An Agent, A Foundling
Larisa Crunțeanu

Curated by Cristina Stoenescu

From November 10 to December 2 2022
Opening on Thursday, November 10, 2022, at 6.30 PM

10 & zero uno, Santa Croce 270/D, Campiello Lavadori de Lana, Venice

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”What is reality?
I am a plaster doll; I pose
with eyes that cut open without landfall or nightfall” (Anne Sexton - ”Self in 1958”)

Larisa Crunțeanu’s solo show at 10 & zero uno art project space in Venice explores
the intricate process of character-making, in rapport with concepts of identity and personal agency. Working across mediums, the artist often engages with metafictions in her conceptual-art practice, focusing on breaking through reality seen as a monolithic axiom of linear experiences. As digital media creates an ever-growing terrain filled of virtual-selves, Larisa questions whether our perceived real-selves haven’t always been partly a work of fiction, and if so, how did this narrative begin?
Inspired by post-modern literature and post-feminist theories, Larisa Crunțeanu creates throughout the show fragments of narrations teasing out possible answers like building-blocks to a tapestry of common experiences and cultural references. There is a performed plasticity implied, a soft malleability in the irregular forms of a newly- created series of ceramic pieces that seem to have been peeled off larger bodies of work. The viewers are enticed to create their own context for reading the sculptural ceramics, partaking to decisions on which animist characters are likely protagonists or mere objects of observation and analysis. The larger narrative tapestry remains hidden, under layers of transformations and reactions of either violence or resilience that come to surface as details with cinematic or theatrical pathos: a vengeful eye is unafraid to stare along a knife-blade in a reverse Un chien Andalou reference. To some, the objects may appear to carry Biblical motifs: a piece of ceramic thorns next to a naïve portrait of a woman swallowing either a worm or a snake that makes for a probable Eve. In other instances, the gradient line of red to white ceramics sketch out a more commercial understanding of the fragmented persona. Depicting a pair of legs reduced to a logo of intuited femininity and exploited by the advertising industry, the work functions in accord to Catherine Malabou’s theory of ”the minimal concept” of woman, whereas ’woman’ has never been able to define herself in any other way than in terms of the violence done to her.”
The contours of the character(s) start emerging as ways of resisting the boundaries and violations imposed on themselves from a narrator that both builds and interrupts story sequences. The artist-as-a-human, the artist-as-a-woman, the-artist-as-a-main- character-author Larisa Crunțeanu takes the scenario from the tactile ceramics to the digital plasticity of the self. Hanging in the exhibition space, there is a chroma key-based background removal, also known as green screen editing, covered with chequered variants of DALL-E AI portraits of the artist. Variations of photographs of photographs of Larisa create strange alternative selves, that may exist in parallel, machine imagined universes. Some odd outcomes of the artificially created portraits test the limit of what one can accept as human, at the boundary between culturally- defined aesthetics and the uncanny valley feelings of uneasiness towards the digital prints sewn into the fabric.

Similarly, the video-work 12 years is an artificially constructed story, out of stock-photo images and filmed snippets of ready-made-emotions. It tells the bitter and absurd story of a man desperate to dedicate years of his life in order to retrieve a discarded bitcoin wallet in the middle of the mid-pandemic crypto boom. Narrated by an even- voiced variant of Larisa Crunțeanu, the video-work shifts gears towards the end, with hand-filmed footage from a gloomy garbage landfill, abruptly breaking from the digital simulation to an un-romanticized landscape in the now war-ridden Eastern European context.

The show means to anchor the virtual defragmentation into marks of the real, only if to plunge it again into narrative chaos. There are instances when a performative body is ghostly present, either in the hands that moulded the uneven surfaces of
the ceramics, or of the incorporeal voice of the sound work ”Good God”(2019). A minimalist cyanotype on paper artwork tracks running footsteps to a final jump of quiet absence.

———

Larisa Crunțeanu’s practice as performer, video artist and sound collector moves from reality to fiction in an endless conversation with the viewer. She studied Journalism and Photography and Dynamic Image, and in 2021 she succesfully defended her PhD thesis at the University of Art in Bucharest. Larisa Crunţeanu’s works create contexts in which facts and memories are reactivated, encouraging a shared effort and the emergence of new practices. Many of her projects reflect on the notion of collaboration and the ideas existing behind objects and stories. Her works were shown in important institutions such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Biennale Matter of Art Prague, SAVVY Berlin, Zacheta Project Room Warsaw, RKI Berlin, Museu de Arte Brasieira – MAB FAAP, São Paulo. In 2022, Larisa Crunțeanu will publish the book titled Protocols of Singularity.

