The Bay Window Project: Luana Perilli

THE BAY WINDOW PROJECT

Six Artists in a Frame
curated by sybin

OPENING: Thursday 22 July at 7:30 pm
Until Thursday 12 August.

SybinQ Art Project
The window on Cleveland Street
London W1T 6NW

Tube: Great Portland Street
(the window is visible when Cleveland St meets Carburton St)

Information: sybin@inwind.it

The Bay Window Project continues exploring the concepts of perception and representation by using the ordinary frame of a window as a display device, disconnecting it from its normal function of a private threshold.

The second artist invited to exhibit in The Bay Window is LUANA PERILLI. 

(Born in Rome, 1981, where she currently lives and works).

Exhibiting in London for the first time, Luana’s choice of expression is focused on language, instruction for use and memory. She is interested in the concept of refrain, of breaking a sequence and therefore disconnecting the objects from their normal function, making them, according to Duchamp’s lesson, “bachelors”. Perilli uses the mediums in a spurious way, putting audio and video in relation to other forms of narrative by images. Her research started through theatre, where a compromise between the scenic illusions and the representation of reality always stands: since then, she has been looking for a relation between automatisms and their reproducibility.

For The Bay Window Project, Luana is presenting the video Sì Dolce è il Tormento, 2009 

(duration: 1’09’’. Courtesy: The Gallery Apart, Rome).

The title – So Sweet is the Torment – refers to a tune conceived by the Italian composer Monteverdi in the XVII century for a castrato voice. In a video which features objects, the castrato is perceived as the first bachelor, a human being deprived of his reproductive function and turned to a full-blown singing machine. In opposition to this, ordinary objects are shown coming to life, satisfying that little poetic childhood fantasy about the secret life of toys when the house is empty. However, these objects cannot have a life of their own: the imprint of those who inhabited the house for a temporary period of time and were then replaced by others determines their will. In a present time characterised by people’s frantic mobility, the concept of home has become transient, and houses are transformed into spaces concentrating the residual energy of different lives. The objects are then silent witnesses of desires, frustrations, hopes, dreams and little daily cruelties of the household occupants. The video spies on them behaving in a passionate and incongruent way, as to summarise in a whole act their unresolved wish of becoming human, which, according to the artist, is often imbued with cynicism. 

To respect The Bay Window’s neighborhood, the video will be shown with the sound at the opening only and will then be projected muted from 9 to 11:30 pm every day.

The Bay Window Project is kindly supported by Invite Me to Dinner

NEXT: SALVATORE MAURO in August.

Mario (a post for connoisseurs)

22 July 2010.

The Bay Window is officially turned into a light projection box. Meaning: if you happen to stroll by Cleveland street, you will bump into Luana Perilli's magnificent video.


No picture can give it justice (especially if made by me and my antediluvian camera), therefore you will need to wait that my confidence in using Final Cut increases just that tiny little bit in order to edit another video, possibly in a better way than this.

The second Bay Window Project taught me a couple of important things that other budding curators might find useful:

The first: if you are projecting a video outdoor, in London, in the month of July, check the sunset's precise time before sending the press release out. This will avoid you panicking because at 7:30 pm you can't see anything and start hoping, wishing and praying that people will arrive the usual late. Which, in fact, for once doesn't happen.

The second: no matter how big the problem is, there is always a Plan B concealed as an ingenious idea. In our case, a little monitor with the video on in the lower part of the window solved the trouble of the poor visibility and became quite performative.

Finally, the third is Mario.
Mario is the famous art critic you must know and have to have at your openings. As reserved and uncatchable as Charles Saatchi, this eminent intellectual rounds on exhibitions undisturbed and has the power to launch or demolish whoever at glance. From where his words will fall upon you, is not for you to know. If he reviews a show, no one who attended is really sure they have seen him there. Most of all, Mario is so ineffable and so incredibly famous at the same time, that there is the tendency to forget his name.

A - You know, I know that famous art critic...
B - Do you?
A - Yes, you know...he's a very famous one...you must know him! Oh God, what was his name again?
B - (encouraging) Mario?

That's it! Mario.
Mario is everywhere, and there is always a Mario for every opening. In the end, aren't we all waiting for Mario?

I would like to thank the artist, G2, my G, curator Francesca Cavallo from cosmicmegabrain, Alessia, Tati and all the others who attended the opening, making it a very nice and funny evening.

Coffee and TV: the next Bay Window Project

Tuesday 20 July.

Italian artist Luana Perilli (pictured) is in London for the first time for her solo show in The Bay Window Project. She's been traveling a lot lately between Rome, Milan and Naples, where she is having a residency at the PAN Museum.

We talk a lot about Naples' ill famed Spanish Areas, where she is actually living: after 9 pm there is a sort of curfew and you see no one around. After a shameless questioning (who are you, what you are doing here, how long are you staying for, who do you know), the owner of the bar where she goes everyday for a coffee decided that she is "not bothering anyone. Yet."

She likes London. The first impression is what it counts: I warn her that you may love it or hate it, it seems to be a very immediate reaction for every European. Black or white, no halfway house.

Before throwing ourselves into the setting up of the next Bay Window Project, I take her around the area to do some very essential tasks: grocery shopping. Very intellectual, but my opinion is: to learn something about a new country, you must start from the food. Then, after having made sure that we weren't going to starve in the following days, we go gallery spotting, straight into London's evening life.

Our Habda is opening a show at Medcalf: Alex Heaton, with Abyssal Worpeltinger. 

After a two-weeks break from the art world, it's nice to find the soft hubbub of an opening again, seasoned with smelling-good hamburgers that are being cooked outside. We exchange impressions on the show and are quite impressed by the huge paintings representing imaginary mountain landscapes covered in snow.

Back home, we wait for our men to arrive: they have the same name, and they both are late. My G. went to a congress and the following drinks, Luana's G2 is arriving from Heathrow: "I still have 18 stops ahead!" an SMS she receives complain. We try the video on the window: tracing paper is stuck on the glass, the size adjusted, the decision to blacken the lower part of the window and to project just on the upper part made. Si Dolce e' il Tormento, the tune that accompanies and gives the title to the video, fills the room in loop. So sweet is the torment, but I would listen to it over and over again (and so will the public on the opening day, because we are leaving the sound on just for that night!) The moving objects reflect themselves in the windows of the building in front of us. Luana peeks at it from behind the tracing paper, and is happy about the effect.

People already have started to look up from the street, intrigued.