Renato Leotta

RENATO
LEOTTA

biography
leottarenato@gmail.com

http://renato-leotta.tumblr.com/

Upcoming Exhibitions

11 december 2015 - 21 febbraio 2016

L' Epais Réel

curated by Ariane Michel
Bas Jan Ader, Dominique Blais, Katinka Bock, Simon Faithfull, Nicolas Floc’h, Ellie Ga,
Giovanni Giaretta / Renato Leotta, Július Koller, Helen Mirra, Abraham Poincheval,
Thomas Salvador, Jessica Warboys, Guido van der Werve

La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, France

5 – 8 november 2015

ALT
curated by CRIPTA747
Renato Leotta, Elisa Troiano, Alex Tripodi e Marianna Orlotti.

Ugo Alessio, Giulio Delvè, Jason Dodge, Daniel Faust, Gianni Ferrero Merlino,
Birgit Megerle, Bruce Nauman, Kirsten Pieroth, Man Ray, Patrick Tuttofuoco,
Lawrence Weiner, Italo Zuffi.

Circolo Sottufficiali dei Carabinieri Caserma Ettore De Sonnaz, Torino, Italia

Past Exhibitions

Auto Tuning Torino
11 September 2015

LISTE
Art fair Basel
16 - 21 June 2015

Piccola Patria
Galleria Fonti, Napoli
14 March - 22 May 2015

book launch
T-A-X-I, June 2015

Of loves and ladies, knights and arms, I sing,

Of courtesies, and many a daring feat;

Renato Leotta, "Museo (Cavalli e Cavalle, Cavalli Cavalli)"

installation view, Cripta747, Torino

Francesco Messina, "Giovane Stallone"
bronzo, 55x76x22,3 cm, 1991 - courtesy Studio Copernico

Renato Leotta, "Ritratto di donna in movimento (Giacinta)"
studio sul ritratto e disegno di Sebastiano Impellizzeri
carboncino su carta, telaio motorizzato, 150x180 cm, 2014

MUSEO

(Cavalli e Cavalle, Cavalli Cavalli)

text by Sara De Chiara and Dario Giovanni Alì

press:

http://www.neromagazine.it/n/?p=16440

http://moussemagazine.it/museo_cavalli-e-cavalle-cavalli-cavalli_cripta747_turin2014/

http://www.curamagazine.com/?p=17255

________________________________________

Con gli occhi chiusi (belvedere I), 2011-2012 - 16 mm film

The yellow side of sociality, at Bozar, Bruxelles

A collection of landscapes tell about cultural and economic heritage of a specific geography.

In the 16 mm film Belvedere I the observation is dedicated about the production of citrus fruits in the east - south/east of volcano Etna.

Con gli occhi chiusi (belvedere I)

16 mm film frame, 2011-2012

______________________

parcheggio . (abitare il tempo)- 2014

installation view, performance/sculpture, Amsterdam.

realized with the collaboration of Wilson Project

*interview

the conference.

The other day I read of a conference held in Mexico City, where the world's scientific community gathered to declare in unison that time is a place in which to live, like space. They were trying to establish conventions to understand the parameters within which it is possible to inhabit time.

The scientists were debating about the nature of this knowledge, in order to define theoretical paradigms and restore the order of Western language to any possible illusion or deception of so-called reality. The discourse was developed to establish the boundaries between what is part of the logic of facts and what should remain in the logic of fiction.
However, both logics are part of the variegated structure of feelings that compose a geography where a space and its temporality define one another.

Landscapes; architectures; swimming, the succession of images redefines our perception of these in a movement between past and present, taking part in the production of our subjectivity.

This imaginative knowledge rewrites geographies and histories by mixing narratives and claiming the membership of fiction to the realm of empirical reality. This brings us to the necessary observation that not only considers space as a physical construction with a tangible foundation, but also as a sensitive structure, loaded with temporality.
It is useless to say that an agreement between the honoured researchers from all over the world was not fulfilled and a new attempt has been scheduled for next year in a convention centre, at the International Airport in Dubai.

. Calco di una spiaggia dedicato alla donna, 2014

plaster, sand - 40x50 cm

September

The neoliberal condition and its regulations affect the current interests and discourses of art on circulation, immateriality, mass and social communication. The spectrum of illusions of knowledge, accessibility and representation mark the artistic research of recent years, shifting focus to technological progress and the volatility of information in the undefined space of networks.

These scattered notes attempt to talk about the temporality of space and to investigate its underlying narratives. Our gaze is directed to the Mediterranean landscape and its spatial and architectural elements, researching the nature of an imaginary and the relationship of mutual determination with its space of origin.

. Museo Archeologico Nazionale

c-print, freamed europeand pear wood, 30x4o cm - 2013

. Invito al Museo Archeologico, 2013

Museo Nazionale Archeologico E. Sanna, Sassari

the mistral.

