From 3 October to 30 November 2014 GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo is pleased to present LOLITA LEMPICKA by Renaud Jerez, the winning project of the second MERU ART*SCIENCE AWARD, promoted in collaboration with the Fondazione MERU/Medolago-Ruggeri for biomedical research and the Associazione BergamoScienza to reward and support the work of an artist and aimed at underscoring the bond between art and science.

For the second edition the jury, composed of Alessandro Medolago – President of Fondazione MERUAlessandro Bettonagli – Associazione BergamoScienza and Giacinto Di Pietrantonio – Director of GAMeC, examined and appreciated all the projects presented by the candidates because of the quality of their artistic research, but chose the project by Renaud Jerez – artist proposed by Michele D’Aurizio – for its particular relevance with the theme of the award, the use of an innovative language, and the narrative and visionary experimentation proposed by the artist, investigating the relationship between the biological body and urban fabric.

Named after the dream-like French fashion designer, this project specifically produced for the Meru Art*Science Award is a fifteen-minute movie. Made using found footage and iPhone, VHS and HD shots edited with computer-generated images and drawn animations, Lolita Lempicka is centred on one narrator, a young rapper, in the city of Berlin. A complex and fascinating character, Ali totally embodies his generation. His inner struggles are reflected by the urban landscape, depicted as the internal perspective of a body.

Cheap production, phone cameras and high-end post-production shape the project, which lives and flows like a diary. No one can precisely relate to what’s going on in the pictures except the narrator’s rapping African accent.

Lolita Lempicka disrupts its own narration by atomizing language, music and image: a flaw in the video recording, noisy pictures and faded colours. What emerge are themes such as commercial design, the music and fashion industries, disease, mutation, technology and filth, in an urban and desperate landscape. This is an elsewhere between our highly defined desires, branded aesthetics, and the experience of desolation and sadness.
The project is part of the programming of the 12th BergamoScienza, one of the most important international science festivals, scheduled this year from 3 to 19 October.

Saturday 11 October 2014, at 11 a.m., GAMeC’s Spazio ParolaImmagine will host the Awards ceremony, followed by a talk with the artist Renaud Jerez.
The event is part of the 10th Giornata del Contemporaneo (The Day of Contemporary Art) promoted by AMACI.

The work will enter GAMeC’s Permanent Collection and the archives of the Fondazione MERU and the Associazione BergamoScienza.

PARTICIPANTS IN THE SECOND EDITION

Along with Renaud Jerez, proposed by Michele D’Aurizio – Managing Editor of Flash Art, the competitors for the second MERU ART*SCIENCE AWARD were:

Luca Bolognesi, proposed by Silvia Lucchesi – Director of Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival, Florence
Bea McMahon, proposed by Philippe-Alain Michaud – Film Curator at Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre Georges Pompidou, Parigi
Kaspar Müller, proposed by Beatrix Ruf – Director of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Pietro Mele, proposed by Lorenzo Giusti – Director of Man, Nuoro
Flatform, proposed by Mario Gorni – Founder of Careof, Milano