Nina Carini - Aperçues

From Tuesday, 7th March 2023 Aperçues, Nina Carini’s solo #show curated by Angela Madesani and Rischa Paterlini, opens to the public and comes to life in the spaces of the Basilica di San Celso in Milan. The exhibition project has been realized under the patronage of Regione Lombardia and Municipio 1 I #comunedimilano.

The exhibition is named after the French word aperçues, (visions, views) that the artist meets for the first time in the pages of Georges Didi-Huberman’s homonymous volume (2018). According to the interpretation of the author, aperçue is the glimpse of an image that appears and leaves behind the trail of a question, a memory, a sensation, just before disappearing. The set-up, designed by #ninacarini, draws inspiration from the idea of a vision perceived just before vanishing, building an itinerary inside the #basilicadisancelso through six installations, conceived to generate interstices, passages, openings to timeless realities.

Angela Madesani explains: “Time, the vulnerability of existence and of phenomena are at the centre of the artist’s research: the “forever” in contrast with the the precariousness of everything are a key to understanding her work, intentionally built by Carini for her first solo #show in the Lombard city. An eloquent dialogue is developped here between matter and language, between theory and poetry”.

The exhibition project conveys all expressive media that characterize Nina Carini’s rich artistic production, starting from sound. The first work to welcome the visitor from the external spaces of the Basilica is the sound installation Le cose in pericolo (A,B,C,D,E,...) (Things in danger), realized with texts from Simona Menicocci’s Glossopeatrae and in collaborations with the children from the institutes Armando Diaz and Antonio Scarpa in Milan.

The exhibition continues with Venere Bugiarda 3023, an installation conceived for the occasion and placed in dialogue with the architectural spaces that welcome it.

Risha Paterlini explains: “Nina Carini’s research is in a continuous process of development and today it’s particularly rooted in performance art and sculpture. It is right under the sign of experimentation with a material like stone that in 2020 #ninacarini, invited by the collector Enzo Nembrini, realizes her first site specific sculpture: Venere Bugiarda (Venus liar). An installation in which two stars talk to each other and that, for the exhibition, is rethought by asking the viewer to reflect upon the theme of beauty, even by discovering its suffering in wearing off soon. Nina Carini’s works are always created and thought to be experienced by the observer in harmony with the place and the materials that characterize the surrounding spaces. The #basilicadisancelso is no exception: a sacred place built before the year 1000 by the will of the archbishop of Milan Landolfo II, and entrusted to the Benedictine monks, and whose transformations over the centuries have represented the history of the city of Milan”.

In a continuous exchange between materiality and spirituality, the itinerary returns a vertical gap in proximity of the altar, which hosts the work realized during the residency at the Fonderia Battaglia, Mani come rami che toccano cielo (hands like branches touching sky), to extend to the work Senza Voce (without a voice), that observes the viewer’s passage from its position inside the confessional.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book conceived as a real artist project curated by Angela Madesani and Rischa Paterlini, and enriched with a text by the philosopher Davide Dal Sasso. The volume, published by Allemandi Editore, retraces Nina Carini’s research through texts and pictures, with a special focus on Aperçues.

The selection of works that compose Aperçues traces a path in Nina Carini’s articulate production, joining an important work from Enzo Nembrini’s collection and works conceived for the occasion. Suspended between a horizontal approach and a vertical and tridimensional tension, the works on #show interpret the harmonic dialogue between reality and mystery, macrocosm and microcosm, visible and invisible.

Davide Dal Sasso says: “Movement in apparent immobility fuels Nina Carini’s research: the possibility that, in their concreteness, her works still express a continuous oscillation between constancy and mutability”.

The realization of Aperçues is supported by Ecoedile Srl, OT and Collezione Enzo Nembrini with the collaboration of Allemandi Editore and NM Contemporary, Principality of Monaco and the technical sponsorship by ArtDefender Insurance.