Il Segno del Tempo Gallery, based in Milan, has always been focused on young talented artists, and has the goal of promoting and supporting them nationally (through the gallery) and internationally (through shows in New York, Miami, San Francisco and Chicago). Recent exhibitions in Milan gallery were Olga Tobreluts and Ivan Olasiuk solo show (paintings) and partipated at MIA 2011 with Barone/Conte exhibition “Are you prepared?” (photography). At MIA 2012 the gallery will offer Barone/Conte again but with a new project, ” HOARDING OFFENDERS – My memories will never die”
The project was stimulated by the observation of socio-behavioral phenomenon of compulsive hoarding (disposophobia) . Today it is estimated that in the United States alone there are more than 2 millions compulsive hoarders . The approach of the two authors tends to aesthetic sublimation through the creation of “frames”, using windows as a support . The images make up a single project that has a strong identity as a whole, it declines in individual representations the tale of an imaginary world / with a strong attachment to reality. It makes pretty evident the critique of a consumerism that in the course of its development generated monsters, victims of their possession of “things” in numbers so large as to have completely filled their living space , people we imagine completely submerged inside their homes. The windows therefore lose their original function and acquire a new one: they are a curtain, a gash through which we can observe the man possessed by its objects; but the project also lends itself to the concept of identity and memory of the man himself. Indeed, the theme of memory is not marginal at all when connected to its opposite, oblivion. What does it mean to remember? It means to select pieces, moments of our lives. In this sense, if we want to find an analogy in literature, BARONE/CONTE’s hoarders are just like Borges’s Ireneo Funes who can remember everything, holding in his memory every shred of reality with which he comes in contact, who at the end will remain paralyzed by the enormous amount of his memories. And this is how physical paralysis becomes a metaphor for an existential paralysis, in Borges as in BARONE/CONTE’s “HOARDING OFFENDERS. My memories will never die”
Barone/Conte have been collaborating for several years. One is an artist, the other is a professional in advertising communication, the duo has combined in this work the particular visions of two apparently separate but increasingly converging worlds in the current language of contemporary art.
Veronica Conte (born 1977) graduated from Brera Accademy, initially directing her attention to the extreme use of the body in the language of film, theater and art. The search for identity became central to her work.
Umberto Barone (born 1978) moved to Milano after graduating in Communication from the University of Siena to assist some of the best photographers in fashion and advertising. Since 2004 he quit assisting and started working as a photographer himself. So far he has published two books (a third is coming out), he collaborates with various Italian and foreign publications and has worked on advertising campaigns .
Their previous project “Are you prepared?” was recently presented at PHOTO Vernissage in St. Petersbourgh Manege.
Il Segno del Tempo Gallery
Milano, Italy
