Photo Faculty Arthur Ou showing in Queens and Turin, Italy
“Repertory” is a major group exhibition that brings together 15 important international artists interrelating them with the extraordinary baroque architecture of Palazzo Cavour, a historical palace in the centre of Torino. The exhibition, curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari, owes its title to the famous 1973 film Repertory by Ian Breakwell. Simple shots and cautious camera movements share the language of the structuralist film, while the scenario suggests an extensive descriptive intention wherein the relationship between the objects and their performative potential is highlighted and transformed.The project exhibits sculpture, paintings, photography, films and installations by such legendary artists as Ericka Beckmann, Heidi Bucher, David Haxton, Andreas Schulze and younger ones like Steven Claydon, Isabelle Cornaro, Elad Lassry, Christian Mayer, Arthur Ou, Karthik Pandian, Carmelle Safdie, Erin Shirreff, Sue Tompkins, Andra Ursuta and Andro Wekua.In using very different formal approaches, all the artists in the show share an interest in capturing ‘what remains’ of the physical body, architectural space and personal objects thereby translating by means of the most disparate techniques their own personal and social stories – stories that open a unique, unexpected dialogue with Palazzo Cavour and with the structure, decoration, and political and cultural history permeating the palace. The works showcased embody the diverse potential of the objects and surfaces that Breakwell’s film describes. In this way, they exist as their own repertory – a sequence of propositions arranged in linear fashion across a single architectural space.
With its essential style and predominant rigid structure, “Repertory” represents our times very well. And, like Breakwell, all the artists present in this exhibition initiate a series of actions in which the objects act and interact, producing new meanings.