SILVIA CELESTE CALCAGNO
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works

2019 – eye verbal motor

2019 – fuoco fatuo

2018 – ROOM 60

2017 – una storia privata

2017 – If but I can explain

2017 – il pasto bianco

2016 – ring around

2016 – maihome

2015 – je t'aime

2015 – interno 8 – La fleur coupée

2015 – rose

2015 – le ceremonie

2015 – the most beautiful woman

2014 – still life

2014 – carla

2014 – se io fossi lucida

2013 – my july

2013 – celeste

2012 – stare

2012 – giovedì

video

bio

Silvia Celeste Calcagno was born in Genoa in 1974. She lives and works in Albissola (Savona).

Education

Arts Secondary School – Academy of Fine Arts, Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa

Regional qualification as Fireclay Ceramist Designer

Prizes

2019 - Premio HDRA, with the work Just Lily

2015 – Premio Faenza, 59th International Competition for Contemporary Art Ceramics with the work Interno 8 La Fleur Coupée .

2013 – President of the Republic’s Plaque, 57th International Competition for Contemporary Art Ceramics, Faenza.

2013 – Laguna Art Prize, Special Prize for Artists in Residence, Venice

2010 – First Prize for a Public Work, International Majolica Festival, Albissola (work currently on the façade of the MuDA (Museo Diffuso Albissola) Museum

show

Solo shows

2018 – IL PASTO BIANCO, inaugurazione opera pubblica, Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna

2018 - ROOM 60, Museo Carlo Zauli, Faenza, curated by MCZ

2017 – IL PASTO BIANCO ( mosaico di me ) curated by Davide Caroli V Biennale del Mosaico, Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna

2017 – IF (but I can explain), Nuova Galleria Morone, Milan

2017 – IF (but I can explain) Museo di Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa, curated by Alessandra Gagliano Candela

2015 – Interno 8, La fleur coupée, Officine Saffi Milano, curated by Angela Madesani

2014 – Silvia, GAMA Galleria d’Arte Moderna Albenga, curated by Sandro Ristori and Francesca Bogliolo

2014 – Mood, PH Neutro Fotografia Fine-Art, Pietrasanta, curated by Luca Beatrice

2014 – Not Me, Musei Civici, Imola, curated by Luca Beatrice

2013 – Celeste, MIA Milan Image Art Fair, Milan, curated by Angela Madesani

2013 – Celeste So Happy, Il Pomo da DaMo Contemporary Art, Imola, curated by Angela Madesani

2012 – Nerosensibile, Studio Lucio Fontana, Albissola, curated by Luca Beatrice

Group exhibitions

2017 – PH Neutro presents PH Neutro PH Neutro Fotografia Fine Art, Siena

2017 – ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE #2, Officine Saffi, Milan

2017 – Eunique Messe Karlsruhe, Germany, organized and coordinated by MIC Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza

2017 – In the Earth Time. Italian Guest Pavilion, Gyeonggi Ceramic Biennale, Yeoju Dojasesang Korea, organized and coordinated by MIC Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza

2017 – Chronos, L'arte contemporanea e il suo tempo, curated by Angela Madesani, Palazzo Botti - Torre Pallavicina (BG)

2016 – From Liberty to Freedom, PH Neutro, Pietrasanta

2016 – XXIV Biennale Internationale Contemporaine, Musée Magnelli, Vallauris

2016 – La Sfida di Aracne, Riflessioni sul femminile dagli anni '70 ad oggi, curated by Angela Madesani, Nuova Galleria Morone, Milan

2016 – Arte Fiera Bologna

2015 – Imago Mundi, Praestigium Italia di Luciano Benetton,  Fondazione Re Rebaudendo Torino – Fondazione Cini Venezia.

