Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Masbedo

Fragile

Vidéo | hdv | couleur | 7:46 | Italie | 2016

The video, Fragile (2016) produced by the Museo Reale Galleria Sabauda in Turin, staged a young man`s visit to the gallery halls in the presence of a peacock. Walking among the masterpieces of antiquity, symbolic objects of archetypal beauty, the presence of the peacock underlines the essential precariousness of the living animal and its impairment that renders it inapt to represent its nature. The image is highly suggestive because it’s made even more dramatic due to the emptiness of the halls, facing the perpetual immobility of the painted characters. The main theme of these works is the concept of "cure": the old animal, object of the care of its master, is a metaphor of the combination of a faded vanity and the eternal journey into beauty, a trip defined by Rainer Maria Rilke as "the tremendous at its beginning." The fragility of art, to which the title of the work refers to, engages the observer`s gaze and warns of the necessity to provide protection of art and cultural heritage. A metaphor that reminds us of the need to preserve and care for our artistic and cultural heritage as a form of resistance to time and carelessness of man. In 2018, when Europe dedicates itself to Cultural Heritage, encouraging public institutions to celebrate their relevance and value for the cultural development of society, the artistic discourse by Masbedo is consistently aligned with this theme, showing how contemporary artists relate themselves with the art of the past and how history of art can be a source of inspiration for new generations.

MASBEDO (Nicolò Massazza, 1973, Milan - Iacopo Bedogni, 1970, Sarzana) started their journey in 1999, focusing on the potential of video art and video installation. Developed around the theme of incommunicability in contemporary society, their research has produced both, intimate works and more socio-political and anthropological-cultural productions. Their aesthetic approach presents pictorial aspects and the realization of their videos pursues the goal of involving the viewer in the space created by the moving images through immersive installations. Their work, in fact, is a synthesis of theatre, performance, space, architecture and video / cinema. They have been included in solo shows in important museums and foundations both in Italy and abroad, as well as in various film festivals, and their works are included in relevant private and public collections: MART, Rovereto, Italy; Fondazione Merz in Turin, Italy; GAM - Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Turin, Italy; MACRO - Museo di Arte Contemporanea in Rome, Italy; DA2 - Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Salamanca, Spain; CAAM Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderna, Las Palmas, Spain; CAIRN Centre d’Art, Digne-les-bains, France; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel.