The Third Meaning

Giuseppe Stampone – Sarnath Banerjee

Curated by Eugenio Viola and Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi

Italian Embassy Cultural Centre, New Delhi

 

This project was conceived as an opportunity for exchange between two curators, two artists and two distinct operative methods within the broader panorama of cultural exchange between Italy and India.

Giuseppe Stampone and Sarnath Banerjee are two artists who come from very different backgrounds. Although there is quite a distance between their artistic development and work, the centrality of drawing is common to both, and employed by both to explore the contradictions and restlessness of today’s world in a graphic approach that is controversial at times yet often attenuated by the filter of irony. A baffling short-circuit, emphasized by the relationship between word and image that is constantly present in works by both Stampone and Banerjee, and which gives rise to the “third meaning” subtly referenced in the title.

Like the Renaissance maestros before him, Giuseppe Stampone’s drawing takes on a cognitive value, offering a personal, scientific analysis of the world in order to manage it on a phenomenal level and present it in an organised form. In this way, a profusion of symbols and devices conceal subtended meanings which go beyond the reassuring form, in a gradual process of revelation.

A work from the Architecture of Intelligence (2016) series is the site-specific project created during the artist’s residence in New Delhi. A synaesthetic and multi-media “archive of experience” constructed by assembling objets-trouvés, in which Stampone presents an inter-generational dialogue with another artist. Following Ugo La Pietra last October in Paris,

in New Delhi it is the turn of Stefano Arienti and his reflections on living. Architecture of Intelligence is a complex installation built to contain images, impressions and sensations gathered from the places Stampone has visited; personal diary expressed as metaphorical dwelling place. The viewer is invited to enter, take part, live and share the experience.

 

 

Greetings from New Delhi
Performance curated by Eugenio Viola

Giuseppe Stampone presents Greetings from New Delhi on Wednesday 27 January at 7:00 p.m. at the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi. Curated by Eugenio Viola, the performance was inspired by Architecture Of Intelligence. For the first time, the work of this artist is animated by action. From a linguistic standpoint, it develops what has evolved from his ongoing work Global Education: the creation of baffling short-circuits between image and meaning, content and form. In this way, the artist encourages viewers to ponder the problematic and conflicting relationship between reality, logical connection and iconic representation. A mosaic of loose words is thus associated with images which are apparently unconnected but whose meaning is reset by the experiences the artist has had with local people.

India Art Fair

From 28 to 31 January at the India Art Fair, the Marie-Laure Fleisch Gallery stand will host Giuseppe Stampone’s presentation of Greetings from New Delhi, a work that takes its name from the performance held at the Italian Cultural Institute. The installation, consisting of 10 works, defunctionalises the pleasant and stereotypical aesthetics of the picture postcard to introduce a disturbing view of nine of the world’s most polluted cities: New Delhi, Beijing, Dhaka, Norilsk, Cherepovets, Chernobyl, Lagos, Accra and La Rinconada

 

The exhibition is open until 20 February 2016
(Monday –Friday 9:30 a.m. -5:30 p.m.)
Italian Embassy Cultural Centre, New Delhi
50 E, Chandragupta Marg, Chanakyapuri
New Delhi – 110021