The exhibition is a project by Copia Originală curated by Cristina Stoenescu, in collaboration with ARAC & Anca Poterasu Gallery Bucharest. The project is co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund (AFCN). The project does not necessarily represent the position of the AFCN. The AFCN is neither responsible for the project content nor for the way in which the project results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the grant beneficiary.

Plastic Age
Mona Young-eun Kim

Curated by Chiara Boscolo, with a critical text by Miriam Rejas Del Pino

From September 16 to November 6 2022
Opening on Thursday, September 15, 2022, at 6.30 PM

10 & zero uno, Santa Croce 270/D, Campiello Lavadori de Lana, Venice

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10 & zero one is pleased to present Plastic Age, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Mona Young-eun Kim (Korea, 1988), curated by Chiara Boscolo, with a critical text by Miriam Rejas Del Pino.

Plastic Age is an exhibition populated by deformed, suffering skeletons wrapped in themselves. Korean artist Mona Young-eun Kim poposes a dystopian tale in which human remains tell the story of the fatal fate of our civilisation. On this occasion,
10 & zero uno becomes a container for the memory of the last human beings on Earth, who experience first-hand the annihilation of the species. Thus, the exhibition reflects on humans’ harmful behaviour towards the Earth and its inhabitants through a narrative concerning the social balance and biopolitical control of bodies.

The artistic experience proposed by Young-Eun Kim in Plastic Age is divided into two acts. Through an almost playful visual rendering, the artist tackles one of the most delicate issues of our everyday life: preserving the planet to avoid the end of Humanity. Or rather, of species. At first, the viewer is surrounded by inorganic organs, no longer functioning, almost like broken, extinguished containers. These organs, preserved in perfect condition thanks to the plastic inside them, have changed their morphological characteristics to the point where they no longer fulfil their original functions. In this first scenario, the spectator plays a role between the archaeologist and the anatomopathologist. These organs, arriving from the not-too-distant future, prostrate themselves before our eyes, eager to be scrutinised with the coldness of a scientific gaze. Our task is, therefore, to open the human body to look inside: open to know but, to open, we must destroy first.

The second act of the narration consists of an immersive VR work that, as a sort of mystical penance, forces the viewer to watch an action repeatedly. “Drink water! Drink! Drink!” says the voice, forcing the virtual character to start over and over. Dueto its medial nature, the work emulates a dissolution of the illusory dimension of representation into the real one inhabited by the viewer. By collapsing these two spatialities, the viewer is subjected to a perceptual discontinuity between the space of his ocular and auditory vision and the haptic perception of his surroundings. The artist uses a technology that allows us to step outside the immersive narrative at will. Perhaps we can react now from this privileged position.

Observing these artistic objects puts the viewer in a condition of extreme presence. “Presence” is understood as “pre-essence”, a vision that precedes something that has yet to happen. This catastrophic event brought back by Young-eun Kim’s artistic gesture recalls plastic as the pharmacopoeia of our society (poison on the one hand and remedy on the other). Following the data produced by the most recent studies on the subject, one can see how China was, until recently, the country that managed the recycling of almost half of global solid waste1. After the ‘National Sword’, China’s 2018 ban on importing foreign waste, Europe found itself without a recycling system capable of absorbing the volume and accumulation generated by its inhabitants. Thus new migratory “waste routes” take place, and other political agreements are born whereby countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia or Turkey are the new owners of our rubbish.

In the artist’s proposal, Humanity, which can no longer manage an eco-sustainable recycling system, is forced to feed exclusively on this artificial substance. Unfortunately, the only one left after the drastic reduction of available resources. Nothing could be further from fantasy; we are already ‘threatened’ by microplastics that ubiquitously populate our surroundings. Every week a human ingests microplastics equivalent to the weight of a credit card. In the artist’s imagination, this is the act that, consciously performed, will lead the human species to its extinction. Not before a desperate attempt to adapt, however. The excess plastic ingested could weigh down the organs to collapse the human spine and deform our anthropomorphic appearance. To become quadrupeds again, to regain the position of our ancestors where hands and feet are dipped in mud. No longer look into each other’s eyes

but stare at the floor or the bottom of the person in front of you and retreating, submitting to the point of exhaustion.

With lacerating iconography, we are shown the ‘baseness’ achieved by the human species, where the bodily suffering of the last humans on Earth results from a concatenation of bad decisions made in our present.
Young-eun Kim’s humans, who had to overcome the limits of their condition to survive, reached a state where the organic and inorganic coexist in one being and form a new body doomed to failure.