The Mistral blows from Provence and crosses the Pyrenees, where it is channelled along the Rhone valley, to arrive in the Mediterranean. On days with low barometric pressure, when the mists from offshore are reflected on the sea’s surface in marks that look like silvery blades, its winds interfere with the view, violently approaching the coast. In the summer the inland temperatures decrease and pressurised air masses crush the water, forming high waves.

The space of a wave is defined in its repetition and it is inscribed in its variables. Getting off the bus and walking towards the plateau that dominates the cove, then down toward the sea. The imagery that arises from a landscape is formed with the same temporality as a wave. Again the canvas bag with the towels gets hitched on the low branches of a juniper crushed by the weight of the sun, dropping on the petals of a plant in bloom nearby.

This was Algiers, Porto Torres, Al-Arish, Tripoli or Palermo. Streets of images, like dreams that return from long before. These are the narratives that make up the construction of our reality, of these fallen petals, of the sharp rocks where you shelter from the wind and from where you are able to watch the waves moved by the Mistral.

. Luigi Cosenza

palm, corner - 2012

National Archeological Museum.

It is possible to think of the time dedicated to the observation of places as an architectural value that informs the character of the occupied volumes. Walking in the archaeological museum, observation is defined by a combinatorial overlapping of my volume and that of the one that contains me.

The way that objects are arranged occupies my senses: the modern museological display, rooms full of light and the plants in the corners, pastel tones broken by the black line of the handrail; some black stone parallelepipeds are embedded on the walls to support large neuralgic artefacts, and soft blue fabrics form the background for the glass display cases. I observe all this while moving though the rooms, keeping one leg as a pivot, attracted by the weight of the volumes and the distances covered by the light filtering through the trees.

The observation of a wave, its dispersal and regeneration, configures the alignment of two moments: one dedicated to a specific physical space, to its architectural and geographical elements and one characterized by a complex process that combines time, (hi)story and experience.

The waves that we have observed as the only constant are still subject to the mistral wind, just like this museum and all the buildings constructed along this coastline.

Visiting palace Abatellis, I think about the complexity of the identity issue related to the Mediterranean and its migration of languages.
The continuous repetition of these wind-related conditions and the incalculable added variables mark the nature of the space in its chain of actions.

The volumes are filled by the aggregate of gusts and currents. The mistral wind emphasizes the architecture, as in a building whose additions and interventions from different periods have changed its nature in a layering of stories. Living that time means dealing with added dimensions that have

been formed and that in some cases have eroded the complete understanding of these expressions, modifying and mixing experiences of distant territories.

. Parcheggio (abitare il tempo)- 2014

installation view, Amsterdam. *interview

. Invito al Museo Archeologico, 2013

Museo Nazionale Archeologico E. Sanna, Sassari

Culture of the equivocal

txt by Benoit Antille

. Belvedere

c-print, freamed europeand pear wood, 30x4o cm - 2011

Described by Canadian historian Bruno Roy as a “culture of the equivocal,” the medieval imaginary was characterized by polysemic language. Symbolical practices, comical ambiguities, or word plays are some of the rhetorical forms that shaped this fluid thinking. For a same use of intertextual constructions elaborated with wit and irony, Renato Leotta’s conceptual work can claim to follow this inheritance. Associative in a way that recalls the hermetic tradition of ars combinatoria, his practice focuses on the creation of installations, that combine everyday life objects chosen for their emblematical value, footages or iconic elements of a given context (such as a specific geographical area) reduced to visual abstractions.

The dialog of these signifiers within the exhibition space addresses cultural constructions such as exoticism or history through playing with their semantic structure. Consisting in two 100 Lira coins glued on the wall at different places of the space, and a 30X40cm framed photograph of a car parked against a brick wall, the exhibited dispositive could hardly be more minimal. But the combination of these elements hides infinite number of possible interpretations. If the sunset reflected in the car windows evocate the topos of the landscape from genre painting to clichés representations of holywoodian movies, the reflection in itself refers to the thematic of the mirror in the History of Art. Since the XVème Century indeed, it became a recurrent way for painters to introduce metadiscourses in their composition (such as a self-reflexive discourse on painting or the theme of the vanitas…).

As for the two coins, displayed at different heights, they of course embody notions of monetary value, but they also speak for another unit of measure: standards ways of hanging frames or paintings. Sharing their respective experiences, Leotta and artist Mauro Vignando indeed came to conclusion that the North American one is apparently more or less 10 centimeters higher than the European one. Through Leotta’s associative practice, these canons and rules of Western painting overlap with aspects of Italian modern History. The Fiat Tipo depicted on the photograph, built in Torino during the Golden Age of the brand, and the Lira used before adoption of Euro indeed address issues of delocalization within a globalized world and economic crisis. The crepuscular landscape reflected on the car thus becomes the metaphorical evocation of economic collapse. As for the two coins, they reach institutional critic, since they dismantle the exhibition practice as another cultural construction. Catching lights of the exhibition space on their reflective surface they build another “mirror of illusions,” a memento mori for Western culture.

"Sotto la strada la spiaggia", 2012

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino

zzz...

i miei ragazzi_pied a terre, 2013

gas soporifero, pneumatico di bicicletta, catena

installation view at Accademia Albertina, Torino

zzz...