2015 – GNAM Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, curated by N. Caruso and Mariastella Margozzi

2014 – 2015 Collect London, Saatchi Gallery, London, curated by Officine Saffi Milano

2014 – ECC 2014 Danish Prize Ceramic Art, Kontakt Bornholms Kunstmuseum

2014 – Arte Fiera, Bologna

2011 – 54° Biennale di Venezia, Palazzo della Meridiana, Genoa

texts

books

IF ( but I can explain ) a cura di Alessandra Gagliano Candela Silvana Editoriale 2017

Not Me  a cura di Luca Beatrice  Silvana Editoriale 2014

Silvia Celeste Calcagno a cura di Angela Madesani  Silvana Editoriale  2013

Nerosensibile a cura di Luca Beatrice 2012

texts

Fuoco fatuo

Trame di un esercizio

La plasticità del sè

details

mosaic of us

Il pasto bianco (mosaico di me)

Al fuoco della ceramica

Tra se e sè

Particelle Esistenziali

Selfie

images of blackmail

fragments of life

Donne senza tempo

Fantasmi impressi a fuoco

Parcellizzazione dell’immagine

Nerosensibile

L’erotica pietà di Silvia Celeste Calcagno

Storie senza trama

news

7 th July 25 th July - Faenza

11th may - 10th june - Andenne (BE)

13th - 15th april 2018 - Milano

22th - 25th feb. 2018 - Karlsruhe

7th october 2017 - Ravenna

21th sept - 10th nov 2017 - Milano

24th may - 10th june 2017 - Milano

3 may 2017 - Savona

22 april - 28 may 2017 GICB 2017

contact

+39 349 7787660

facebook page

facebook profile

instagram profile

mail

press office

OFFICINE SAFFI

Milano – Via A. Saffi 7 – +39 0236685696 – info@officinesaffi.com

PH NEUTRO

Verona – Via Garibaldi 22 – +39 045 4579643 – info@ph-neutro.com
Siena – Vai delle Terme – +39 0577 051079 – siena@ph-neutro.com

