Gallery Gentili in Prato presents a group exhibition curated by Lorenzo Bruni entitled, Getting Nowhere – voglio essere proprio qui (I really want to be here.) The project presents a group of international artists, some exhibiting for the first time in Italyfeaturing large-scale works and projects designed specifically for Galleria Gentili’s space. . The project starts with the investigation of possible connections between real space and representational space in order to create a new hypothesis concerning the role of organization in urban space. The artists present a new paradigm, regarding the observation of space ias public/personal and physical/perceptual in order to create t a new collective space.

Throughout the 20th century, the relationship between the spectator and perceptual space has been a prevalent theme. t While theword “space” h defines both physical and mental space, and has italso is a way of viewing, interpreting and imagining the world we inhabit. For the artists in Getting Nowhere, the question is directed at how we perceive and react to space. Their research focuses on overcoming the difference between spatialrepresentation and the experience of physical space; between the space we observe and the space we occupy; making them both present, but not interchangeable. We can, in fact, consider their works as manifestations of a spatial synthesis. This spatial relationship is resolved in an efficient instrument in order to orient the observer. That which is perceived is not only a dislocation of objects and images in a container, but also in a sense of the “here and now” of the encounter.

Being here, ok, but in respect to what? The “what”, in this case is a specific situation i we use to respond to reality. The works of the artists in this exhibition are rooted in a search for a balance between not just how we analyzewhat we see, but how we actually see. The codes used are those that define organized space and the possibility to move within that space such as those related to architecture, to orienting tools such as geographical maps, or those that establish the difference between everyday objects and art objects; between an object that has |use value and one to be contemplated. These abstract elements, removed from their usual context often create new systems of measuring space.

Martin Boyce’s metal wall silhouette, the monochromes that create a dialog with the details of geographical maps of Paolo Parisi, the crumpled photos of sky scrapers saved by Jose Davila; modernist grids that recall the urban maps of American landscapes, the abstract geometrical landscapes by Alexis Harding that slide by the sheer weight of the excess paint from the wooden canvas and onto the floor; t Loris Greau’s sound installation undermines the safety of the architecture of the gallery, the barricade and the lyrical light sculptures of Karin Suter; the monochrome walls that host the abstract painting of Serghej Jensen, these are some of the works that make up the space of Galleria Gentili for Getting Nowhere, a project that in different ways solidifies various points of view while providing ta new direction. For these artists, reflecting on how we react within the physical/mental space is not limited to personal perception and thus subjective, but rather a consciousness of collective space.

This is not, however, a utopian plan or a rational abstraction of reality , but a projection of the social space characterized by the possibility of a dialogue entered into by the observer. To accomplish this, the artists confront both a reflection on the architectural codes that point to an organization of space as both internal and external, but as abstract painting that avoids the illusion of “another” space. This brings us to a new non-rhetorical reflection on modernism since it deals with the instruments of modernism and not its ideologies. Getting Nowhere was born from the idea that abstract space does not actually exist; instead the exhibition redefines the context between physical/mental space and individual experience. These artists intervene in the space, creating a ground zero for perception by the observer, transforming and forming a potential space where the temporal fruition and its measure is the real instrument for representation and spatial context.

The Volume: The exhibition Getting Nowhere –– voglio essere proprio qui (I really want to be here,) examines aspects of ideas underlined in the upcoming publication by Lorenzo Bruni in Silvanna Editoriale dedicated to the relationship between art and architecture from the 1970s to the present. The book examines not only the exchange between art and architecture, but also proposes a third avenue attempted by the artists to represent an invented mental and physical space. The book examines the change in social space imagined by the artists of the Nineteen Seventies and put into practice in present times. The idea of creation through an act of heroism (and of utopian space that is invested with all the branches of society) has necessarily left a place for the total rethinking of space starting with the need for the subject to occupy space in time.