garage BENTIVOGLIO

On the occasion of Arte Fiera 2024, garage BENTIVOGLIO invites Agostino Iacurci to think of a temporary intervention for the window space. \nThe imagination and the worlds that Iacurci inhabits and builds have numerous similarities with the work of Felice Giani: both are often based on the modes and forms of Pictish architecture, which are mixed and enriched by their different obsessions. \nIn fact, the small temple that inhabits the window has nothing to do with Alberti's lyricism or Winckelmann's candor of invention, but it reconnects the lost colors of the Parthenon with the more contemporary experiences of minimalist art. \nThe pattern, a characteristic element of Iacurci's grammar, thus makes the wood polychrome or enhances the texture of the fabrics. \nAnd while recalling a theatrical setting, the temple will never be inhabited by any actor, leaving the street and the passers-by to remain protagonists of the scene. \nAgostino Iacurci: “This is a small temple in painted wood, felt, iron and neon, inspired by a sketch for wall decoration by Felice Giani, one of the main protagonists of Italian neoclassicism, whose work is on display simultaneously in the spaces of Palazzo Bentivoglio. At the center of the temple, a moon-shaped neon tube illuminates the space after dusk. \nThe small temple, with a strong scenographic character, occupies the entire space of the garage, recently converted into a white cube intended to accommodate exhibition projects. \nRuinenlust is a German word, whose etymology derives from Ruinen + Lust, ruin and lust. Literally, in fact, Ruinenlust indicates “The irresistible attraction that someone feels towards dilapidated buildings and abandoned places.” A nostalgic feeling of pleasure, peculiar to German pre-romanticism, but which can be extended, in an existential key, to that sort of feeling of melancholy mixed with pleasure that one feels in complacency for one's failures. A sort of “joy of shipwrecked people” as Desiati defines it, borrowing the title of a collection of poems by Ungaretti. \nThe work is therefore configured as a reflection on time, through a work-device with the appearance of a polychrome mirage. A ruin of the future, nestled within the ancient walls of one of the grandest palaces in Bologna.”