Lupo Borgonovo searches for the boundless pleasure in experimenting with materials and shapes. He proceeds through mixing and associating materials, confronting solids and liquids, existing and imaginary objects, refined and brut materials. His surrealist sculptures seem to (re)become organic and living, edible, adoptable. Yet hard to grasp, since they emerge from a chemical and poetical kitchen which provokes a strange fascination, as if something exotic; extraterrestrial organs, mutant machines, transfigured moods. The impermanence of the process and the instinctive dimension of the relation to the material urges Borgonovo to create sculptures that seem ready to convulse. (Marie Villemin)

Samara Scott uses materials that mix the bodily with the industrial or chemical which create confused reactions of both familiarity and disgust. Her work has an intimacy and repulsion that is tied up within the body, which combined with such familiar everyday materials, has a sense of place rooted in contemporary culture. Samara Scott’s practice revolves around the devouring of stimuli, her interdisciplinary background has given her a thirst for discovering the material properties of substances. She often equates material with her experience of the body and uses everyday matter to describe sensations and evoke feelings.

Nicola Martini’s practice is characterized by an intrinsic dualism in which empirical research and ritual coexist. Ancestral procedures such as baking, mixing and melting take Nicola Martini’s work to a sort of ground zero of sculpture, in which the artist allows the physical properties of the substances to guide the final form of the object (or of the space activated by the artist’s intervention) that is almost dictated by the physical characteristics of the materials and their reciprocal interactions. This cognitive tension, expressed through continuous experimentation, emerges into a category of thought that is common to different cultures and eras: revelation. Revelation to be interpreted as the vital link between material and idea, a link through which a chemical process dismantles preexisting paradigms in favor of a new system of understanding, and a mathematical formula opens the way to metaphysical speculation. Through his works, Nicola Martini reveals to himself – as well as to the viewer – the fundamental relativity of physical and perceptive assumptions. Incongruous materials such as bitumen of Judea, shellac, concrete and colophony interact to create reactions that change with time, that generate physical tensions and unstable equilibriums, which remind us that matter is never static nor inert.

Starting with references ranging from myths about the first president of the United States, George Washington, to the biographies of historical thinkers like Immanuel Kant and Aby Warburg, or films like Walt Disney’s The Song of the South (1946), William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), Stephen G Rhodes builds up immersive multimedia installations that collapse the distinctions between immediacy and representation, history and fiction, conscious and unconscious. Using Hollywood green- screen technology, Rhodes might insert himself into a preexisting filmic source, while also using the cinematic apparatus as a sculptural element, whether by projecting it onto or through disparate surfaces, or by setting the projector itself into motion. These mechanisms destabilize our relations to cultural conventions, and throw even the position of the viewer into doubt. (Andrew Maerkle, Extract from «(NON) POSSE (NON) PECCARE», in: ART-IT online, 29.01.2016)

Barry Johnston’s sculpture, poetry, and performance are simultaneously destructive and ecstatic. Drawing from a wealth of influences ranging from Jean Genet to Norman O. Brown to Patti Smith, Johnston’s work asserts the liberatory potential of a kind of violent celebration of presence, each piece another attempt to find the exit, another temporary threshold further into the present moment.

Curator, researcher, and writer is an art historian. In 2012 she has been appointed as curator at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli/Torino – where she works since 2007. She has curated various exhibitions and publications such as Andres Serrano’s Via Crucis, Massimo Grimaldi’s Before The Images, Paloma Varga Weisz, Rachel Rose, Cecile B. Evans, Ed Atkins, Anna Boghiguian, Hito Steyerl and Cally Spooner and edited monographic catalogs such as John McCracken and Luigi Ontani. She collaborates to numerous editorial projects with particular attention to historical research in the compilation of chronological and anthological histories. She is currently working on the exhibition and publication of Michael Rakowitz in collaboration with Whitechapel, London, the exhibition of Marianna Simnett and the project with Pedro Neves Marques all opening at Castello di Rivoli in fall 2019. Her research is focused on transdisciplinary projects in which critical thought and artistic practice coexist such as Abitare il Minerale and currently Comp(h)ost with Witte de With, Rotterdam. From 2009 she is in the committee board of Public Art of the City of Torino. She has contributed to numerous Italian and International magazines. Working on Curva Blu since 2016, for INCURVA, Marianna also curated Sivilization’s Wake by Stephen G. Rhodes and Barry Johnston (Palermo, 2018).

Attilia Fattori Franchini is an independent curator and writer based in London and Milan. She is cofounder of the nonprofit platforms bubblebyte.org and Opening Times and contributes essays and reviews to international publications such as Mousse, CURA, and Flash Art International.  She has been working at Curva Blu since its inception in 2016. Attilia is currently curator of BMW Open Work by Frieze (since 2017); the Emergent section of miart, Milan (since 2017); and directed the latest edition of the Termoli Art Prize, Italy (2018). Recent projects include Could you visit me in dreams? as part of curated_by 2018, Vienna, (2018); Red Lake at Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia (2018); and ARS17+ at Kiasma, Museum, Helsinki (2017).

Past projects include: Meshes of the Afternoon, Roman Road, London (2017); Céu Torto, Boatos Fine Arts, São Paulo (2017); Morning uber, evening oscillators, Seventeen, London (2016); Europa and the Bull at LambdaLambdaLambda, Pristina, Kosovo (2016); Oa4s, Temra and David in 4 parts, Sorbus, Helsinki (2016); Yves Scherer, Snow White and The Huntsman, Mexico City (2016); Kuvan Kevät, Kuvat Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki (2015); Bold Tendencies, London (2015); and HAND, Barbican Centre, London (2013).

For more info: http://attiliaff.com

Curva Blu studios are set in the wonderful estate of Museum Ex-Stabilimento Florio delle Tonnare di Favignana e Formica.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped and experienced Curva Blu in 2016:

Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Ermes-Ermes, Kaufmann Repetto, The Sunday Painter, Giuseppe Pagoto, Luigi Biondo, Renato Alongi, Calogero Gammino e il team delle guide del Museo, Peppe Nnue, Renato Leotta, Gianni Politi, Ignazio Mortellaro, Laboratorio Saccardi, Laura Barreca, Orit Gat, Thom O’nions, Dominik Arni, Lisa Rampilli, Jacopo Menzani, Nicola Ratti, Elena D’Angelo, Ilaria Orsini, Lara Favaretto, Rosario Riginella, Lorenzo Barbera, Manuela Trapani, Grazia Palmisano, Fabio Pantaleo, Antonio Lo Presti, Gaspare Ernandez, Pina, Antonio De Luca, Vincenzo Ritunno.

Curva Blu is supported by our forward-looking technical sponsors:

Curva Blu is made in partnership with the following institutions: