Paolo Piscitelli: The Broken Places /1

Paolo Piscitelli's third solo exhibition for e/static (consisting of recent works the artist has never showcased before, and created in the US, where he has been living since 2006) will be opening on Tuesday 9th October in Pittsburgh, PA, at the artist's new studio; subsequently, his pieces will be sent over to Italy, where they will be newly mounted at blank, in via Reggio 27 in Turin, where the 'Italian' opening will take place, at 8.30 pm on Friday 9th November 2012.
These places are geographically far away from one another, literally an ocean away. Moreover, the first one is a studio, while the second is an exhibition space, two very different dimensions, essentially antithetical. The studio embodies a private dimension, since it hosts the work during its birth and youth, before it approaches adulthood, when it leaves the studio and is ready to be set up in a public exhibition space.
In this case, the roles happen to be swapped, or better still, blurred, because the Pittsburgh studio – still ‘virgin’ territory, since Paolo just moved there – opens up to the public; on the other hand, in Turin, blank, by hosting almost immediately after the works previously exhibited in Pittsburgh, is infused with the freshness and constant instability which usually permeates the place where they were created, thus subsiding to the strength of novelty, instead of maintaining a rigid and impervious stance. Right in front of our very eyes (especially of those who will be able to see both exhibitions), an unusual phenomenon takes place: a largely obscure process is revealed, since the aspect of privacy is almost always inevitably absent by the time the exhibition is mounted and opened.
Other places are also involved in the process: Piscitelli’s old studio in Texas (from 2006 to the beginning of 2012), the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he worked one year ago for a month, Vermont, where he was artists in residence last October. His works were actually created there, before being sent to Pittsburgh to his new studio, which they permeated with their raw energy, just before being submitted once again to the public eye in Turin. This exhibition moves through time and space and is marked by an uninterrupted continuity, testifying the artist’s journey across different places, and tracing, through his works (which keep on changing while they travel, adapting to a variety of contexts), an invisible path which connects them, without ever reaching an end.