Nicola Samorì
Campo dei miracoli
2022
Oils on paper applied on linen
500 x 800 cm
Courtesy Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin
Photo Rolando Paolo Guerzoni

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH NICOLA SAMORÌ

Ninety-nine words made me think of ninety-nine bodies and ninety-nine days, just over three months, the period of time during which my most complex work created in 2022 took shape: “Campo dei miracoli” (“Field of miracles”).
It is in this five by eight meter frame that rest perhaps ninety-nine – I have never counted them – bodies, a sort of derailed cataloging. Over eight years of accumulation to form what appears to be the bed of a dry river from which stones, vegetables and figures emerge.
Returning to the initial ninety-nine words, nine are missing: here they are.

Patrick Tuttofuoco
OUT OF BODY
2022
Polished and painted stainless steel, Portogallo pink marble
Courtesy Nilufar Galley, Schiavo Zoppelli Gallery

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH PATRICK TUTTOFUOCO

The expression OUT OF BODY indicates those experiences in which one perceives to “go out” of their physical body, projecting their own consciousness beyond bodily boundaries. We often speak of a journey of the soul, considered capable of freeing itself from the snares of the body where the purpose of this experience is to acquire a greater certainty of one’s spiritual reality. Such practices recur for example in Egyptian mythology, in the Pythagorean doctrine of Plato and the Neoplatonists, in Pliny the Elder, and in the general literature of visionary of various religious, spiritual and esoteric currencies, concerning projections or perceptual shifts in other dimensions of space and time.
These reflections serve as a prerequisite for starting a practice that sees objects as extensions of the body and as a possibility to perceive the creative experience not only through the direct relationship with the material, but as an evolution and extension of thought. If the human body can be experienced as a tool to achieve new visions of the world then, in a logic of transformation, it can even become itself the matter of the project.

100th edition of “99 words with”

Giulio Paolini

Giulio Paolini’s studio in Turin
Photo credit: Paolo Mussat Sartor
Courtesy Giulio and Anna Paolini Foundation

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH GIULIO PAOLINI

In an instant
I live here, I’m writing you from here and here
I intend to remain from now on.
From here, yes, precisely from here
one must look.
It is here that the mind rests:
not even a rampart of a thing,
a person, not even a sound,
announces itself in a void
full of nothing that
neither sees nor hears…
Yet it’s all normal:
seriously, it’s really like that.

[Giulio Paolini. Recital, Scritture in versi, 1987-2020, Vol. II, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, 2020, p.56]

Annamaria Ajmone
Preparatory studies of
La notte è il mio giorno preferito
2022
Photo Credit: Natália Trejbalová
Courtesy the Artist

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ANNAMARIA AJMONE

Jura, September 2021. Jean Marc, the ethologist who accompanies us howls, we wait in religious silence for an answer. I’m afraid to breathe. In the forest at night you wait. They suppose they might pass through this area. At night in the forest you perceive other creatures, you do not see them, you feel their eyes on your skin, while you search in that black thickness too.
Following animal tracks means abandoning our human way of looking at the world; borrowing the gaze of another creature, grasping its actions, reading space through another gaze. Trying to transform, the attempt is the first move.

Zilla Leutenegger working
Photo credit: Sebastian Rinderknecht

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ZILLA LEUTENEGGER

I like:
_23 degrees celsius (outside)
_Bergamasker Dogs
_kitchens
_the way home
_big feet
_the feeling after swimming
_green apples
_renting a car
_grand hotels
_gin tonics with a lot of tonic
_well-tailored pants
_melons
_clinking glasses
_order in the closet
_ being saved by a good DJ
_dancing
_clear water
_midnight blue
_early morning
_resting
_being alone but not lonely
_combination of numbers, colors and letters
_chocolate
_black eyes
_spicy food
_long introduction, short stories
_space drawings
_dialects
_vinegar
_stone floor
_calm feet
_bitter perfumes
_a little sore muscles
_humor
_talking with my cat
_sharp edges in drawings
_the salt of my tears
_white wine
_bitter sweets
_the beginning of a project
_a good sleep
_changing clothes

Luisa Rabbia working on
Birth
2017
Colored pencil on acrylic on canvas
108 x 202 in
Photo credit: David Dixon
Courtesy the artist

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH LUISA RABBIA

My work starts with a countless number of fingerprints on canvas, my approach is physical and intuitive. Whether I intertwine pencil lines or I scratch through layers of paint, marks accumulate over a large surface referencing both time and the responsibility that comes with every single action. I imagine our bodies immersed in invisible traces left by humanity over the course of time, small particles that we breathe in and out and that inevitably determine a present never disconnected from past and future. I see the fingerprints as fossils, traces that are there, just waiting to interact with the making of the painting.

Evan Roth
Landscapes
2020
Network located videos
Photo credit: Bruno Lopes, Red Lines with Landscapes, Portugal (Lisbon), Fidelidade Arte, January 31 – May 22, 2020, Lisbon

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH EVAN ROTH

My recent work concentrates on how bias affects systems. Our current network of buried glass strands did not descend from the cloud, but has a history dating back at least as far as the “All Red Line”, the name given to the first telegraph network to circumnavigate the globe. Otherwise known as the “Empire Girdle”, this cable landed only in areas shaded in red on maps depicting the British empire. These systems are narratives that are bent intentionally and unintentionally by the histories and biases of those with the power to define which way is up.

Irina Kirchuk
Cloudburst
Installation view
2018
Bold Tendencies Commissions
Photo credit: Damian Griffiths 

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH IRINA KIRCHUK

Our urban landscape.
The inconsequential and the unattended objects that fill the world with their material obsolescence and a petty and apparent functionality.
An absurd panorama.
Self-criticism, parody, sarcasm, humor, camouflage, irony, minimalism.
The symbolic and the obvious, the real and the fictional.

The discarded materials and its charm, a free record, unwanted, of our everyday.
Those aren’t solitary, lost and godforsaken bits, on the contrary, clues into worlds ruled by systems previously unknown.
Doors open to mystery, fantasy or fun.
Found objects isn’t only about saving resources, but also about pointing a finger to our own economic behavior.

Valentina Medda
Healing interventions for domestic wounds
Santarcangelo Festival_2019
Variable dimensions
acupuncture needles, house walls
Courtesy and photo credit: Claudia Borgia

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH VALENTINA MEDDA

“All you do is highlight what’s already there,” you once told me.
You hurt me – it sounded like an accusation.
But in the end…isn’t that what really matters – highlighting the existing?
Who am I to create? What needs to be created?

[Healing intervention for domestic wound_intervention#1 | NY, 2015]