The group Vedovamazzei (Stella Scala, born 1964, and Simeone Crispino, born 1962; they live and work in Milan) was founded in 1990. Using videos, paintings, installations, and photos, this pair of artists represent the contradictions of contemporary life with acute and unabashed irony.
Their favorite theme is the future, which they perceive in terms of an ambivalent myth: the marvelous realization of utopia or the catastrophic end of humanity. Their works develop such themes as genetic modification, the computer revolution, technological fetishism, and transformation of human nature, as well as romanticism based on notions about art and the past. Often based on the plastic realization of a story with surreal, ironical, and unsettling implications, their work mixes current events and literature, erudition and urban legends.
Eldorado is hosting the installation SoHo, a ruined, cracked wall through which shines a powerful artificial light that blinds the spectator, while the surrounding space is suffused by a mysterious sound that suggests both primoridial and technological energy. This is the sound of the Sun rendered audible by SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), a space probe located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
We enjoy the heat and light of the Sun every day, but we had never before heard the sound it releases into the Universe. This is what the artists have to say about the project: “Oxygen is a wonderful highway, it lets you live and at the same time travel from one side to the other through noise, sound, or whatever. We were probably placed on Earth to feel and hear. As far as we know, this is the only hole in the Universe where this privilege has been granted: without oxygen, sound doesn’t exist, it’s dead. In space, where we can’t live, there is no sound.”
The solo show in the Eldorado exhibition space at GAMeC follows the solo shows by Vedovamazzei at the Magazzino d’Arte Moderna in Rome, The Box Associati in Turin (both 2000), the Studio Guenzani (Milan, 1998), the British School at Rome (Rome, 1998), and the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne (1997). They have participated in various group shows, including Over the Edges (Ghent, Belgium, 2000) and numerous shows organized at the Centro Nazionale per le Arti Contemporanee in Rome, the Castello di Rivoli (Rivoli, Turin), the Chisenhale Gallery and ICA in London, ICA in Boston, the Konstmuseum in Malmö (Sweden), and the Kwanjiu Biennial (Korea, 1997).