campo volo 5 November 2010 (Giovanni Morbin: Lid)

- twelve stages, huh? And how many more to go?
- there are thirty-three in all.
- If I get through the next twelve as fast as the first ones, I’ll already be in the home stretch.
- you won’t, I promise you. However much you think you’ve suffered so far, it’s nothing compared to what lies ahead.
- the birds don’t suffer. They just spread their wings and take off. If I got the gift like you say, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be a breeze.
- because, my little pumpkin-head, you’re not a bird, you’re a man. In order to lift you off the ground, we have to crack the heavens in two. We have to turn the whole bloody universe inside out.

(Paul Auster, Mr Vertigo, Faber and Faber, 2006)

When Progetto Diogene group was invited to curate the 4th edition of campo volo, we chose to collaborate with the artist Giovanni Morbin (Valdagno, 1956). Over the last few years he has been exploring the nature of form and image through an analysis of everyday objects as an ideal artistic rearrangement of the world.
The dialogue generated together with Progetto Diogene begins with the need to train oneself before spreading to include the sharing of original needs and working methods. (Progetto Diogene)

On Friday 5th November 2010, between 9.30 pm and 11.30 pm, Giovanni Morbin will present “Lid” at blank, on the occasion of the fourth edition of campo volo. This type of “one-off” expo, which was launched with a series of three events in succession, on 6th, 13th and 18th March (carried out respectively by Alis/Filliol, Ludovica Carbotta and Cosimo Veneziano), presents for the very first time a truly site-specific project by the artist from Veneto, until now known in Turin only by the visitors of Artissima, where he exhibited several times in the last couple of years. On the occasion of the 2008 edition, the presence of one of his works was used as a pretext to stir up a completely misleading controversy, which deliberately misinterpreted the meaning of the enterprise of this artist, who incidentally represents quite a rare case (at least as far as the Italian situation is concerned) of seriousness, passion and lucidity concentrated in the same person. This time, the result of Morbin's installation, as it will appear to the visitors on 5th November, is quite different, something that one could place “between Tiepolo and Superheroes”, quoting the words used by the author himself, when he talked about it to me and the members of Progetto Diogene, the group of artists from Turin invited to curate this fourth edition of campo volo. Since the context requires the presentation of an original work (even better if totally new) and limits its public fruition to one day only, for a few hours (two, this time), choosing Morbin - a bold and unpredictable performer, always inclined to “ethical”, acutely motivated provocation – was almost predictable, staying inside the boundaries of national contemporary artistic research. I had therefore no hesitation whatsoever in expressing my complete agreement with the orientation of the curators. (C. F.)