RICCARDO ARENA

Artist

 

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My artistic practice is dedicated to the creation of visual and narrative environments that combine theoretical and formal research and are conceived as cultural devices of imaginative knowledge. Incorporating heterogeneous disciplinary territories, my research weaves phenomena and events distant in time and space into a filigree of analogies and correlations leading me to the construction of dreamlike subplots formalized through a multiplicity of languages and modes of expression.

Animated by these tensions over the years, I have developed long-term projects in different countries around the world-China, Argentina, Russia, Iran, Armenia, Ethiopia, Mexico-whose timing, poetics and content are defined by a rhizomatic investigation that builds during travel experiences. These projects consist of a network of rhapsodic paths in which the layering of correspondences between myths, scientific speculations, geographies, fictional models, cosmogonies and mirages of consciousness opens a field of vision in which historical frames, contexts and cultural backgrounds dissolve in favor of an evocative dimension that reveals more intimate and universal components.

During this process, the oscillation between methodology and intuitive act generates a series of cognitive movements that crystallize into mental diagrams, abstract cartographies and gestural atlases; orientation tools that reveal the very substance of the mental laboratory and provide the basis for the creation of figurative, verbal and spatial works that make up the corpus of each project. Installations, films, visual reflections, narratives, seminars, workshops and lectures configure an imaginative geography open to horizons in constant reformulation and expansion within a research aimed at experimenting with hybrid modes of expression in different contexts.

Riccardo Arena (Milan 1979), lives and works in Milan. He has taught at: the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts, and is currently guest proessor at the Amsterdam Academy of Cinema (AHK). His work was recently exhibited at: TRIESTE CONTEMPORANEA, Trieste; MONTEVERITÀ, Ascona; GALLERIA MILANO; MATERA CAPITALE DELLA CULTURA 2019; MAMBO, Bologna; IIC Addis Ababa; MERKUROV MUSEUM, Giumry; MUSEO MAXXI, Rome; IMMA MUSEUM Dublin; IIC London; CENTROPECCI, Prato; QUADRIENNALE D’ARTE, Rome; FONDAZIONE SANDRETTO RE REBAUDENGO, Turin; VIAFARINI, Milan; PREMIO FURLA, Palazzo Reale, Milan; MART, Rovereto; MAGA, Gallarate; MUSEO DEL NOVECENTO, Milan; PALAIS DE GLACE, Buenos Aires; 1918ARTSPACE, Shanghai. He was selected as a finalist for PREMIO MAXXI 2016, winning the National Prize LONG PLAY – XXIV, MAGA and the First Prize of MANUALMENTE, Villa Panza, Varese. He has given workshops, seminars and readings at: UNIVERSITY UNAM, Mexico City; DIMITRI SCHOOL, Locarno; FONDAZIONE FELTRINELLI, Milan; ECOMUSEO DI NIGUARDA, Milan; MUSEO MAGA, Gallarate; P.I.A. Persistence Is All, Lecce; AAU – University of Fine Art And Design, Addis Ababa; TUMO, Center for Creative Technologies, Yerevan; VIAFARINI/ MIBACT, Milan.

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