Contemporary Cluster, Turnover, solo show Clement Mancini
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Contemporary Cluster, Rome: a fluid space where contemporaneity and tradition merge

The word ‘cluster’ means conceptually approaching and observing dynamics between apparently distant elements that generate circular energy. In conversation with Giacomo Guidi

Contemporary Cluster doesn’t seek for definition

It seems more appropriate to describe what Contemporary Cluster is by saying what is not: it’s not a conventional art gallery, an artist-run space, a residency; yet it’s each one of them. Contemporary Cluster doesn’t seek for definition. It’s a creative hub for ideas and projects regarding art, music, design, architecture. A hybrid and open space at the intersection where disciplines (although already the same notion of discipline can be misunderstanding) coexist, redefining themselves every time they meet each other.

Collaboration is the key. An opportunity for creative people come together in a participative way. And Giacomo Guidi, the artistic director with more than twenty years of experience in the cultural field, knows the art institutions of his territory, the city of Rome, with his double nature of historical heritage and a underground scene. He also knows the importance of studying the past, the historical movements such as the avantgardes that can be really understood only today, to move with agility in the present and de-construct what it’s not working for him and his project.

Guidi underlines the ability of observing, of being in constant flux and itinerant. No wonder the collaborations that he creates are not strictly linked to one physical space, (ie. Palazzo Brancaccio in Rome, the gallery space), but are rather happening in different parts of Italy, simultaneously. He knows what he doesn’t want his project to be. What he doesn’t want to know is what it might become.

A retrogressive behavior: Contemporary Cluster moving its steps from the avant-gardes of the past

Contemporary Cluster was born in 2016, in the moment Giacomo Guidi realized that it was about time to redefine the concept of a contemporary art gallery. The gallery is not a closed space but is what happens around it, thanks to the synergy of different people. From here the desire to expand it at a programmatic level of image, of finality. The idea was to regenerate, redetermine a new modeby looking at the past.

«Nothing is really new. The right behavior to assume is the retrogressive one: the redefinition of some dictates that starts from the simultaneous observation of a much broader phenomenology», claims Guidi.

«The gallery has to go back to a broader propulsive attitude that is typical of what were the avant-gardes of the past. The artistic movements of the past had a much broader and open attitude. If we think about Fluxus, or to artists anyway within their work was a constant inclusion of performative elements, or elements related to sound art, or the concepts of Situationism, performance there was also the idea of place as a refuge for a community, aggregating places».

The concept of ‘Contemporary’ and the problem of linguistics

The abuse of language de-potentiates the words themselves. «Contemporary means in time, with-time, for-time, about-time. It means something happening right now. at this precise moment. A phenomenon in transit whatever it is, it cannot be defined, it can only be observed. Whereas everyone has the attitude to define, to collect, to perimeter what happens in the contemporary. Instead, the contemporary is only to be observed and collected. It will take time, a time by which it will no longer be in time and contemporary to be understood».

«St. Augustine says this when he recounts for example his conception of temporality: there is the present-present, the present-past and the present-future. The past is something that can only think from the present, the past does not exist, it exists in the moment you remember it, the future is expectation. That is why he always combines these two dichotomous realities. The true contemporary is the present-present that is attached to the present-past, the present-present is the son, the direct sonship is attached in an embryonic inseparable way to what the past has been».

«The true contemporary is nothing but an evolutionary state of what has been, a worthy ‘consecutio’, a continuation, a linearity, a familiarity. Being within the timeline allows you to be contemporary, whereas what often happens in various things that are called by the many for convenience and especially for lack of knowledge ‘contemporary’ is ‘extemporaneous’, it is outside of time, something that is there today that is not there tomorrow and therefore does not exist. Something that is an end in itself. It has no past and will have no future and therefore is destined to disappear».

The role of publishing at Contemporary Cluster

Publishing has always had a space in the project, as one can see with ‘Realpolitik 2018-2023’ the exhibition organized at Base in Milan, in collaboration with con Cesura publishing house and Base.

Giacomo Guidi claims: «Publishing and the return to publishing is smilar to the great return to vinyl. Many thought that young generations were going only towards digitization and instead they created something else. They wanted something material such as paper support because it gives security. This support is both content and container. it has an aesthetic, and it has its own performative aspect. In the absence of support there is a void. They need a past device redetermine in-depth study on contemporary issues, something that has been to the support of something that is. These are the same people that went to look for archives, to search for their relatives, redetermining who they are by seeing who they were».

Contemporary Art in Rome

Rome is divided between a bourgeois and an underground vein. The high and the low. Mainstream and underground are two natures of Rome that have always coexisted. Rome is not one city, it is a collection of many small cities that create a huge city. They communicate, they feed off each other but they have an independent circularity. Rome had an incredible springtime related to necessity: many young artists feeling on the sidelines, they organized, because a certain kind of bourgeoisie, of other generations did not allow to build within a system of attention.

So, in self-defense they organized an attack, because peace is often found when superior firepower is brought into force (point Break), the young people made themselves independent. By creating a space where they can work, they can do exhibitions, create dialogues, where the art lover is welcome. They have replaced the system by creating their own. They are nurturing the city. They continue to grow, as well as creating quality in the city. «Institutions are tired, bureaucratized machines, I see little relationship with the city. There is a lack of connection with the territory».

