Luca Vitone: Una domenica a Wiepersdorf / A Sunday in Wiepersdorf

On The 4th of December 1996 at Wiepersdorf's Künstlerhaus Schloss, in what had been Bettina Von Arnim Brentano's mansion in Brandenbourg, Luca Vitone launched the installation “Ein Sonntag in Wiepersdorf... Ich möchte nichts machen, nur hören...[A Sunday in Wiepersdorf.. I don't want to do anything but listen]”. An overt homage to the Romantic writer, the work was based on a sound recording done by the artist himself in the surroundings of the mansion. Four beds placed so as to form a cross, with their heads touching each other, invited to a sort of contemplative listening, at the same time relaxed and attentive, of the sounds diffused by four loudspeakers in the corners of the space.
Fifteen years later, that same installation is to be presented once again – or, better, re-created – at blank, the space in via Parma (perfectly suitable according to Vitone), using the same elements from 1996, while the audio part has undergone an accurate cleaning and balancing of the sounds, after the transfer of the original recording into a digital file.
The contest is totally different, unavoidably, because this time everything happens here and now, in another place, fifteen years later. These have been fifteen fundamental years for Luca Vitone's artistic evolution: at the time he was an emerging young artist, already with a clear-mind on which territories deserved to be explored and where to aim his gaze; now, a definitely shaped author, thanks to his lexicon's clearness and the consistency of the targets he achevied.
For the first two days following that of the opening (the 26th May), the installation will be open from 4.30 pm till 7.30 pm: from then till the 5th of November 2011 it will be possible to visit by appointment. At the end there will be a presentation of a special limited edition cd featuring the sound file, enriched by the reading (done by a German actress) of a text by Bettina Von Arnim Brentano.

The work of artist Luca Vitone (1964) began in the second half of the ’80s. It focuses on the idea of the place, inviting us to recognize something we already know, defying the conventions of mutable, faded memory that characterize the present. His work explores the way places are identified through cultural production: art, cartography, music, cuisine, political associations, ethnic minorities. Vitone bridges the gap between the sense of loss of place characteristic of the postmodern and the ways in which feelings of belonging arise in the intersection of personal and collective memory. He reconstructs and invents forgotten paths to reconfigurate his own personal geography. Since 2006 he has been teaching sculpture at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan.

Luca Vitone’s work has been shown in public and private space both in Italy and
abroad, including PS1, New York (solo show, 2000); Accademia di Francia, Villa Medici, Roma (1999); Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma (solo show, 2000); Lenbachaus Kunstbau, München (2001); National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow (2002); 50th Venice Biennal, Venezia (2003); ARC Musée d’Arte Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2003); Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (solo show, 2004); Villa Arson, Nice (2004); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Roma (2005); Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg (solo show, 2006); Sharjah Biennial; OK Centrum, Linz (solo show, 2007); MART, Rovereto (solo show, 2007); Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo (solo show, 2008); XIII Biennale Internazionale di Scultura di Carrara (2008); Nomas Foundation, Roma, (solo show, 2009); MAXXI, Roma (2010).