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

Little by little we subtract Faith and fallacy from fact, the illusory from the true and then starve upon the residue.
Samuel Hoffenstein

“Do you see my head?” In 1976, when Francesca Woodman, at the age of just 16, asked the technician to remove her head from the scene, she had already understood the process: the artist/performer has to be blurred in the viewfinder, disappearing and then appearing. The naked body, stigmatized by visual effects of simultaneity, shadows and movements, highlights its own fragility in its fragmentation and dissection.
The technique of creating a self-portrait by using one’s body as the raw material has been used by many artists, from the earliest videos created by Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci, in the early years of their careers in the late 1960s, and the methods used by artists and performers who, in the following decade, used self-representation as a method of expressing protest as well as inner pain. Examples include Gina Pane and Marina Abramovic.
Silvia Calcagno has also decided to “use herself” as a subject, not so much for the narcissistic pleasure of elevating her Ego – a trap that many fall into – but rather in order to have greater control of the actions that she puts on stage. Her ambition is not that of talking about herself, she is not really interested in this. Her subjects are depictions of emotive states, in which presence is achieved through absence, space can be found in volume, and life is constantly alternated with a profound sense of death. The contrast of opposites.
The body is at the centre: fixed camera, repeated actions, almost an obsession that can last hours, or days. The result is literally a wall consisting of hundreds of images, all very similar, differing only in the space of a breath. Silvia Calcagno defines them as “realizations,” in a way analogous to Gina Pane who considered the work as being the photographic documentation and not the actual performance itself, in other words the “constat photographique.” Silvia Calcagno’s work is then followed by a process in which the image is fixed onto fireclay tiles, on which the image is corroded and consumed, compressing the lightness of the original shot into the final result that resembles period, neo-romantic postcards.
The movement that appears in each frame, when considered overall, forms a photographic sequence that recalls the studies from the book “Animal Locomotion” by Eadweard Muybridge who, in 1887, was more successful amongst the voyeuristic general public than with the scientific community to which his work should have been destined. The development of the ceramic panels on the walls, and the series of photographs, suggests a movement that is on a plane above that of isolated photograms. Overall, the narrative becomes more complex, and it is defined by means of mini-videos and audio components that accompany and complete the picture. Silvia Calcagno’s creativity is scientific and not bucolic. She lives in Albissola, historic centre for Italian ceramics. She has considerable experience as a professional ceramic artist, and she has acquired a masterly technique which she uses to implement her own unusual form of creation. She treats the fireclay with glazes and slips, and then transfers the image onto the material by means of an alchemical principle of photo transfer at very high temperatures.

Thursday, any Thursday, all possible Thursdays. That exact day, the same as many others. Same place, same actress, same wait. Fruitless. The chair remains empty. The sense of incompleteness and loneliness is heightened by a self-centred interchange, syncopated sentences in a repetitive loop pronounced by a single broadcast voice. Just as “The Artist is the Present” (MoMA, 2010) in which Marina Abramovic, in red, blue and white, was there, seven hours a day for three months, searching for something in spectators’ eyes, for some sort of reassurance in the face of who knows what turmoil. The present, those seconds or minutes spent observing the artist, seated in front of her in silence, expanded into moments that seemed eternal.
The theme appears in the video Wait by Silvia Calcagno, in which she is lost amongst an indefinite number of sleeping, fluctuating Ophelias. The last performance of white swans, after which there is just the spotlight on an empty stage. Lou Reed would sing “Goodbye Ladies.”
There is none of the romanticism of pre-Raphaelite imagery, such as in photographs by Justine Kurland that contain references to late 19th century English landscape painting in which attractive women dance or sleep like Venuses of the waters, amidst wide-angle visions of uncontaminated nature. In this case, the choice of iconography is closer to the drama of the Dead Christ by Mantegna, at the Brera Gallery. The perspective concentration of the composition enhances the gravity of the wake, with feet and hands brought to the foreground by virtue of the visual composition’s illusionistic vortex.
Silvia Calcagno’s sacrificial virgin is Hilaria, blurred and faceless, as in many of the compositions by Francesca Woodman; she is one, no-one, and a hundred thousand, young women. The fact that the title identifies a character creates a contradiction with the impersonalization formed by absence of expression. The same is true for the dematerialization of the long-shutter-speed shots in From icon to icon and Myclone. The model, artist and director, moves in front of the camera, shakes her head, and parcelizes her body in order to attain a suitable visual effect.
The relationship with suffering and death is visceral and closely linked to performance, just as in Marina Abramovic and Gina Pane. The evident necessity of demonstrating female identity goes hand in hand with denouncing the taboos associated with the “weaker sex.” Within the aesthetic appeal is contained all the power that implodes, in the impotence of a sterile, conservative and dated demarcation of differences between male and female.
In a show curated by Francesco Bonami, who brought together a considerable number of international artists with an openly political stance, the provocative quotation of the exhibition title, “Don’t touch the white woman,” demolished a prohibition imposed by an incidental domination, opening the path towards the acceptance of contradiction and debate between the two sexes. Female identity as a symbol of conquest.
Recalling photographer Marta Maria Pérez Bravo, Silvia Calcagno develops femininity and the performance action ahead of the environmental installation of photographs and ceramics, as if it were a ritual without any ambitions for expressly-formulated aesthetic design.
In this way, the sensuality transmitted by the shape of a mouth seen very close up, deformed (the title Stare can be translated as Being) by the hands of another actor, directs erotic attention towards a perverse, artificial excitation. “The sex appeal of the inorganic” (Mario Perniola, 1994) is not concerned with beauty, but with the sadistic, masochistic use of the body in the guise of machines whose virtual potential can be abused without any filters. This work expresses a degenerate form of communication, the impossibility of any reaction, the passive condition of a dialogue for a single actor.

Silvia Calcagno does not like the monumentalization of art, at least not in the sense of a visual approach popular in the 1980s, that of enlarging an image in order to create a direct clash with the public. Her tiles survive independently in the intimacy of a format frequently used by artists in the 1970s, for example Francesca Woodman, the 18×23 cm pieces made by Cindy Sherman early in her career, and the 28×18 cm works by Ana Mendieta. This visual format returned in the 1990s and has continued ever since: micro-stories of everyday life, in contrast with the spectacular approach preferred by the “Sensation Generation.”
But it is technique that places Silvia’s works into an experimental dimension, amplifying the power of the medium. The use of photography is a pretext, the realization of a final result that transforms the initial image into its archetype. The transfer to fireclay at 1,250 degrees saturates contrast and bleaches the luminosity of blacks and white. The process resembles digital alterations of the chromatic curves, and a development of material forms. The process is a solution to the equation of crafts and contemporary aesthetics. Experimental photo-ceramics, a skilled procedure in which the result is unique; the technique could never be used to create a numbered edition, differently to photography which can be duplicated infinitely. The image can be repeated, but each copy has an unpredictable appearance, different to the degree of 70% of the original (as specified in copyright law). Technical methods of avoiding the “reproducibility of a work of art” (Walter Benjamin, 1955) and the idea of a “copy” in its literal sense are important concepts amongst the artists of yBa, those in the Saatchi stable. Mat Collishaw achieved success applying the same rule adopted by Silvia Calcagno: impressions of images on many ceramic tiles that parcelize the image, as in paintings by Chuck Close, in an incalculable number of pixels, just as in digital photography. Iconic archaeology is contaminated by the aesthetics imposed by contemporary media, and a crafts technique becomes the method of preserving the category of artistic uniqueness.
Luca Beatrice