Fortunately, there is still something we can do.

———

Mona Young-eun Kim’s (Corea, 1988) practice is dystopian, satirical and surreal. She often uses VR and AR to reproduce and modify the surrounding space. Her work remains current through the use of objects and languages. Many of her works question the understanding of visual signs and information and their possible evolution in the future. The signs he puts into work, however, are not always legible. This ambiguity creates a poetic and humorous space. Her participatory works address the notion of social connectivity, offering the audience the freedom to reinterpret them and make them their own. Interested in artistic interventions in public space, Mona young-eun Kim produced a public installation work (2017-2018) for the rehabilitation of Les Halles Laissac in Montpellier. She also created a 360-degree geolocated video as part of the artistic and cultural programming of Grand Paris and 104 Paris (2019). She participated in the Season 6 art residency (2018-2019), sponsored by Mo.Co. in Kochi (India), Venice (Italy) and Istanbul (Turkey) during the international biennials. She was artist-in-residence at the Cité internationale des arts 2020-2021 in Paris.

Non siamo mai stati moderni
Roberto Amoroso

Curated by Chiara Boscolo, with a critical text by Rossella Farinotti

From July 2 to September 3 2022
Opening on Friday, September 3, 2022, at 7 PM

10 & zero uno, Santa Croce 270/D, Campiello Lavadori de Lana, Venice

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La 10 & zero uno is pleased to present Non siamo mai stati moderni, an exhibition by Roberto Amoroso, curated by Chiara Boscolo, with a critical text by Rossella Farinotti.

On the occasion of his solo exhibition, the artist presents a corpus of new works, eight watercolours to be exact and a site-specific intervention applied to the window of the space.

The research carried out by Amoroso revolves around the visionary narration of thorny themes that start from the human organism and from details that recall a carnal, living and moving physicality. Each work represents a great hybrid that escapes the eyes, often even an anthropomorphism that is never catalysed in a single, precise, static form but is created by the stratification and interconnections of uncontrollable elements that continue to evolve, breaking out of the central cage in which they were conceived by the artist for their deconstruction.

Amoroso emphasises his vision, taking to extremes certain symbolic elements that are part of his visual hemisphere: the humanised figures drawn by the artist belong to a queer universe and are a necessary mirror for a personal identity analysis.  We have never been modern. And we are still not today. The title of the exhibition, taken from the 1990s literary work by Bruno Latour, could not be more contemporary, seen today through the eyes of Amoroso.

Amoroso's subjects and details are "chthonic" creatures, as Donna Haraway would define them, who writes of contemporary unicum and natural hybridities of gender and beings "at once ancient and newborn (...) full of tentacles, antennae, fingers, cables, whip-like tails, spider legs, and ruffled hair... (that) make and unmake, are made and unmade." Amoroso also draws from here, relating personal, autobiographical experiences to an urgent context that needs to be resolved. It is science fiction, but it is real. They are body snatchers, but they are real. If we have never seen them, then we have never really been modern. But we can be futurists, breaking through the virtual curtain that pierces and shows every wound, pointing to that body that will become, as the artist wants, 'stable and unchanging'.

———

The work of Roberto Amoroso (Naples, 1979) focuses on the relationship between the real world and the virtual world. Using the strategy of hypertext, which unites the use of networked resources and objectifies the mind's associations by transforming them into real and concrete connections, his work focuses on the thin boundary between the narcissism made explicit by people in the photos posted in social networks and the need to be represented by them. Photos posted in social-networks are then archived and processed in metamorphosis with the symbols of smart-phone and tablet applications, enhancing the ambiguous and theriomorphic appearance of the figures. After graduating in Digital Art from IED Turin, he participated in several exhibitions of national and international importance: SPOT2 Piece of my Art curated by Eugenio Viola and Adriana Rispoli, Museo Madre, 2009 Naples; Exhibition at the 10h Biennal of Miniature Art, Cultural Centre in Gornji Milanovac, 2010 Republic of Serbia; Amorosoteofilo, Annarumma Gallery, 2011 Naples; Exhibition at the Campania Pavilion for the 54th Venice Biennale curated by Vittorio Sgarbi 2011; Cairo Prize curated by Luca Beatrice, Permanente di Milano, 2011 Milan; Kunstform der Nature 2. 0 curated by Mihael Milunovic Parobrod, 2013 Belgrade; The human behavior, Mars Milan; 2014 Milan; 2000 Maniacs curated by Andrea Bruciati and Lorenza Boisi, 2014 Verona; I.P. Indentity Portrait, curated by Guido Cabib The format, 2015 Milan; Face to Face, Ernesto Esposito collection, Palazzo Fruscione, 2016 Salerno; Behind the Curtain, Galleria Dino Morra, 2017 Naples; Multiplex Conscience, Museo Madre, 2019 Naples.

