ARTgallery
Site Specific Art by Commission
Ginger House Project is an art gallery which produces unique works on commission, specially requested by the collector.
The brief for the realisation of the works featured within the Ginger House Project is based on two concepts: hospitality as a welcome to Milan, and a reinterpretation of the iconic places in a city just waiting to be discovered.
The gallery owner personally chose these themes and commissioned the works to the following artists: Mattias Schnabel, Ludovica+Roberto Palomba, Raffaele Barbuto, Fausto Caletti, Carlo William Rossi+Fabio Mureddu, with the support of the curator Rossella Farinotti.
A striking example to explain the transition from commissioning of a piece and realisation, is the work "Alano" which the gallery owner strongly wanted, in order to offer the welcome home of a pet on a short-term tourism hospitality project.
Below are the works created for the Ginger House Art Gallery, explained by Rossella Farinotti.
ARTISTS
GINGER
Carlo William Rossi
+ Fabio Mureddu
The photographic work, created by William Rossi and Mureddu, represents a poetic synthesis of the collaboration between the two artists. A man, a "ginger" in fact, is immortalized from behind, in a plastic pose, but strongly human, almost touching. The subject escapes the eye, is thoughtful.
A romantic thought underlined by the chromatic patina chosen as if to underline an escape from reality. That of "ginger" is in fact a dream world, an escape. The work, small, refined and installed on plexiglass, is the symbol of the house and its polite guest. Those reds, pinks and blues, delicate and surreal, return a subtle hint of colors that do not exist within the Ginger House, and which must therefore be found in the characteristics of those who live there
ALANO
Matthias Schnabel
Video as an ideal means of translating an illusion and the idea of something animated.
Alano is a video installation created on commission, specifically for the Ginger House. The installation symbolizes the many emotions shared between the most intellectually advanced animal, man, and this portrayal; loved, chosen and faithful. These emotions are preciously encapsulated in a few slow, surreal, and magical frames and repeated digital movements. The work, also created with the aesthetic inspiration of a religious icon, highlighted by a moving luminous halo, is animated in an almost naive style, and has retro, but current visual impacts placing itself firmly in the present. The play on reflections created by water digitally - which indicates a reference to various works by the artist created precisely with this element - contributes to celebrating the "Great Dane icon". A symbol which protects the house and watches over its inhabitants.
41
Ludovica+Roberto Palomba
41 is a gesture, a creative sign made possible by technology.
41 is also a story, the eternal story, often repeated between those who own the work and those who imagine it.
41 characterizes the entire living area of this house ‘invading’ the various environments from the sofa area to the kitchen and it is clearly visible from the entrance.
PARALLEL LINES
Fausto Caletti
The relevance of everyday materials in artistic practice is a natural, immediate reference to American Minimal Art. A use in which the simplicity of form, the energy of matter and its relationship with the surrounding space represented the driving force of getting things done. Fausto Caletti creates a site-specific work in complete relationship with the space. More than a dialogue, it creates a necessary, essential relationship with the structure of the apartment. The home's heating system dictated the retention of pre-existing connections. Caletti therefore, starting from mere practical functionality, identifies and creates a gilding of the tubes, to indicate aesthetic harmony. Two simple parallel ducts reveal their function here, becoming the symbol of a Milan that optimises everything.
Milan, the city known for ennobling industrial work, redesigning it and then showing it to the world. The Parallel lines title is inspired by the Blondie album, one of Fausto Caletti’s icons of reference.
ALPI
Ludovica+Roberto Palomba
If we think of the mountains, we imagine white peaks full of snow, or ice, which go from earth to sky. This external part contains immense treasures made of minerals, earth, fragments, water, clay. Our wall too is driven by the different strength of the elements which, like the Alps, advance into the terrain becoming a corner, a peak separating the full from the empty. Just as it happens under the mountains, the clay, the water, and the colors of the earth push the full mass, deforming the wall with a strange, angled trajectory advancing into the space of the apartment. We called it Alps because it was inspired by this mountain range, which is part of Italy, and of neighbouring states, beautiful and unique in all of Europe. This mountain range embraces Milan, with wonderful views also with the colors of sunset.
NON SONO IO CHE AMATE
MA CHI MI ABITA
Raffaele Barbuto
"It is not I who you love, but who lives in me" (Roger Munier, "The least of the world", 1982). The analogy of living in a space and experiencing the art of Raffaele Barbuto.
The impact is misleading, it reminds one of a large colorful advertising billboard, layered by the passage of time. But then, the great work of Barbuto, confronted with more in-depth scrutiny, is a macro-world of languages, fragments, shapes and materials that, by looking over it more closely, shows anatomies, expressions and gestures that remind one of natural elements, such as leaves and details. Of shapes. Or such as dynamic curves of landscapes and movements in thought.
"You do not love a place but those who live there," writes Roger Munier. The house is made by those who created, lived, loved, and hated it. The house is the most intimate, contained, mysterious and personal living space: it represents that one moment of pause and warmth. The domestic walls are in fact the refuge of past, present, or future life. Barbuto's work created for Ginger House starts right here, as the title underlines. It is not I who you love, but who lives in me. Through his great work with many facets, created specifically for the space of the house in Porta Venezia, the artist indicates that the traces we leave in inhabited space represent the living essence of that place. The home belongs to those who lived in it. The walls don't matter, what matters is the history of the stories experienced in there, of the memories, of the pains, and of the joys. This is home.
CARILLON
Fausto Caletti
A few elements in pencil create a fairytale micro-world referring to a still vivid memory, mixed with characters inspired by a drawing by Elsa Schiaparelli, which Caletti has decided to aesthetically represent through machine embroidery. The work, a large wall tapestry, hints at a historic area of Milan where, until a few years ago, there was an amusement park. This was the former Varesine area, where the new urban area of Porta Nuova stands today. In the 1960s, this territory saw the formation of a small amusement park, operational from 1973 to 1998. It is not easy to think of a playful Milan. This Italian metropolis is a serious city, with intense work and fast relationships. This is why the formal choice of the carousel, represented by the animals populating it, is not at all canonical. The carousel takes on a double meaning here: that of simple entertainment for all ages and that of swirling perpetual motion. Milan is therefore a circular city which seduces and renews. Milan is a fair of vanity which accumulates the new along with the old, in an ever-changing cultural mix.
OUR ART CURATOR
Rossella Farinotti
Rossella Farinotti is a Contemporary Art Critic, Curator and Journalist. She writes for magazines such as "Flash Art Italia", "Zero.eu", "Telescope", "Arte", "Exibart", "Pagina99". Executive director of the Gio ’Pomodoro archive (Milan) since 2016; Curatorial Consultant for Sergio Rossi The Magic Kingdom and the Kooness.com platform; Artistic Director of the Citadel of the Archives of the Municipality of Milan and Guest Professor of the Master Art Market at the Catholic University of Milan; in 2013 she published il Quadro che visse due volte, on the relationship between Art and Cinema. She has lived and worked between Milan and Chicago since 2014.