depth of human discretion.

“I guess the flat is a nano representation of the world. It makes us to think about what means receiving and giving back a possible response to the today ( that’s a very anthropophagic stuff… how to see a place or situation that it does not belong to me and finally to understand what is expelled.”

When we arrived here, our bodies were exhausted, each of them before the journey already containing the fatigue of their own activities, of the multiplicity of mood transmitters that can pass through our bodies. We rode and sailed, in epic conditions. But here, in Athens, in a few hours, La Beauté has built enchanting figures, light and full of joy. Not all people see spirits and that is the problem.
These companions can be embodied in the smallest forms and objects. Once they have been deposited, once they are watching over the place, they must not be disturbed. Any awakening or modification of their forms would shatter the mirror of La Beauté and the spirit would become angry. La Beauté is strong, but it only takes a little to disturb it. All relationships are underpinned by invisible en-ergies. Just as with spirits, for La Beauté a shift in forces can cause an imbalance in the fragile flow of fluids that regulate our states of mind. With La Beauté, everything is fragile and intense at the same time. La Beauté does not like to be seen eating. She goes to bed early, around 7pm. And at the end of the day, we prepare offerings that we leave in evidence. At night she wakes up and eats everything that has been prepared for her. But no one knows if it is not the spirits that are eating the sweets.
Just another swallowing story. Swallowing always: for relationships, work, the body. But like the spirits, we cannot see it, yet here in the azure cube some give them colours of green, of pink.

“This is the very first time I’m gonna make big paintings like that. I really don’t know what it will be like.”

These paintings, it came as a flow of energy, filling the entire space, life, and all the atmosphere changed radically. The colours are sour and crisp, perhaps again because of swallowing, for we must not forget that this month I have made five lemon pies and that is more than enough.

Exhibition produced with the support of Mendes Wood DM
Images: ©Thanassis Gatos

Red, 2022
Green, 2022
WATCH TV YOU WATCH TV WE WATCH TV, 2021,
silkscreen on underwear elastics, variable dimensions

WATCH TV YOU WATCH TV WE WATCH TV, 2021,
silkscreen on underwear elastics, variable dimensions

Green, 2022

Red, 2022
WATCH TV YOU WATCH TV WE WATCH TV, 2021,
silkscreen on underwear elastics, variable dimensions

Red, 2022

Red, 2022
WATCH TV YOU WATCH TV WE WATCH TV, 2021,
silkscreen on underwear elastics, variable dimensions

Green, 2022
WATCH TV YOU WATCH TV WE WATCH TV, 2021,
silkscreen on underwear elastics, variable dimensions

WATCH TV YOU WATCH TV WE WATCH TV, 2021,
silkscreen on underwear elastics, variable dimensions

sheep, 2022

WATCH TV YOU WATCH TV WE WATCH TV, 2021,
silkscreen on underwear elastics, variable dimensions

Please Don’t Leave Me Alone, 26min
©Molly Ledoux

Adriano Costa (1975, San Paolo) vive e lavora a San Paolo, Brasile.

Accendendo una tensione tra umorismo e politico, Adriano Costa espone le sfumature del sistemi di valori culturali posti sugli oggetti. Le sue opere non sono regolate da regole o idee specifiche, abitano invece in un regno di neutralità, incorporando materiali disparati come cemento, carta, bronzo, stoffa, filo metallico, legno e innumerevoli altri detriti. Molto di più sulla realtà attraverso l’uso dell’ironia tragica rispetto all’originalità all’interno del processo di creazione, Costa provoca a riflessione sul valore reale delle opere d’arte, affrontando la questione di come materiali ordinari o anche i materiali nobili possono essere trasmutati in un oggetto d’arte e viceversa.

Tra le sue mostre personali flowers and holes (glory), Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2021); ROCKWHORESHOW, Nuno Centeno, Porto (2019); wetANDsomeOLDstuffVANDALIZEDbyTHEartist, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2018); B A I L E, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2018); DearMeatCutsDevilMayCry, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2016); Every Camel Tells a Story, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2015).
Inoltre, il suo lavoro è stato incluso in mostre collettive istituzionali come Breaking The Waves, Chi K11 Art Museum,Shanghai (2021); Everyday Poetics, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (2017); Frucht & Faulheit, Lothringer13 Halle, Münich (2017); IMAGINE BRAZIL, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo & Musee D’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France (2014).

CAPITOLO (V) PART II ATHENS
Politica dell’esperienza

Adriano Costa

A N Y.B L O O D .?