Kenji Ide / Nicola Martini

This exhibition of Kenji Ide and Nicola Martini is about people and action, missing or present, and urgencies, of gatherings or walking around. The gallery is rewritten by the work Sippe by Martini, started as a process on 2013: a photosensitive tar applied directly on the wall of the space, reactivates what it was hidden by layers of white paint and plaster. The space is turned into a sort of negative film, all the plaster works and the installation marks from previous shows suddenly re blooming on the dark surface of the walls. In the last decade Sippe changed different shapes through art galleries and museum, and recently doubled its presence along with a series of private reunions in the artist’s studio. A proper series of assemblies between the artist and selected people close to him coming from different worlds and disciplines. All the encounter have a circular disposition where at its center is located a monolith like shape, made out of plaster, photosensitive tar and wax. The assemblies are not documented by pictures or other media and device. The only mark accepted as a condition is the possibility of carving on the plaster monolith, words letters or anything else. The gallery space, with it dark and alive presence, and the monolith sculpture, echoing the thoughts of the people how merged around it, resemble a city’s back alleys, where Ide’s sculptures add other layers of narrative, laying on the ground, creating scenes where no one is around. The works, tiny sculpture hand painted and made of carved wood, at times with inclusions of materials pick up from the street, look as if they are scattered along the roadside. They are created while walking, so that the walking time becomes the thinking time, they suggest the possibility of an action or a movement, either already happened, or about to happen, and this interaction becomes a tale of courtyard stories.