Condizione di Insieme - Majority Report
Matteo Vettorello e Marzio Zorio

Curated by Chiara Boscolo

From April 22 to June 23 2022
Opening on Friday, April 22, 2022, from 12.30 PM to 9 PM

10 & zero uno, Santa Croce 270/D, Campiello Lavadori de Lana, Venice

——

10 & zero uno is pleased to open the doors of its space in Venice to the public for the first time during the opening week of the Biennale on Friday, April 22 from 12:30 to 9 p.m., presenting "Condizione di Insieme - Majority Report", a two-person exhibition by Matteo Vettorello and Marzio Zorio, curated by Chiara Boscolo.

Matteo Vettorello and Marzio Zorio share the same sensibility towards the central themes of their artistic research, which drives them to carefully analyse not only the relationships created between human beings but also their actions in the context they belong to, in the micro and macro system of the environment that sorrounds us.

Through a language that becomes a common ground  in their practices, in which they contrast the use of technological and apparently cold systems with the emotionality of the concepts investigated, they invite us to reflect on the power of the "poetics of the machine". On the basis of this research we can also say tha devices, carriers of messages and analyses of our way of life, contain internal (and existential) oxymorons in the works of art themselves.  Works of art who frequently require the interaction of the user in order to be completed, without which they would cease to exist. The artists therefore focus on the actions of individuals who deeply seek vitality in their community and in the sharing of their feelings.

It is not coincidence that "Condizione d'Insieme - Majority Report" also talks about this. In fact, the reason for analysis is the human presence that inhabits the space and creates a community in which the condition of the present time is strongly perceived, generating a propulsive thrust towards becoming. A becoming that concerns everything and everyone, in which one cannot remain passive and solitary observers. Where a cause triggers an effect and where the interaction with others leaves a more or less ephemeral trace. Something that lasts or that is consumed in its own evolution but that despite this becomes a light that dazzles and marks a change because it remains in the experience of those who have experienced it as well as in the place where the phenomenon occurred.

Entering more in the detail, we find in the R.B.V.O.T.L. (01) - Rilevatore di benessere del vicinato per ottimizzare la tranquillità di un luogo -  the intention of Vettorello to create an interactive biometric sculpture that invites a group of three people to relate to each other. The machine in question, of a strong sculptural nature, is put into operation through a synchronous breathing exercise, through which a controlled natural event unfolds in the form of a vortex enclosed in a Plexiglas cylinder filled with water. Its importance lies in the elegance of this element that is not randomly selected and indeed conveys a powerful message. As can be seen from the very title of the work, the ritual that is enacted leads to the realization of an activity that puts the users in communion with their own bodies as well as with each other, with positive results for the entire surrounding environment. "The goal is the absolute perception of the present so that a common cognitive feeling of the whole is created," which leads to living with real awareness the concepts of union and community and the strength that the individual can draw from them.

The site-specific installation created by Zorio, entitled "Moti Umani", immediately impresses with its aesthetic refinement and ability to intervene in space, enveloping it and becoming an integral part of the environment itself. What appears to us is a speaker that through the production of vibrations triggers a real process of writing on reels of paper of several meters. The sound tracks that are reproduced by it are the result of recordings made during moments of great human aggregation. Circumstances of union of people selected by the artist with the aim of making us reflect on how much consciously or unconsciously man leaves a trace in his environment and more generally in the earth system. This work, which finds an easy analogy in its functioning with the seismograph, stands as a meeting point of the three temporal dimensions, i.e. past, present and future. We can identify as past the reproduced recording, present the act of transcription and future the result of the same hypothetically. In fact, it is plausible to imagine an archives made up of the results of transmissions of recordings on paper, since they represent a form of writing of the spoken language in which the intonation is not lost.

The dialogue between the works of Matteo Vettorello and Marzio Zorio takes place with great naturalness within the exhibition space and highlights not only the conceptual similarities at the base of their respective artistic researches but also some glaring differences present in these two works.

For example, it is evident that the difference between the viewer who approaches to enter in relation with these two worlds. While in Zorio he remains a spectator, in Vettorello the spectator becomes the protagonist and then returns again as spectator in front of the vortex phenomenon. However, what must remain even more impressed by these different characteristics is precisely that through dissimilarity and relationship with the other creates the identity of the individual, which if isolated can do nothing but remain sound waiting to be able to turn into music thanks to the union with the community.