Individual Project

Riccardo Giacconi presents an immersive installation featuring recent outcomes of his research project in the exhibition 'Ecfrasi'.

The exhibition presents an immersive installation featuring various moments of Giacconi's recent research: excerpts from his film dedicated to Italian singer-songwriter Alberto Camerini, wooden handmade masks carved by craftsmen from Barbagia (central Sardinia); a series of stage costumes, three plastic curtains inspired by oriental folding screens.

These works suggest a possible resonance between the artistic career of Camerini and the so-called 'riflusso': a general resignation to the private sphere and a concomitant political and social disengagement that characterized the transition from the 70s to the 80s in Italy. The installation evokes the various 'personae' embodied by the singer-songwriter – a Harlequin, a cyber-punker, a robot.

The artworks are arranged in the exhibition space as props and backdrops, before or after a performance. The bright colorful costumes conceal unexpected cuts and pleats; the masks, pockmarked and carved in a wood devastated by insects, reveal an abiding interest in bodily deformations and constrictions.

'Ecfrasi' [Ekphrasis: description of an image] is an exhibition about the attempt to inhabit an other body, which has been constructed through make-up and disguises, symbols and gestures.

The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Valentina Lacinio.
The masks have been realized in collaboration with Gonario Denti, Franco Maritato, Ruggero Mameli.