Vincenzo Schillaci. MikE

Operativa Arte contemporanea is pleased to present MikE, the second solo show byVincenzo Schillaci in the gallery space.
Vincenzo Schillaci conceived the exhibition as he came across a weird and fascinating story that took place in the mid ‘40s in a small village of Colorado (USA): when Mike, a Wyandotte rooster happened to survive headless for 18 months after he had it cut off by its owner with an axe blow. Surprisingly, it stayed alive fed from a dropper with a mix of milk and water by the owner himself.
Hence, to Vincenzo Schillaci, Mike turns into a pretext to point out a certain strictness in contemporary man’s behavior. The current lack of existential benchmarks leads him to give identical responses toward different inputs, acting “on instinct”, as well as Mike did without its head.
The artist decides to start right from the “head”, using it as modular measure to make all these thoughts converge into a symbolic matrix. Taking a cue from the Policletus Canone, he creates a new series of works looking for an ideal creative relation between them, in which each of them is able to claim its own originality. Through stating values based on the content - rather than a purely formal practice - and through showing how even simpler shapes could be feasible breakthroughs to a complex modernity.
The ideas and gestures that generated each work often seem to be forgotten along the path, hidden by coats of stucco, layer by layer, letting from time to time a composition, which fragments in some spots the surface with a brush stroke or a discreet gesture, arises. Such disruptions on an otherwise virgin surface, are necessary to increase the painting mystery, raising questions about its construction development and its status as an object in reality, in a perpetual relation between past and future.
Vincenzo Schillaci (Palermo, 1984) lives and works between Rome and Palermo. Among the recent solo exhibitions: Figures (?), In Berlin project, Berlin, 2018; Figures (?), Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea, Milan, 2018; Dove Nessuno Va, Operativa Arte Contemporanea, Rome, 2016; La Vita Rapita, Komplot, Bruxelles, 2014; Ente da fare, Cripta 747 at Basement Franco Noero, Turin, 2013. Among the group shows: Il Vello D’Oro, Giorgio Galotti, Turin, 2018; La Febbre, Manifesta 12, Palazzo Mazzarino, Palermo, 2018; Twiner#5_ La Joie de Vivre, Centrale del Tennis, Foro Italico, Rome, 2017; La mostra Bianca, Operativa Arte Contemporanea, Rome, 2017; WAX, Galleria Francesco Pantaleone, Palermo, 2016; Le Associazioni Libere, La Maison Rouge, Paris, 2012.

Opening Saturday, December 15th, h 7pm 


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