NOTES FROM THE SURFACE #1 – Erika Baglyas, Rodrigo Braga and Jacynthe Carrier with Alessandro Facente

RU TALK: Alessandro Facente introduces NOTES FROM THE SURFACE #1 with RU artists Erika Baglyas, Rodrigo Braga and Jacynthe Carrier.

A discussion curated by Alessandro Facente, RU curator-in-residence.

Wednesday October 9, 2013
6:30 pm – Free and open to the public
Residency Unlimited
360 Court Street #4 (big green doors)
Brooklyn, NY 11231

“Notes from the surface #1” introduces the very first results of ongoing interactions undertaken by Alessandro Facente with three RU artists over the course of his four months curatorial residency. Facente’s curatorial approach consists in excavating the artists’ practice by identifying intimate connections that exist between the individual artist’s thinking process and the infinite layers that form the city of New York. Their conversations will center around the concept of the history of this city as something that is not hidden underground but that is deep-rooted in people who temporarily or permanently engage their daily experiences at its surface.

Further iterations of “Notes from the surface” will take place over the next couple of  months.

About Alessandro Facente

Alessandro Facente (b. 1982 Anzio, Rome) is an independent art critic and curator currently based between Rome, Imlil (Marrakech) and New York. He acquired his MA in Art History from La Sapienza University in Rome. He has worked at the Volume! Foundation, curating site specific projects in unconventional spaces. Through his curatorial practice, Facente attempts to uncover, in a critical and analytical way, the main concepts underlying the artist’s process and thinking to rebuild new meanings and directions with the artist as primary source of content.

As an “embedded curator”, Facente experimented this method with the artist Gian Maria Tosatti. The resulting exhibition-“Tetralogia della Polvere” (2012) – was an ambient installation at Casa Bossi in Novara, an abandoned 5,000 square meters building that was built by the famed architect Alessandro Antonelli and abandoned for thirty years. For 3 months, Facente was on site each day with the artist taking daily notes. The resulting text is a narrative and critical analysis of this dialectical exchange exploring the current status of the curator as a critical part of the process of construction of a work of art.

With Atla(s)now – a platform conceived in Morocco 2012 by the visual artist and ski instructor Angelo Bellobono- Facente has gone a step further. For a couple of months each year, Facente works in close collaboration with artists in residence who are invited to engage with Berber communities in the mountainous villages of Imlil and Oukameiden towards the development of site-specific projects.

As a curator-in-residence at RU, Facente will pursue his research by actively engaging with resident artists for four months. The outcome of these exchanges are a series of talks and discussions that explore the connections of the artist’s language with contemporary society; how their thinking is intimately linked with the infinite layers of the city of New York where history is not hidden underground nor obstructed by the present but actively involved on its surface. Through his ongoing interactions with the artists, Facente will excavate the visual connections between their lives and the city.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.