This series of mixed media works is inspired by Asger Jorn and his symbiotic interaction with Albissola Marina and its inhabitants during his long stay in the Ligurian town. As in the archetypal association between fungus and alga that originates a lichen, also the mutual exchange between the Danish artist and Albissola has produced a new organism: Casa Jorn (the artist’s italian house and workplace), a surprising psychogeographic hybrid creature born out of mutual contamination with the surrounding socio-cultural context, in a bold but also respectful and playful way. I wanted to identify with this conceptual process by temporarily introducing some additional symbionts into the Casa Jorn organism, processing the house’s inputs in terms of mimesis and prosthesis, leaving room for randomness and errors.

July – August 2021, Casa Museo Asger Jorn, Albissola Marina. Curated by Luca Bochicchio, Stella Cattaneo and Daniele Panucci. In collaboration with Traffic Gallery, Bergamo. Supported by Fondazione Agostino De Mari, Savona and the municipality of Albissola Marina.

December 2021 – January 2022, Traffic Gallery, Bergamo.

Prototipo

She was meant to be a draft, a test, and then she became a work in progress translating the evolution of my ideas for a series of sculptures: lightweight, involving simple and recycled materials, evidencing the traces of her physical and conceptual construction; directly relating to her environment, without any kind of pedestal. Prototipo can be touched and held and turned around.

Metabolismo Utopico

Asger Jorn’s creative work in his italian house and garden anticipated sustainable design strategies of the present time, involving recovered and second-hand materials for reuse in construction and decoration. I tried to radicalize this concept imagining an organism able to metabolize electronic waste, which is – up to now – just utopia. But it stands as a metaphor for the urgent necessity to change the guidelines of our societies’ production and consumption models.

Time Machine
Trying to meet Asger Jorn travelling in time. It might not work out. But you never know.

U-Muldvarp

A hybrid organism reminding of a submarine and a mole, as a reference to Asger Jorn’s pipe smoking habit and to the situationist practice of détournement he often employed in his work.

Korister

My idea was to imagine the black space below the big painting by Asger Jorn in his bedroom as a sort of stage. The two figures were inspired by the painting’s forms and colours. They seem to be performing a song, as if to transform the small room into a temporary synesthetic Gesamtkunstwerk. Korister in Danish stands for background singer, which means that whatever and however they might sing, the leading voice is the powerful Jorn artwork above them.

Hibernator

Asger Jorn didn’t die in 1973. He simply decided to postpone the rest of his life, as he desired to witness the future evolutions of our world. So he faked his passing away and self-hibernated for the decades to come. He is still sleeping in the cave of his italian house’s pizza oven, a protected place which never becomes too hot or too freezy. Like a hibernating hedgehog he is covered with leafs, which in his case are leaflets of the Internationale Situationniste magazine.

Additional bidimensional works

Symbjornts Workshop

A workshop involving people from Albissola shortly before the exhibition’s opening. We tried to build ephemeral, biodegradable artworks to be placed in the Jorn House garden and to be watched in their evolution in the weeks of the show.

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