Contra Me Giusto: Vale Palmi brings to the LABS Gallery the unconfessable anxieties.

 

 

Cross the blood, to try to find the words. Even when words are useless, sometimes even harmful. And yet necessary. Contra Me Giusto', is the first solo exhibition of the young Bolognese artist Vale Palmi, the proposal of Labs Gallery (Via Santo Stefano, 38 - Bologna) for the Bologna Art Week, curated by Gaia Fattorini. 

 

The exhibition opens on Saturday, February 2, on the occasion of Art City White Night, from 8 to midnight, with an installation specially created for the exhibition and the projection of a video and exhibition of photos derived from her performances, which revolve around a disenchanted and mature reflection on themes that we very often tend to remove.

 

The challenge Vale Palmi confronts the viewer with is disturbing: it forces him to come to terms with death, which in a world that tends to deny its existence and aspires to eternal life, in Vale Palmi's work is an attractive companion. Her details end up becoming not only socially acceptable, but even aesthetically sensual.

 

La Guerra di Piero (Piero's War), a site-specific installation that will be presented on Saturday evening on the occasion of the Art City White Night, even if it can make you think of a song by De Andrè, actually refers to Pier delle Vigne, which Dante inserts in the XIII canto dell'inferno, in the circle of suicides. His body is transformed into a shrub that, if broken, bleeds and speaks. He is condemned to an eternal punishment every time someone tears off a piece, and yet, precisely because in life he has unjustly inflicted a punishment on himself that was not his fault, he has things to say and tell. To listen to Pier delle Vigne, to read his words, you have to get close to the bush and to approach it you have to cross a pool of blood. Piero's verb is an emblematic accusation, which the human being has the moral duty to know. But that lake of blood that in our iconic memory recalls the dead by outrage, is a border and a line of protection. It prevents us from getting closer, torturing us with a distance that creates fear and curiosity, resignation and guilt. Only those who have the courage to take a stand and decide to overcome the obstacle, remove the taboo, face the disturbing spectres of their own home and trample on blood, will be able to read what Piero has to tell us.

 

Around this perturbing installation Vale Palmi exposes his world of obscene yet delicate memories, using a wide variety of languages and materials with maturity. He reflects on macabre details, such as blood and the decomposition of bodies, and leads them back to private areas, made of corners and tin buckets that can turn into limited spaces and infinite containers.

 

Vale Palmi (Bologna, 1994) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna where she followed the chair of Painting under the guidance of Prof. Bruno Benuzzi. She participated in the following exhibitions: MediterrArte (Milan, 2017), Take me (I'm Yours) by Christian Boltanski (Bologna, 2017), The Interior Sea (Beirut, 2018) and Before and After Nature at the Galleria d'Arte Maggiore in Bologna with the series of five photographs of the performance "Sub-Limo/Sub- Limen". The work received a mention from the jury of the Premio Zucchelli on the occasion of Art Up and was purchased by GAM.