Solo show: VITTORIO SANTORO - Immortalité provisoire (over)

	Vittorio Santoro

Cortex Athletico Galerie - Art Contemporain Cortex Athletico Galerie - Art Contemporain 20, rue Ferrère 33000 Bordeaux France (city map) Send E-mail tel +33 (0) 5 56 94 31 89 www.cortexathletico.com

Press Release

Vittorio Santoro
Immortalité provisoire

Artist's statement

Immortalité provisoire
12 October - 18 November 2006

About 30 years ago NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. These two spacecrafts were conceived to explore Jupiter, Saturn and their respective moons.
Among other things, NASA included an ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2 - a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate the story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record - a 12inch gold-plated copper disk - and contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. On the record there are, among other things, a series of rumbling sounds of volcanoes, earthquakes and thunders, a barking dog, the voice of a chimpanzee, etc. Also included on the record are greetings to the universe in 55 languages and music such as percussion from Senegal, J.S. Bach played by Glenn Gould, a song from New Guinea, a blues performed by Louis Armstrong, a Mozart aria sung by Edda Moser, a rock-and-roll song performed by Chuck Berry....
In coming years, the spacecrafts will leave our solar system and will find themselves in empty space. Forty thousand years will pass before they come close to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan, head of the committee that selected the material for the record, has noted, "the spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

I have often thought about the kind of messages that Voyager 1 and 2 are carrying out into space. As far as I know, there are no images or sounds of other achievements that civilization on Earth has been producing, let's say, in the last one hundred years, such as the atomic bomb mushroom cloud, images of horror of wars, of the exploitation and destruction of our planet, of ingenious and advanced weaponry, of racial harassment, of certain effects of religious convictions...

Some works in this exhibition are directly or indirectly inspired by such thoughts of "universal" and "durable" human achievements which form the baggage of the two spacecrafts. The works that bear the common title "Une certaine idée de..." are imbued with a general feeling of fatalism. It is a kind of fragility that is related to the belief in our best intentions: what we are, what we can be, what we are forced to be, what we never wanted to become. These works are produced with a consciousness of how instable and shifting the meaning of values is or can be. In our popular culture we like to venerate some artistic achievements with warm emphasis. We know that every so-called achievement is probably a product of a need that was permitted to develop at a certain time.

But what if we were to accept the vulnerability of these achievements as an area from which to start thinking about how the invisible man, the person we see on the street leaves his or her trace? I like to think that viewers of these works are invited to reflect upon this fragility. This could lead to thinking about our place in this society, our real and our abstract relationships to others.

We ask each other what we like, what we believe, and we ask each other what we know. Do I know you? I think I know you, I think I do. But the opposite could be also true.

Vittorio Santoro
Paris, September 2006

Communiqué de presse

Vittorio Santoro is an Swiss/Italian artist living and working in Zurich and Berlin. His work has lately heen shown in exhibition such as : New N/B York/Berlin, Kunstmuseum Thun (2006), Video Suisse Contemporaine, Centre Culturel Suisse of Paris (2006), Le Mépris Mépris or (Comtempt), Mediamatic Groundfloor, Amsterdam (2006), There something you should know, Galerie Store,Berlin (2005), Ticker 9, Galerie Carlier/Gebauer, Berlin (2005), It's all in your mind/C'est tout dans ma tête, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Project Room, Paris (2003). He will exhibit five new works in his first time collaboration with Galerie Cortex Athletico. His work make palpable the effects of social parameters on human consciousness and convey the ambivalent perceptions that characterize our relations with the world: memories, emotions, fear, scepticism and shame.

The exhibition will take place in our former space, 84 rue Amédée Saint Germain. A
specific project by Jean François Dumont will parallel run at our actual exhibition space.

Vittorio Santoro is currently working at the Cité des Arts in Paris.

List of the differents works

-Goodbye Darkness III, dimensions variables, 2006.
-Une certaine idée de… (Goldberg Variations / Elephant), 65 x 50.3 cm, 2006.
-Une certaine idée de… (Beatles / Apple), 32.5 x 32.5 cm, 2006.
-Une certaine idée de… (Requiem / Birds), 44 x 58 cm, 2006.
-Untitled (Perceptible Erosion), dimensions variables, 2005-06.

