On October 3, 2004, 6:30 p.m. , on occasion of the National Day of FIDAM (Italian Federation of Friends of Museums) and in collaboration with the Association of Friends of the Accademia Carrara, GAMeC presents the sixth event in the Palestra series, an initiative dedicated to young artists debuting on the professional art scene. From October 5 to November 28, 2004 , the glass and cement structure in the Gallery courtyard will host the work by Concetta Modica entitled Excoperta.

Excoperta is a blanket that is no longer precisely that, but rather a harmony of multicolor yarns that the artist’s grandmother had woven together using the leftovers from knitting. During her recent pregnancy, Concetta Modica unraveled the blanket and has now recomposed it inside the Palestra Space at GAMeC, transforming its use and form, converting it into a landscape, a meeting place, and even a musical instrument.

Thus, she moves from practical use to the search for a purely visual order: the wool yarns run from one side to the other of the exhibition space, creating a structure with which the observer can interact and play like an instrument that transforms the entire room into a sound box and the observer’s own body into a means of execution.

On the opening day, Sunday, October 3 , the musician Giovanni Giroldi will offer a musical performance that will present a different perception of the work to visitors.

“From my grandmother’s hands to my own, and from my own to yours, the same colors, different dirges, the suspended time of participation in creation of the blanket and the ex-blanket, a unique and different material for anyone who approaches and experiences it.” Concetta Modica

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Concetta Modica was born in Modica (Province of Ragusa). She completed her studies at the Universität der Kunst in Berlin and at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (2002-2003). She participated in the Antonio Ratti Higher Course of Visual Art at Como in 2002, with Giulio Paolini, and the workshop L’altro da sè, with Corrado Levi, at the Accademia di Brera in 2001. She has exhibited at viafarini (Milan) and competed for Vigna per gli Artisti in Vinci (Province of Florence) in 2004. She lives in Milan .

Her artistic activity is concentrated on historicized objects belonging the millenary culture of Sicily, transfiguring, elaborating, and rendering them in new forms. Just as in the work presented here, she typically decomposes the material and combines it with different media, such as video and installations, until she achieves agitated, ironic, and emblematic results.