Silvano Repetto: Useless performances at Villa Arconati

After the great success of his solo exhibition at the MASI - Museum of Italian Switzerland, Silvano Repetto (Swiss/Italian artist and performer) presents his latest works at the beautiful Villa Arconati, home of the FAR - Augusto Rancilio Foundation.

Repetto moves in the fields of painting, video, photography and above all in performance (on and in places around the world).

His "Useless Performances" are very famous for which he is collected in many national and international museums.

What they say about him: Of a Dadaist, post-conceptual Duchampian nature, partly fluxus, of pataphysical colouring, Silvano Repetto theorizes the absurd, the uselessness of his work starts from a playful, light, superficial attitude, which is nourished, however, in depth to the devices of waiting, of nullification of the word, of the strong gesture, of the peremptory sound, of figures such as Samuel Beckett or Buster Keaton. - *Viana Conti* (critic and art historian)

At the Chambers of the Seasons of Villa Arconati you will be able to see a selection of his most famous performances, and other brand new ones created on site, with irony and lightheartedness. These are photographs and videos inserted in the spaces of the Villa.

His works can also be found at the Kunsthaus of Zurich, the Republic and Canton of Ticino, the Muba Tourcoing Museum (France), Mamba Buenos Aires, 5610 Gallery Tokyo and many other public and private collections.

USELESS PERFORMANCE

Silvano Repetto is an artist who loves to play with art, he himself defines his performances as useless, moments of everyday life reversed, with a pinch of madness and poetry. His performances often arise from sudden inspiration and are immortalized by the artist through makeshift means. With his works, Repetto aspires to create amazement in the viewer, bringing him back for a moment to the innocence of childhood. As part of the pop-up projects, the performer has created compositions of images and videos, in which some of his performances will be presented. He is a video artist, but also a painter, photographer, producer, director and art promoter: a personality with many identities, to whom the term "unclassifiable" is suitable as he is capable not only of escaping categories, but also the systems of market and cultural industry. His works are mainly actions of which no trace remains, except in his stories, in self-portraits and self-recordings, almost always made in a daring manner. His performances are deliberately impossible missions: those that could succeed are of no interest to him since, according to his system, "failure" is precisely what legitimizes them and guarantees their success.         

With humor and without the desire to provide intellectual or symbolic interpretations, Silvano Repetto offers playful visions born from sudden inspirations and linked, in some cases, to the Arconati palace and garden, which overturn the logic and obviousness of things.

As Guglielmo Gigliotti, art historian and journalist, states, Repetto's works are "masterpieces of nothingness, monuments to nothingness and to the importance of unimportant things! In the era in which everyone wants to give meaning to everything, Repetto lets things without obvious meaning remain as they are, he doesn't change their value, he lets them happen..."

The Seasons Rooms of Villa Arconati will be overturned by useless performances: sumptuous and classic eighteenth-century stuccos contrasted with the art of the absurd.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1968 in Mendrisio (Ti-CH), he lives in Lugano and works in Chiasso. In 1992 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.  In 1993 he founded the IFDUIF Video Festival dedicated to video art which subsequently took place eight times. He is co-founder with Gianpaolo Minelli of the CACC, the Chiasso contemporary art center which lasts, by statute, only one year.  In 2002 he founded IL DAV International, Video Art Deposit in Chiasso. In the same year he co-founded the Max Huber Kono Foundation, Chiasso, with Aoi Huber Kono and Caroline Holdener where he actively participated, over three years, in the creation of the Max Huber Kono Museum which was inaugurated in Chiasso in 2005. In 2008 he re-founds the Chiasso Contemporary Art Center with the art critic Prof. Gigliotti. He is also a producer of artists' films such as those dedicated to Gianpaolo Minelli, Chiara Dynis and Mirko Aretini's latest film "NDE" shot in Las Vegas (USA).

The exhibition will be open to visitors every Sunday from 02 June to 24 November 2024

Free entry, included in the entrance ticket to Villa Arconati

For informations:

info@fondazioneaugustorancilio.com | www.villaarconati-far.it

+39 02.350 2217 | +39 393.8680934