Cadere/Rose, Parsons faculty Sreshta Rit Premnath’s first solo exhibition in Italy, proposes a constellation of relations between the Polish conceptualist André Cadere ((1934, Warsaw – 1978, Paris) and the immigrant rose sellers of Rome.
The print Recto/Verso functions as a kind of cypher for the show. Here, photographs of the artist holding a bouquet of red roses are inserted into one page of a spread, which mirror the opposite page taken from the catalogue Documenting Cadere and featuring the last three photographs taken of Cadere before his premature death. Premnath proposes that Cadere’s round bar, which he is photographed holding, functions in much the same way as the flower seller’s rose, each object entwining contradictory symbolic and monetary values. Five folding rulers painted with rose extract, iron filings and green-screen pigment lean against walls, like tired bodies, but also like markers, pointers or indices. Titled Here, these objects continue Premnath’s use of folding rulers as bodies that both occupy and measure space. The three large Monochromes, printed on commercial vinyl, are photographs of anti police graffiti at Torpignattara, Rome, whited-out by the police. These prints build upon Premnath’s ongoing interest in erasure and redaction as a means of making things visible. Finally, the video Rosa Rosae, is a collaboration with the dancer and artist Kuldeep Singh who, trained in Odissi – a classical dance form from India – performs a series of structured improvisations based on gestures related both to the rose sellers of Rome and the rhythmic structures of André Cadere’s round bars.
This exhibition follows How to Live Together: The Common School, a workshop conducted by ALAGroup and Rit Premnath with students at Istituto Einaudi, during his residency in Rome in January 2017. Copies of Ti Porgo Una Rosa, a zine produced by the students during the workshop, are displayed in the exhibition along with a video of the students’ interaction with Bachcu Siddique, the head of Dhuumcatu, a South Asian community group in Torpignattara.
Sreshta Rit Premnath
Cadere/Rose
March 8th – April 12th, 2017
Nomas Foundation
Viale Somalia, 33 – Rome
Opening Tuesday, March 7th, 2017 at 7.00 pm
