ANDREA BIANCONI
PRISONER OF LOVE
September 6 - October 19th, 2019
Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to
announce "Prisoner of Love", a solo
exhibition by international artist Andrea
Bianconi opening Friday, September 6th
with an artist’s reception from 6:00 to
8:30 pm. The exhibition will include
drawing, painting, installation, sculpture
and a performance by the artist. This
exhibition is on view from September 6th
through October 19th, 2019.
WORDS FROM THE ARTIST:
Cage, arrow, wings, action: these are the essential elements of my work. In the last performance I set up inside Milan’s prison of San Vittore, “How to build a direction”, I caged the cage and released the inmates. I set them free, completely free, for an hour.
During the performance, I sang, together with the inmates and the audience, a song called "The arrow" that I wrote a while ago. The song is about the search for love and suddenly says “… to make you love you need Cupid, to make Cupid you need an angel, to make an angel you need Cupid, to make Cupid we need a bow, to make a bow you need the arrow". It is from this song that I want to develop the show.
In Cupid I see the figure encompassing all the elements that are part of my work: the arrow, the wings, the search for a direction. Cupid embodies the human being. We are all Cupid. We are the ones shooting arrows, we are the ones holding our own bow. The arrows represent our wishes and dreams, our words, our projects, our hopes. The meaning of our existence lies precisely in that network of relationships, connections, love stories.
I designed this new exhibition like a huge world, of sensation where everything converges to help human beings find their own direction in life. Drawings, canvases, sculptures, installations, a quiver with arrows, every medium is involved, because the exhibition is first and foremost a meditation on choice, and therefore on the directions people have to take. The power of love is incredibly strong when we make choices. We are warriors of love. We are prisoners of love. And in a small canvas I saw that two open arrows going opposite ways can even end up becoming a heart.
-Andrea Bianconi
Internationally recognized artist Andrea Bianconi currently lives and works in Italy and New York. Among his numerous achievements, Bianconi was selected to participate in the 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art curated by Catherine de Zegher, former Director of both, the Drawing Center New York and the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts in Belgium. Zegher was also the curator of “ON LINE”, an internationally recognized exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art New York. In 2013, Bianconi launched his publication Fable at MoMA PS1, which was purchased by the MoMA Library. Finally, he was the only artist invited to participate at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.