. Mad Med, Cripta747, Torino

Obee, Aniello and Primitive Art

audio work - live set

http://atpdiary.com/exhibit/cripta747-ente-da-fare/

zzz...

. Untitled, 2013

water colours, ambientale.

Wilson Projects Space, Sassari

VVV

fontana, ardesia, 240x90 cm - 2012

PALOMAR

Palomar is a project of observing territory through the aesthetic and linguistic codes that characterize current European, Italian and Mediterranean generation of thirty-somethings.

The project expresses a geography by intersecting levels that meet multiple data: rural epica of the mezzogiorno, massindustry advertising semiotics, and rituals and phenomena of customization at the apex and forfeiture of the modern.

The exhibition matures through experiences and observations within a continuous game of relationships.

Renato Leotta, "Palomar"
installation view, Galleria Gentili, Prato

Renato Leotta, senza titolo
still frame

"Salvatore e Christian", 2012
fabric pockets / coins, 90 x120 - 90 x150 cm

Renato Leotta, "Palomar"

installation view, Galleria Gentili, Prato

"Roma", 2012 - fabric pockets / coins, 90 x120 cm

Renato Leotta, "Palomar" - installation view, Galleria Gentili, Prato

http://moussemagazine.it/renato-leotta-gentili

Con gli occhi chiusi (belvedere I)

16 mm film frame, 2011-2012

The works of Leotta activated complex attention to the places, trying to imagine and reconstruct the network of connections that they have determined. The result is close to the forms of interpretive anthropology, transfigured by reference to a variety of artistic and literary echoes. The survey of places, historical events and artefacts are well educated in the sign of a temporal dimension of stratified, organized visually by means of analogies, parallels and discontinuities.

“Belvedere” (16mm film,Catania 2011) is the synthetic assembly of a walk in rural landscapes: from the streets and countryside of the province of Catania. The eye of the Leotta's camera follows the thread of a historical reading of the scenarios encountered, built by minimum and fragmentary elements. In the visual panorama of the work, summaries of stately architecture of the old "landed aristocracy" overlap seamlessly at the urban development and its continuous evolution.

Citrus crops, orchards and scenarios of lush vegetation alternate with subliminal presence of vehicles and means of transport of mass industry. The artist draws an critical hypothesis where the fractures and the continuities between past and present becomehe common thread that links the development of historical events seemingly unrelated to each other, such as feudalism, agrarian reform and migration of local people towards the world's industrial northern Italy.

"Belvedere" is a minimum diary of the social and urban transformations in Sicily built by means of a writing made up of visual intuition.

"Miramare" (16mm film, Naples, 2010) is a video consisting of a few moments of shooting in 16 mm of an urban garden in front of the aquarium on the Riviera di Chiaia in Naples.The work depicts the detection of a fragment of the classic Mediterranean nature,in exotic and literary terms. Even in this case the artist synthesizes a reflection on the landscape as an echo of the cultural events that have formed and clichés that continue to determine the resonances in the present. The palm in the wind determines a vision based on symbolic and evocative codes, in a saturation of suggestions assigned to sensibility of the viewer.

Luigi Fassi

pubblicated in occasion of "Vitrine"

Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino

http://moussemagazine.it/renato-leotta-at-galleria-collicaligreggi-catania/

Affinità di linguaggio

Renato Leotta's work may be descrived as a personal diary in which each installation is a cchapter recounting the experience of a specific place. In his exhibtions, each single work is part of a web of connections that aim to depict a landscape and certain historical events that took place there.

The artist describes his work as “simulation of promenades” that he recostructs into heterogeneous fragments using a “mise en abyme” structure similar to hypertextual writing. Through his creative process, he trasposes a lived experience into a text, which is itself filled with references and allusions to other writings. This is then translated freely into a small collection of sculptures, photographs, film and paintings.

The installation at the Fondazione Morra Greco in Naples shows city scenes (the gardens of the Real Villa di Chiaia and the Palazzo delle Poste rationalist building) interwoven with images of a 16 mm film, photographs views and abstract rapresentations of a journey to Capri, all of which enter in dialogue with a Sol Lewit wall drawing. Leotta builds connections between geography – unterstood etymologically as writing and representing earthly landscapes – and biographical, literary, historical, political, and cultural information. His ambition is to create a personal atlas, annotated with

facts and perceptions of particular importance, almost as if to suggest a conceptual and abstract version of today's smartphones and their “ augmented reality”.

When see in succession, his exhibtions give the impression of four-dimensional roadmaps: they exist not only in space but must be read according to a specific time sequence that the artist regulates choreographically, using a timer to set off lighting and projectors at specific moments. His exhibition are to be approached as abstract documentaries removed form their territorial context, which, rather than representing space and time in linear sequence as recorder on a conventional film, translate perceptions into objects and images arranged in the exhibtion's own unique spatial-temporal continuum.

Francesco Manacorda

publicated in occasion of Premio Rotchild

Palazzo Reale, Milano