Intervallo n°1 is an exhibition conceived as a journey through different media and artistic sensibilities that together comprise a set of relationships between space, attraction, and tension. The exhibition attempts to investigate the void that separates and unifies people as the dimension where distance and desire generate and blend with each other. It is thus an exhibition conceived as a field of relationships by three artists of different nationalities.
The common thread running through the works exhibited by these artists is the motif of a human figure caught in moments of concentration and distraction, in addition to almost total expressive concentration on a single medium: performance and photography for Marcello Maloberti and video installation for Hans Op de Beeck and João Onofre.
Performance and video are brought together here to evoke a subtly reciprocal relationship between the presence of the image and absence of the body, between the physical proximity of the performer and the evanescence of video, between the persistence of the digital loop and the temporary nature of performance.
Within this field of action and the flirt between voids and solids, the works of Hans Op de Beeck, Marcello Maloberti, and João Onofre manifest a focus on the dynamics of relationship as moments of blockage, tension, uncertainty, sense of loss, desire, and nostalgia.
Two performances by Marcello Maloberti and two video installations by João Onofre and Hans Op de Beeck are set up alongside each other in sequence where the spectator can sense himself as the other pole in a relationship between space, persons, and images, and where his own sensibility is the wager in an eternal bet: approaching one’s own object of desire and managing to keep it at one’s side.
Marcello Maloberti Performance and photography are the focus of Marcello Maloberti, an artist who concentrates on the most intimate and recondite dynamics of language, human relationship, the emotional dimension, and its representation. He is currently featured in a one-man show at the Kunstverein in Ludwisburg, while he has participated in various group shows, including those held at MUSEION – Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bolzano (2003), the Museo del Corso in Rome, and the Galleria Civica di Montevergini (Siracusa, 2002), the Kjubh Kunstverein in Cologne, and the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato (both in 2000), and the Melbourne Biennial (Australia, 1999).
João Onofre Lisbon, 1976. One of the most vibrant and internationally known Portuguese artists of his generation, João Onofre works exclusively in video, producing works characterized by minimalist and intense visual strategies, structured on the concept of repetition, sampling, and intensification of the emotions. In addition to having participated at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), the Sidney Biennial Sidney (2002), and group shows at the Tate Modern in London (2000) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he appeared in one-man shows at PS1 in New York (2002), the Museu do Chiado – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, and the Kunsthalle in Vienna (both in 2003).
Hans Op de Beeck Turnhout (Belgium), 1969. Hans Op de Beeck’s work – focused on video, drawing, and installation – reflects on the relationship between image and individual existence, according to a framework that alternates between melancholy and subtle irony and magic. In addition to having represented Belgium at the International Art Program of PS1 in New York in 2002-2003, Hans Op de Beeck has exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, Belgium, the Biennale Internazionale di Arte Giovane BIG in Turin, and at Le Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse (both in 2002), at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (2001), the MUHKA in Antwerp, and the Le Consortium in Amsterdam (both in 2001).