PAST TO THE FUTURE

Holder of a color, the “blu Stampone”, the artist born in Cluses, France, in 1974 and active between Teramo, Rome and Bruxelles, is among the guests of the next Venice Biennale (within the Cuban Pavilion).

Meanwhile, he has never ceased to feed his relationship with Prometeo Gallery Ida Pisani, which opens on March 22, 2022 his new personal exhibition with inedited works, including the by now famous "short circuits" of quotations from masterpieces of the history of art, which take the form of fascinating training compendiums through the work of the artist. 

Thus, for example, Giuseppe Stampone, in one of the tables on display, portrays himself with the meticulousness of Diego Velasquez, while the psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung sits in front of his canvas, in an atelier characterized by Albertian perspectives, but with details that recall a Flemish interior. The work also features the portrait of his partner, the artist Maria Crispal, who composed the poem Cara Terra Guerra (Death Earth War) specifically for the exhibition, and whose presence contributes to the symbolic title of the work: Holy Family.

“To dilate time, of doing and observation: this is another essential paradigm, which in this personal exhibition emerges with extreme clarity through a reasoned selection of recent works created with BIC pen on board and paper”, Lorenzo Madaro writes in his critical text. As a true argonaut (or rather artonaut), Stampone attributes a formative, pedagogical value to his slow technique, reminding the viewer of the time needed to learn through study.

For years, in fact, the artist has referred to Global Education (2004-2018) as his great collective project that aimed at making literate, but also at providing new insights, through works full of re-enactments within them.

"In the ultimate era of what is sudden, Stampone instead brings us back to a dilated time - as Madaro points out -, that of the dimension of doing with a deliberately artisan inspiration that rejects the imposed time and also obsessively focuses on what is necessarily enormous and evident”.

Madaro also quotes some examples of masterpieces filtered and updated by Stampone, through BIC on table, as a "clever photocopier" (the definition comes directly from the artist): «Nomadic is also Stampone, first of all for his ability to range from sacred images to the history of painting, as happens with the San Girolamo in the studio by Antonello Da Messina (1474-1475 ca.) or with the Wanderer above the sea of fog by Caspar David Friedrich, to icons of the twentieth century, from Fidel Castro to many others: all of them live the tables and cards, together with the Afghan women, the wanderer young children who observe, amazed, the metropolis, and again the reinterpretation of Giorgione's Storm, which highlights the artist's commitment to the great theme of emigration».

The eternal utopia of learning lessons for the future, by re-tying the threads of history, is invoked both by the title of the exhibition, Past to the Future, and by Rosella Farinotti, author of the other critical text of the project: "Working on the past, in fact , means analyzing the present “. In a today where war is no longer the faded and confined spectrum of History, Farinotti attributes to Stampone's portrait of Mussolini the power to instill fear, as an instrument of defense against the negative consequences of tyrannical power, which is also expressed in the gestural rhetoric of a finger raised to heaven as a sign of victory. Consequences that can be clearly seen in the works on display, for example among the rubble overlooked by two children from behind, innocent spectators of an eternal return that Farinotti associates with famous cinematic sequences, such as that of the encounter between the American soldier and the child of the film Paisà (1946) by Roberto Rossellini.

Among the other recent events that involve Giuseppe Stampone, there is the exhibition "VILLA ROMANA - FELLOWS 2019 / 2020 / 2021", at the Kunstverein Braunschweig in Germany (which opens on March 11, 2022), as the result of the "Villa Romana Award" won by Stampone in 2021 together with three other international artists: Pauline Curnier Jardin, Lene Markusen and Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi.

Biography

He lives and works between Teramo, Bruxelles and Rome.

Giuseppe Stampone has been a member of The American Academy of Rome since 2013, he has been partner of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in New York and Associated member of Villa Romana in Florence since 2017.

His works have been exhibited in international exhibitions, museums and foundations including:

Biennale Mongolia 2020; Biennial of Architecture in Seoul, South Korea (2017); Trieannal of Ostenda, Belgium (2017); Base progetti per l’arte, Firenze (2017); Fuori Uso, Pescara (2016);  56th International Art Biennial of Venice, Italy (2015); Group exhibition “Black on White”, American Academy, Rome (2015); Au rendez-vous des amis, Fondazione Burri, Città di Castello (2015); “The Idea of Realism”, American Academy, Rome (2013); Biennial of Kochi-Muziris, Kerala, India (2012); 11th Biennial of L’Avana, Cuba (2012); Biennial of Liverpool, UK (2010); 14th and 15th Quadriennial of Rome, Italy (2004 – 2008); Museum of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, U.S.A (2016); “Welcome” American Academy, Rome, (2008); Art Kunsthalle of Gwangju, South Korea; Wilfredo Lam  Contemporary Art Center of L’Avana, Cuba;  MAXXI – National Art Museum of XXI Century of Rome, Italy; MACRO – Contemporary Art Museum in Rome, Italy; Foundation Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy; Triennial Bovisa, Milan, Italy; Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland; GAMeC – Modern and Contemporary Museum of Art, Bergamo, Italy; The Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn – NYC, U.S.A.

His works are included in institutional collections including: Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TX; MAXXI Museum, Rome, Italy; Foundation of Biennial of Kochi-Muziris, Kerala, India; Foundation of Biennial of Sidney, Australia; Foundation of Quadriennial of Rome, Italy; MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy; Phelan Foundation, New York, U.S.A.; GAMeC Museum of Bergamo, Italy; Wilfredo LAM Contemporary Art Museum, L’Avana, Cuba; Birbragher Foundation, Bogotà, Colombia; La Farnesina Collection, Rome, Italy; La Gaia Foundation, Busca, Italy; Pecci Contemporary Art Museum, Prato, Italy. Giuseppe Stampone is represented by Prometeo Gallery of Milan-Lucca, Italy, MLF Gallery of Bruxelles and Eduardo Secci Florence, Italy. Gallery solo shows by Prometeo Gallery: Emigration Made Pavilion 148 (2015), Global Education (2012), The Rules of the Game (2010); by Galleria MLF: EUROPE VS EUROPE (2016), Welcome to Gransasso (2019); by Eduardo Secci: Precipitato formale (2018).

INFO:

Giuseppe Stampone
Past to the Future
23.03.2022 - 06.05.2022
Texts by Rossella Farinotti and Lorenzo Madaro
Opening: 22.03.2022, from 6pm to 9pm

Free admission with Green Pass

Prometeo gallery Ida Pisani
Via Privata G. Ventura 6, Milano
Info: tel. +39 02 83538236 - info@prometeogallery.com

Prometeo Gallery reminds you that it is mandatory to wear a mask for the entire duration of the event and to maintain social distancing. Body temperature will be measured at the entrance, and if it exceeds 37.5 °, access will not be allowed.