Introduction of the artist:

Alice CATTANEO (Italy)
Born in 1976, Milan, Italy. Lives and works in Milan. Selected solo exhibitions: 2012 Contrapositive. Alice Cattaneo, Fred Sandback, Galerie Stadtpark, Krems, Austria / 2011 Galleria Suzy Shammah, Milan / 2008 Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples, Italy / 2007 Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK / Selected group exhibitions: 2012 Italian Genius Now, Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy and Santander Cultural, Porto Alegre Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil / 2011 Arte essenziale, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main, Germany / 2010 Negotiations, Today Art Museum, Beijing / 2009 Premio New York Fall 2009 Exhibition, ISCP Gallery, New York.

Introduction of works:

Untitled, video still, 02'05", 2012

Untitled, iron, enamel, cable ties, nylon, 160×80×60cm, 2012

Untitled, iron, paint, metal mesh, nylon wire, 250×400×350cm, 2010

Alice Cattaneo’s work proposes a modesty that enthrals, a fragility that conveys a refreshing vision of the object world. Her materials are inexpensive and unprecious, her techniques straightforward, and yet the overall effect suggests a certain magic.

To some extent Cattaneo’s sculptures are responses to the spaces they occupy, but are more opportunistic than site-specific, sometimes stuck to walls, floors and/or ceilings - especially the wood/tape structures - in order to get the purchase they require for a kind of formal gymnastics. It is as if the artist is demonstrating her understanding of the way our universe works, according to popular science, but instead of drawn sketches she is providing improvised 3D models. Intersecting circles of differing diameters, for example, bring to mind at once ideas of solar systems and electrons orbiting nuclei. Other sculptures involving folded pieces of roughly cut card resemble architecture, sometimes little high-rise cities, modernist/constructivist in the way they have been assembled.

The video pieces are little epiphanies, captured moments that have a transformative effect. They derive subtle drama from pivotal events and coincidence, in situations which might easily go unnoticed, and like Cattaneo’s sculpture they assert that nothing is monumental and sure. Everything is what you make of it, the way you see it. A sense of humour could be a kind of salvation. Something incidental could make all the difference.