Namsal Siedlecki. Braccio (Trevis Maponos), 2019. Copper, wax, coins, zinc. Each element 64 x 10 x 9 cm. Courtesy Magazzino
Magazzino is happy to announce A, the first solo exhibition by Namsal Siedlecki with the gallery. The exhibition will open on Wednesday 15 May 2019 and will last until 15 July 2019.
Siedlecki has decided to elaborate a double approach, linked to separate trajectories having the common idea of desire and its fulfilment. On one hand, the artist has gathered approximately one-hundred thirty thousand coins among the ones that are picked up daily from the Trevi Fountain, and that for several reasons (non-existing coinages, too low exchange values, damage or modification to coins) are not exchanged and are simply piled up and put away. Medals, tokens, carved or modified coins do represent for Siedlecki a whole of desires, stuck in a sort of limbo, waiting to be fulfilled.
In the same limbo, we can imagine the votive figures discovered in Clermont-Ferrand (in the French region of Auvergne) as a result of an excavation carried out in the Sixties, in a well from the Gallic era. These votive figures carved in beech wood, similarly to modern ones represent parts of the human body, very often a hand holding a spherical object (a stone, a coin) as a wish for prosperity and fertility. The artist has appropriated these figures scanning them in 3D and obtaining wax moulds, which will be then processed in a long-duration galvanic bath that will progressively hide the original features and connotations and will deform the original shape. As in the recent series Gandhãra shown in Berlin, Siedlecki aims to reflect, through this exaggeration of the galvanic process, on the idea of time and sedimentation: the tank used for the galvanization is a further vessel, like the fountain or the well, where time acts directly on the objects and modifies them, confounding and hiding their contours.
The performative and choral transformation of the individual elements that form the conceptual humus of the entire exhibition, is maybe the main aspect of the processual nature of the installation in the gallery. In this perspective, the coins will assume different shapes, even becoming supports for the galvanized fragments. On some of them, the idea of time will be evident as a stratification and deformation; others will be actors in the transformation and used as anodes in the galvanic tank which, over the entire duration of the exhibition, will act on the works condensing time in a physical copper residue on the surface of the sculptures. The result will be a continuous transformation of space between raw forms and finished objects, the accumulation, variation and layout of the individual elements.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a critical essay by Ilaria Gianni, art critic and curator based in Rome.
Namsal Siedlecki was born in 1986, Greenfield, USA – he lives and works in Seggiano, Italy. In 2015, he won the 4th edition of the Premio Moroso and was appointed the Cy Twombly Italian Affiliated Fellowship in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome. He has recently exhbited his works in several institutions, among them: Villa Medici, Rome, 2019; Chertlüdde, Berlin, 2019; 6th Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, 2018; Fondazione SmArt, Rome, 2018; Galeria Boavista, Lisbon, 2017; Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon, 2017; American Academy in Rome, 2016; Villa Romana, Florence, 2016; Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, 2016; Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, 2015; Antinori Art Project, Bargino, 2015; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2014; Museo Apparente, Naples, 2014; Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome, 2013; Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice, 2012; Cripta747, Turin, 2013. From 2008 to 2013 he run the independent space GUM Studio, first in Carrara then in Turin.