Artist's presentation

Vittorio Santoro

Born in 1962
Lives and works in Zurich and Berlin

Solo Shows

2006
NB-New York/Berlin, Kunstmuseum Thun

2005
There is something you should know , GalerieStore 52°31'52'', 13°22'55'', Berlin

2003
It's all in your mind/C'est tout dans ma tête, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Project Room, Paris

2002
Split (Fragment 1-4), Kleines Helmhaus, Zurich
Preview/Event, o.T - Raum für aktuelle Kunst, Luzern

2001
Split (Fragment 1-2), Centro d'Arte Contemporanea, Bellinzona

2000
Endgames, Espace Libre/CentrePasquART, Biel
Heute, Morgen/Today, Yesterday, Galerie Brandstetter&Wyss, Zurich

Group shows

2006
Le Mépris Mépris or [Contempt] , Mediamatic Groundflooor, Amsterdam
Vidéo Suisse Contemporaine, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris

2005
Inherent Discrepancy, Public>, Paris
A Swiss Video Selection, ARTeast Foundation, Fortress Gallery, Tirgu Mures, Roumanie
Temporary Import, 10.Art Forum Berlin, Berlin
Ticker 9, Galerie carlier/gebauer, Berlin
Contemporary Swiss Videos, Akademie des bildenden Künste Wien; Galerie Bunkier Sztuki, Cracow

2004
Vidéo Suisse Contemporaine, Paris Photo, Project Room/CCS Paris, Caroussel du Louvre, Paris
Geschiebe-Landschaft als Denkmal, Haus für Kunst Uri, Altdorf
Values, 11th Biennial of Visual Arts, Pancevo/Belgrad
New Videos, K3/Project Space, Zurich

2003
Môtiers 2003, art en plein air, Môtiers
PARA…SIGNS, Galerie Elisabeth Kaufmann, Zurich

2002
'is reading becoming as classical as listening to jazz? the dreadful threat of folklore, Supermarket, Mediatic, Amsterdam
Frenetic Interferences, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum Store, New York

2001
Inverse Probability, Kunsthalle Palazzo Liestal
Eidgenössischer Wettbewerb für Freie Kunst, Basel
Position Report, Galerie Brandstetter&Wyss, Zurich
von Fern, Künstlerhaus Boswil, Boswil

2000
Missing, Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich
Eidgenössischer Wettbewerb für Freie Kunst, Basel

1999
Home is where my friends are, Nidwaldner Museum, Stans
Faltenwürfe, Kunstraum Hotel, Zurich
Andere Raüme, andere Stimmen-Other Voices, audio works by artists, Swiss Radio DRS2

1998
I looked at the ceiling and I saw the sky, Memory/Cage Editions, Kleines Helmhaus, Zurich
Out of the Blue, Club Römerstrasse, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart
Travelling Without Moving, Galerie Friedrich, Bern
Morphing # 3, Morphing System, Klinik, Zurich

Résidence d'artiste

2006
Cité des Arts, Paris (Atelier Kanton Zurich)

2004-2005
Berlin Atelier, Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern

2004
Werkstipendien Kanton Zurich
Preis/Award It's all in your mind/C'est tout dans ma tête, Die schönsten Schweizer
Bücher 2003 Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern

2001
Bundesstipendium, Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern

1996
Watermill Art Center, Long Island, N.Y. (Summer program), Migros Kulturprozent

Presentation of the gallery

Cortex Athletico is an experimental space comprising two venues.

-One is dividef into studios for artist on basis of residencies.

-The other is dedicated to a broad range of exhibitions.
This platform allows us to understand and accompany projects on a European scale by inviting artists, curators and critics to consider the gallery's space and its role as the site of an artistic Utopia.

The gallery, opened in January 2003, has evolved according to the same principle, beginning with neither capital nor public financial support. In 2005, it became a business in order to facilitate its expansion and to develop its marketing tools and distribution network for contemporary art. A supplementary space will open its doors in February 2006 and will begin to develop a series of " carte blanche " interventions by young European curators in order to compile a series of propositions around the idea of singular Utopias.

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