NUOVA GALLERIA MORONE

Milano – Via Nerino 3 – + 39 02 72001994 – info@nuovagalleriamorone.com

Il Pomo da DaMo

Imola – Via XX Settembre 27 – +39 3334531786 – info@ilpomodadamo.it

Just Lily https://silviacelesteartis.wixsite.com/justlily

Silvia Celeste Calcagno, the theme is all here.
What we are shown is an existential diary in which the artist describes herself with images that gradually reconstruct the entire dimension of an existence, by means of sensations and suggestions.
The artist offers herself to us with simplicity; she places her body and her life in front of us, and in doing so she offers her life to herself, with narratives, memories and dreams. And we too become personally involved, because, as in a mirror, we can be surprised by images that lay in our unconscious, with mutually-referential views.
Works by Silvia Celeste are hallmarked by an ambivalent, extremely intimate air of mystery. Initially they attract us and induce us to observe more closely in order to gain a better understanding, but then they activate our sense of confidentiality, and they make us take a step back in order not to impinge on the private world facing us.
It is a crude narrative, in parts, or slices – the metaphor could be taken to the extremes to underline the work’s extreme carnality – in which the body suddenly becomes ethereal, without substance, sometimes absurdly abstract. We see some hints but without perceiving an excessively detailed description.
In the layout specially designed for the two halls of the library Biblioteca Classense, which have now been reopened and are accessible to the public, the new language of the artist’s latest works can be compared with that of just a few years ago, heightening the dialogue between figuration and abstraction even further, between recognisability and mystery, between space and volume, in which the body remains the subject around which a personal, intimate alphabet is developed.
This alphabet is thus used to tell a story: as in an unbound book, the pages of a life are jumbled, juxtaposed chaotically. The images are given absolute dominance, and the protagonist of the work, initially the subject, becomes the object of attention, and becomes something different to what the camera lens immortalizes in a moment, an image that is further alienated by the monochromatic treatment.
The story thus becomes something different, and its meaning seems to become lost while concentrating the attention onto each individual element, in itself so attractive, but excessively indecipherable if considered in isolation from the work as a whole. We can detect meaning only by shifting our viewpoint, reconnecting every single slab into an overall vision that can bind the details together. In this way we can escape from the details and take part in the Being laid bare in front of us, enabling us to discover the way in which each tiny fragment, apparently insignificant and unfathomable, itself encapsulates the meaning of the whole.
As if in a classical mosaic, every piece has its own place, but what unfolds in front of us is not simply an image: it is the result of a demanding process of introspection on female identity, with the eternal dichotomy between the body, a limited and limiting object, and the aspiration for freedom from weight, escape beyond limits, becoming something else.
The narrative of a life, of an existence, is simply this: putting together images, memories and fragments which, brought together, can give us the sensations, experiences and traits that formed it. And in this case, the central part of this exhibition titled Il pasto bianco (The white lunch) amplifies with excess this aspect of the work’s intrinsic vitality, to the point that, as there is nothing more than the artist’s sense of life, this is itself changed and developed as the work progresses.
In addition to physical presence and sensuality, it was necessary to place a sort of curtain, a filter, to protect that body that was acquiring too much of an objective identity, becoming too cold and aseptic. Reality is not, in itself, as clean as the work was initially suggesting, a memory that exists in traces in some parts of the installation. The drama in which we, in many ways, are immersed, and that surrounds us, could not be silenced, and it is as if it emerged uncontrollably from the finished work.
The object independently desired to return to its status as a subject: the woman’s body could not resist its definition as an object, provocative though this may be.
That initial, ideal move towards purity therefore seems to be restrained and castrated by the physicality and weight of matter itself, as if it were this that made it impossible to attain the sublime dimension so anxiously coveted. It is here that the new features of this work surprise us, because it shows us how it is precisely through materiality and our bodily existence that we can learn and understand our own Being to the full. Our ideal tension can only attain expression and maturity through our own body, which is therefore not a prison, but a springboard…
This is visually narrated by the type of installation chosen, in which the work becomes a sort of wallpaper, a skin covering the hall and occupying the space, giving it life and a unitary dimension, as if wanting to provide direct experience by placing the body into direct contact. Il pasto bianco arose from, and was strongly inspired – in terms of both narrative technique and content – by the literary work by W.S. Burroughs The Naked Lunch – later made into a film by D. Cronenberg – a masterpiece constructed from apparently disjointed episodes, reassembling sheets of text written almost unconsciously by the author, and reordered successively by means of the Dada “cut-up” technique.
The narrative structure is completed by two works that Silvia decided to install in continuity and direct relation with the first piece.
In 5 breve freddo, a video suspended between theatricality and intimacy, we are transported and immersed, as if unwary spectators, into a crude dialogue set in a mysterious location rendered distinctive by a flame-red colour, as if in part a cherished love nest (since destroyed), and in part a fiery asteroid that seems to have just fallen, devastating existence and annihilating everything known and loved. The resigned, monotone voice in the background – interrupted as is often the case in life – is juxtaposed against the scene’s latent sensuality, and everything is combined and blended, creating the sensation of a relationship that has cooled off and has seemingly reached a point of no return, perhaps.
But the thing that is impossible to grasp is the identity of the personalities involved, and one thinks that perhaps that it is “just” a monologue in which the protagonist of Il pasto bianco reflects aloud, while immersed in the rituals of everyday life, as suggested by the sound of a washing machine in the background.
The physical dimension returns strongly in the latest work, Una storia privata (A private story), in which nature nonetheless replaces the artist’s body as the subject of the piece.
Increasingly abstract, the narrative proceeds in the almost dancing lines of leaves and trunks, as if the artist were making a final attempt to break free of her physical nature and to describe herself by means of images stolen from nature, presenting herself with figures far more imposing than her own, as if this could represent a form of succour in her quest and struggle.
In the silence of these views, the plants, carrying the artist’s emotions, swaying and writhing in their attempt to gain attention, transmit the feeling that not even this subterfuge will resolve Silvia’s voyage: her body, her persona, remain the “location” in which her liberation will have to take place, so that at last she will be able to savour the long-coveted meaning of completion, on her own skin.
Davide Cairoli