GIOVANNI GIARETTA
SELECTED WORKS
An inaccurate distance Video Full HD, 15 22 Italian with English subtitle 2014 The video is an attempt to grasp the relationship the translator Riccardo Bertani has with the notion of distance. Bertani worked as a farmer all his life and has never visited the countries he has written about. The camera tries to portray the intimacy of his house and look for distance within his domestic space. The video has been realised with the support of nctm e l arte. https://vimeo.com/114186689 Password: aid
An inaccurate distance, Still from video
View of the installation, De Ateliers, Amsterdam
Untitled (Portrait study) Video Full HD, 13 21 2012 The video documents the relationship between an entomologist with a few different species of butterfly. The gestures and the experience of an entomologist create a narrative between scientific description, language of play and choreography. https://vimeo.com/128477080 Password: ups
Untitled (Study portrait), Still from video
View of the installation Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, Venice
View of the installation, Scale di Montesanto, Naples
A thing among things Video Full HD, 7 13 2015 The video combines the recollection of visual memories of a blind person with close-ups of transparent minerals. The images work almost as a scenography open to different interpretations: as if to see something presumed to be something else. https://vimeo.com/128470332 Password: atat
A thing among things, Still from video
A thing among things, Still from video
View of the installation at Corridor Project Space, Amsterdam
View of the installation, Tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam
Everything into something else 35x42 cm C-print 2015 This work consists of pictures of mirrors that have lost the ability to reflect an image (bronze mirrors from the Egyptian and Greek periods). The camera can stand in front of them without being reflected and is able to observe the oxidized surface where no image can appear anymore. The film was inverted, presenting the print as a negative, so the light (necessary for an image formation) will touch the mirror s surface, giving an unexpected physical quality to it.
View of the installation in the studio
View of the installation in the studio
View of the installation, Marian van Zijll Langhout, Amsterdam
View of the installation, Van Zijll Langhout, Amsterdam
Bicycle Bicycle, Led light, battery Variable dimensions 2011 The light lamp of the bike was previously modified to charge itself when a person is cycling. The light keeps on shining in correspondence to the length of the journey and slowly fades out until it completely disappears. The bicycle was used everyday to travel to the exhibition space. Metaphorically the beam of light projects the journey; the energy of everyday travel translates into light.
View of the installation Fondazione Ratti, Como
During the entire duration of the exhibition Livret III at Motive Gallery in Amsterdam, the bicycle was used by the gallery owner moving from his home to the workplace. View of the installation Motive Gallery, Amsterdam
Moon Beard mirror, clamp, LED battery, sodium chloride Variable dimensions 2009 A small LED battery, held up by a clamp, points to a shaving mirror. These simple items settled together function as a rudimental projector. The mirror reflection recalls the shape of the moon. View of the installation, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene
View of the installation, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene
To make words become things and not events 35x42 cm C-print Series of 5 2014 The work consists of some images of my mother s handwritten transcriptions of popular songs. She is a singer who, being non-english speaking, cannot understand the meaning of the original words and through this process of transcribing, the song s lyrics become a new or imagined language. A selection was made of the lyrics that refer to geographical locations. The different places are only evoked through a bastardised English and as such only a stereotype remains; an unreachable reference point. The intimate translation that unintentionally results, creates a new landscape, the words becoming things or signs of a place that exists only in personal dreams.
View of the installation in the studio
Giovanni Giaretta / Renato Leotta Effetto Majorana (La Solfatara, recording of disappearance), 16 mm film 01 19 loop 2014 The video documents an exercise in disappearance within the space. An attempt to use the geological features of a landscape as a rudimental special effect. https://vimeo.com/120810511 Password: em
View of the installation at Fuori Campo, Siena
View of the installation at Fuori Campo, Siena
Untitled (Misteri d Italia) 06 07 loop 2015 The starting point for this work is a book of articles written by the Italian writer Dino Buzzati called Misteri d Italia. For one summer the writer travelled in some rural parts of Italy looking for legends, folkloric stories, paranormal or superstitions facts. He was more interested in the relation people had with different phenomena than the phenomenon itself. The video Untitled (misteri d Italia) shows a number of people interacting with the optical phenomenon of the gravity hill. A street where things appear to defy gravity, seemingly rolling uphill and not down. The work is based on found footage and the editing underlies the relation between ordinary objects and this illusionary aspect of the landscape. https://vimeo.com/125863797 Password: umi View of the installation
Untitled (Misteri d italia), Stills from video
Study for a drawing (completed by its own shadow) C - print 25x35 cm 2014
View of the installation
The uncanny parrot C-print 40x40 cm 2013 The c-print captures the moment in wich a parrot realizes that it is in front of a mirror.
View of the installation
Dans la Baleine Video, MiniDv, 08 25 2011 A laboratory with blue lights. Some details of natural landscapes. Mountain peaks lit by cold neon lights. Some artificial waterfalls. A jetty which is boxed between the walls, a painted backdrop. The piece was filmed inside the engine room which manages all the tanks at the Milan Aquarium, trying to observe it as a cinematographic apparatus. http://vimeo.com/29554273 password: dlb
Dans la baleine, Still from video
The House 140 slides Variable dimensions 2010-ongoing Genre films follow some aspects and cliches that make several movies look like the same each other and create a similar imaginary and atmosphere. In horror movies, architecture is often the main character, a frame around which and in which disparate situations weave together. This work comprises a collection of several architectures. So all the movies are reduced to their common denominator, dehydrating them in order to deprive these images of their references, forced to show themselves, all variations of the same element, revealing the same sign, hidden in an architectural skeleton, constantly renewed.
View of the installation, Cripta 747, Turin
Solving the dive Video Full HD, 9 15 2012 This video is filmed in collaboration with the ex-diver Nicola Marconi taken while training before diving in the pool, learning to fall in the best way.
View of the installation Macro Museum of Contemporary Art, Roma