Presenting:
Caverne, Pietre, Luci (Caves, Lights, and Stones), Carlos Casas, video trilogy, 2016, 42’52”
Duration: 2017 April 29 – May 30
Arthub is delightful to bring Carlos Casas’s video trilogy Caverne, Pietre e Luci (Caves, Lights, and Stones), is a work about and into the Mediterranean Sea. A video about Europe’s extreme land, anintimate portrait of caves, lighthouse, sea and stones.
Where is the boundary that separets north and south？Where and how do these imaginary lines merges？ How do we view those extreme lands from whithin them?
Independent curator Paolo Mele brings his presentation for the screening and Exhibition on the Table.
A Personal Encyclopedia
Solo show by Carlos Casas, curated by Paolo Mele
In the field one has to face a chaos of facts, some of which are so small that they seem insignificant; others loom so large that they are hard to encompass with one synthetic glance. But in this crude form they are not scientific facts at all; they are absolutely elusive, and can be fixed only by interpretation, by seeing them sub specie aeternitatis, by grasping what is essential in them and fixing this. “Only laws and generalizations are scientific facts, and field work consists only and exclusively in the interpretation of the chaotic social reality, in subordinating it to general rules.
— Bronislaw Malinowski
The artist today is a researcher: he collects any kind of data (video, audio, text, objects, etc.) and, through his works, he offers a personal interpretation of the reality. The method used to collect and remediate those kinds of materials represents the architecture of the new artistic practice.
Fieldworks are the architecture of the work of Carlos Casas: a series of free, anti-narrative notes in which the artist takes the time to plunge his gaze into the meaning of the place, of the landscape, without drawing on the need for the definition of a complete story.
Renewed mostly as video artist and filmmaker, Carlos Casas’ world reveals us a deep and intimate analysis of the contemporary world, the physical and fictional border that divides or merges imaginary and perception.
He has been investigated the landscape and what there is beyond it since the beginning of his artistic research. Casas is obsessed by extreme locations, extreme lands and its extreme inhabitants, because he believes therein lies a truth, a geological scar that shows us how we lived and who we were, thus allowing us to understand who we are now.
A Personal Encyclopedia is an exhibition about nature, landscape, border and extreme and how the humans approach and deal with those. It includes video, photos, audio, drawings and objects from different places around the world: Patagonia (South America), Cape of Leuca (Europe), Nepal, Siberia and Tajikistan (Asia).
At the same time, the exhibition is not only about topics, but also about a methodology. Casas is mostly know as visual artist and filmmaker, but his practice is much more deep and analytic. He makes videos, audios, drawings, photos and he collects objects. He uses the fieldworks as instrument of cataloging the known and the unknown and to represent an intimate vision of the world, a personal encyclopedia.
The exhibition reflects this multidisciplinary attitude of the artist, who, like a modern researcher, plays with different kind of media and tools to study and offer a representation of the world.
About Artist
Carlos CASAS, Lives and Works in Paris (FRA)
Carlos Casas (Barcelona 1974) filmmaker and visual artist. his work is a cross between documentary film, cinema, and contemporary visual and sound arts. His last three films have been awarded in festivals around the world from Torino, Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City and some of his video works have been presented in collective and personal exhibitions.
He has just concluded a trilogy of work dedicated to the most extreme environments on the planet, Patagonia, Aral sea, and Siberia. He is currently working on a film about a cemetery of elephants on the borders between India and Nepal.
His works deals with the idea of survival, death and the archaic, as a modern day explorer. His audiovisual research pretends to question the way we understand ourselves and our changing environment, pushing the ways we envision the audiovisual experience.
He is founder of Map Productions with his partner and wife Saodat Ismailova and runs the audiovisual label Von archives with fellow artist friend Nico Vascellari.
He has exhibited and performed in many important gallery and spaces all around the word: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporaine, Paris; Microscope Gallery, New York; Hangar Bicocca, Milan; Lastation, Gagliano del Capo (LE); Blank, Torino;
In march 2017 Casas will perform at Bmw Tate Live Exhibition: Ten Days Six Nights at the Tate Modern, London
About Curator
Paolo Mele (1981), independent curator and founder and director of Ramdom, an art organization based in the heel of Italy. He organised 3 editions of Default, an international masterclass on “Arts, cities and regeneration” with important artists and guests from all around the world. In 2013 he launched the site-specific project “Investigation on the extreme land”, collaborating with international artists, curators and directors.
Paolo has collaborated with several international organisations such as the Arthub Asia (Shanghai, China), New Art Exchange (Nottingham, UK), Fondazione Veronesi (Italy), Fondazione Chivasso (Italy), World Bank (Washington, USA) and others.
He was Visiting Researcher at the New School for Public Engagement in New York City from November 2013 to October 2015 and curator in residence at Residency Unlimited in 2016. In 2015 he was awarded PhD in Communication & New Technologies at IULM University in Milan with a project research on Arts and New Media.
From 2008 to 2012 Paolo Mele worked for the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and Mediterranean (Bjcem) as Project manager and curator of OFF programme.