Past, present, and future exhibitions at Contemporary Cluster

On view the exhibition ‘Contemporary. Nothing Ancient Under the Sun’, with a critical text by Vasco Forconi at Palazzo Ducale di Tagliacozzo, from the 29th of July to the 10th of September 2023. «I An exhibition that is a bit of a mirror of the new Roman generation», explains Guidi, that adds that he works a lot outside of the Cluster gallery at Palazzo Brancacio in Rome. «I work a lot in the structure that off. We have done a lot outside the walls, Tagliacozzo is the last of the season but with Museo delle Navi di Nemi, Ostia. Next year there will be a big project with Ultrastudio Pescara, Ostia with Leonardo Crudi». 

For the artistic director spaces are nourishment. Spaces have stories, they are devices not just containers. Hence the word ‘cluster’ means conceptually approaching and observing dynamics between apparently distant elements that instead generate circular energy. There are various types of clusters: there are clusters in chemistry, biology, physics, music. It means polarity, plurality, diversity. «This Contemporary Cluster becomes an observer, a watching tower. An observer of contemporaneity».

The 2023 exhibitions of Contemporary Cluster. A retrospective

La bigiotteria della Terra: Luigi Presicce

On January 27, 2023, Contemporary Cluster presented a synthesis of the last three years of work of Luigi Presicce. Entitled ‘La bigiotteria della Terra’ (‘The trinkets of the Earth’), from the confused ramblings of a homeless person down a street, the exhibition aims at gathering a variety of art pieces.

Presicce’s art, moving from the interest towards the human figure, swifts from painting to ceramics to get to tableau vivant. Research which was stimulated during the pandemic years, reflected in a consequent change of narrative as well. When the colors migrated from melancholic to mystical atmospheres an experimentation of themes and techniques is aimed to be presented in the Contemporary Cluster location.

From painting to sculpture to performance: the artistic practice of Luigi Presicce

The artist’s eclecticism is illustrated by the use of techniques spanning from figurative art to performance, Presticce’s preferred practice over the years, however limited from 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions.

A return to painting is the focus of La bigiotteria della Terra, with the re-emergence of a research of primordial practices, gathered in the Homo Sapiens Sapiens Sapiens 2020 group of works. Homo Sapiens Sapiens Sapiens manifests a return to origins, in an investigation of human race, natural forces, and spirituality.

The figures painted by Presicce do not have a definite sexuality despite usually being naked. His models are purged of sin towards an Eden-like eroticism in its embryonic stage. Only left with their basic human features, exaggerated like medieval caricatures.

The showcase was open to visitors until March 11, 2023, within the spaces of Contemporary Cluster in Rome.

Previous exhibitions: Burning Bright – Serena Confalonieri at Contemporary Cluster

Burning Bright is Serena Confalonieri’s first roman solo show: an exhibition that explores the dreamy and colorful imagery of the designer’s projects. As she says: «This exhibition hosts a selection of works, some brand-new projects, unpublished and customized versions and investigates the amplification of colors, the manipulation of perceptions».

Burning Bright takes place in seven different rooms, creating an experience that guides through a mental but also physical journey, towards exotic and mystical places. The title of the exhibition refers to the poem ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake, the author who first explored the idea to expand human perception.

Through the filter of color perception – Aldous Huxley as inspiration

Serena Confalonieri narrates her works through the filter of color perception, taking inspiration from Aldous Huxley’s research on the perception alterations following the use of psychedelic drugs, as told in his essay ‘The doors of perception’.

«I have always had a passion for color since childhood, perhaps influenced by my mother and her art crafts and handmade sensibility. I studied interior design at the Milan Polytechnic and over time discovered a strong interest, at first, in graphic design». Burning Bright accompanies the viewer on a vibrant and colorful space, where sight and all the other senses are overstimulated by strong colors and kaleidoscopic patterns.

References to Bauhaus, modernism, the houses of Le Corbusier

«I do not believe that elegance is only in black and white and gray. Between black and white there are not only shades of gray, but shades of all colors».  In 1952, Gio Ponti wrote an article for Pirelli magazine on the design use of color in interior architecture, a tribute to bright tones: «The true tradition, the one I love, the one of which the innovators are repositories, has always been colorful and sanguine».

A theory that was also close to Philippe Daverio’s mind and that Serena Confalonieri introduces in all her work and in her private life too: «My house is an open space in which there are many colors: the ceilings are green, the walls are yellow, pink, and even the kitchen is all colored. I really like the contrast, the juxtaposition of warm with cold colors for example, or the references to Bauhaus, modernism, the houses of Le Corbusier».

Serena Confalonieri: Milan, Barcelona and Berlin

After completing a master’s degree in interior design, Serena Confalonieri began her career, working for architectural and design firms in Milan, Barcelona and Berlin and collaborating with the Department of Interior Design of the Polytechnic University of Milan as an assistant professor.

In 2013, she debuted at the Milan Design Week with her Flamingo rug, produced by Nodus. «In product design there is a high degree of synthesis effort. The greater the synthesis, the greater the difficulty of the design. For this reason, it is challenging to create a product object: it must satisfy the designer, the company, the market».

Accurate research of surfaces is always present in her projects: «Whenever it is possible, I also like to experiment with new sustainable materials, although it is often easier to do so on custom products than on the design product, which responds to a brand’s logic».

Contemporary Cluster, Rome

Palazzo Brancaccio, Via Merulana, 248, 00184 Rome.

Contemporary Cluster is a space dedicated to interdisciplinarity and the contamination between art, architecture, photography, design, visual art, sound design, fashion design and much more. It was founded in 2016 by Giacomo Guidi, art curator, and Giorgia Cerulli, architect and interior designer. From Thursday 23 September 2021 Contemporary Cluster has a new headquarters inside Palazzo Brancaccio, a noble palace built in the late nineteenth century and immersed in the greenery of the Esquilino district.

Editorial Team

Giacomo Guidi, Contemporary Cluster

The writer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article.

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