Where and when
At the Museo Novecento the presentation of the catalog of Flavio Favelli‘s work, Wednesday 29 May at 6 pm To introduce the volume, together with the artist, the curator Elisa del Prete, the artistic director of the Museo Novecento Sergio Risaliti and Arabella Natalini
On Wednesday 29 May at 6 pm the Museo Novecento is pleased to host the presentation of the “Imperial Series. Flavio Favelli” (Corraini Edizioni), dedicated to the homonymous work of the Florentine artist (Favelli is also present at the Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition entitled Il bello inverso at Ca ‘Rezzonico) which will talk about his work together with Elisa del Prete (curator of the project together with Silvia Litardi), the artistic director of the Museo Novecento Sergio Risaliti and Arabella Natalini.
Imperial Series is the name given to a series of stamps issued in 1929 and in use until 1946, which show the face of Vittorio Emanuele III. Among these, the artist Flavio Favelli has chosen two that have undergone the overprinting of another stamp (one is the overprinted edition issued in 1944 by the Italian Social Republic, the other, with the stamp of the German occupation, after the September 8, 1943, in Zadar) which alters the appearance of the sovereign. His work consists in enlarging them and painting them on the wall of obsolete buildings.
The project was carried out in three phases: during the first (painting) two site-specific murals were created, one at the Casa del Popolo and one in a
ex Coop supermarket, in Bazzano (Bologna) in a subsequent intervention the tearing of the two wall paintings and their transfer on canvas took place; in a third phase, the obturation was carried out, that is to say the “hole” left by the tear was restored. The work is completed by the photographic documentation that virtually renders the experience of the installation and the sites that hosted it, accompanying the work-diptych on canvas in all its future exhibitions.
The central purpose of the work is to bring out the existing and inextricable relationships between past and present, between personal history and collective history, bringing the current Italian situation to deal with a dramatic past that is not too distant. In this perspective, the space of the work becomes the metaphorical place in which memory can survive thanks to the possibility, given by art, of being able to rearrange and reactivate it.
Flavio Favelli
He was born in Florence in 1967, lives and works in Savigno (Bologna). It has established itself on the contemporary art scene thanks to collages of objects, site-specific installations and public art interventions, some of which are permanent. He has exhibited his works in group and solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including at Palazzo Grassi (Venice, 2008), Maison Rouge Foundation (Paris, 2007), Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation (Turin, 2007), Pecci Museum ( Lawn,
2005), Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles (2004), 50th Venice Biennale (2003). His works are present in numerous public and private collections.