Alessandro Bulgini, Opera Viva Formulario
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"This is the story of a progressive exile"
Christian Caliandro
Texts by
Christian Caliandro
Lorena Tadorni
Geneva Pucci
Fabrizio Bellomo
Hardcover, 27cm x 17cm x 2cm, 1kg, pages 312
Collection of formulas relating to an indefinite discipline carried out for issues of peripheral interest.
Since the beginning, Bulgini focuses his research on the theme of the invisible and the submerged.
The first manifestations of this meaning are still linked to painting: Le dejeuner sur l'herbe (1993-2000) and the subsequent Hairetikos series.
In 2008, the year of the artist's transfer to the Turin district of Barriera di Milano, the lemma Opera Viva appears to define a series of diptychs with a painted black part (figurative but apparently monochrome) and the other in formica, which simulates the bulkhead of a ship.
Son of an official sailor of the Italian Navy, Bulgini grew up inextricably linked to the sea. The "opera viva ( in italian the term means both hull and living artwork)", in nautical jargon, is the submerged part of the hull therefore it represents the submerged, all that is invisible, all the peripheries, mental and physical. This is how Bulgini translates the term into art to indicate, from that moment on, all his artworks, in order to describe a poetics and an investigation dedicated to the other and the elsewhere.
Light and dark, visible and invisible, emerged and submerged, center and periphery.
From two to three dimensions from the painting to the street, the step is short and it is initially conveyed by the social networks, which become the place where the work is expressed and takes place. Facebook thus becomes the fundamental stage, on which the process is shown in the moment it takes place.
In 2012, on April 23, Bulgini adds a new piece to its work dedicated to laterality and the periphery: the key project Opera Viva BARLUIGI, a project with which the artist abandons his studio to enter the daily routine of life.
Thus it is born the figure of the District Artist, the artist who works in his own neighborhood through visual art.
The concept of "responsibility" is declined with new methods and approaches, thus the idea of Decoro Urbano (Urban Decor) was born in 2014: drawings made with chalks that decorate the streets of Barriera di Milano, a historic Turin district or the itinerant performances of Luci d 'Artista, an intelligent way of putting attention to the forgotten places with which the artist transforms himself into light holding two portable lamps that illuminate Turin, Livorno, Porto San Giorgio, Taranto and other territories such as the Jungle of migrants in Calais, the Imlil mountains in Morocco, the outskirts of Peekskill in the United States.
Care of the place but also care of the community that inhabits it, care of entire neighborhoods such as Taranto Vecchia or the historic center of Cosenza, such as Barriera di Milano in Turin, where activities multiply including urban interventions and performances, images destined to disperse and disappear which find their profound meaning precisely in this ephemeral nature.
And again The first and second Attempt to move the Old Taranto Island (2015 and 2017) to move it away from ILVA, the first Attempt to shorten the Channel with Kites (Jungle Calais, 2016) to bring migrants closer to England , all interventions that revolve around a precise idea of the relationship between art and public space, interpreted in turn as human tissue even before as a material structure.
The work therefore leaves the institutional, official artistic spaces and enters reality, merging and integrating fully into everyday existence. This work, obviously, is born and grows through the participation, involvement, inclusion of the community to which it refers.
Bulgini therefore works in a varied way for everything that is invisible, for all the peripheries of the world in the belief that art must be a living tool and that it must take action to bring attention to where it is hard to look, an art at the service of the other and the elsewhere, an art immersed in everyday life.
Alessandro Bulgini (Taranto, 1962) is an eclectic artist with a disruptive energy and great empathy. These characteristics have been fundamental for the realization of a tireless work of research, a work free from prejudices and from the short chains of the art market that have often caged, in sterile repetition, many artists. Since the beginning Bulgini has concentrated its research on the theme of the invisible and the submerged, from 1990 to 2000 with the cycle of works "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" and from 2001 to today with the cycles "Hairetikos" and "Opera Viva" . Performances, paintings, photographs, installations, urban interventions, are all tools that the artist has used over time as acts of opposition to a truth considered absolute, attempts to indicate something beyond the visible.
Christian Caliandro (1979) is a historian, contemporary art critic and curator. He teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts of Foggia. Among his books: The transformation of images. The beginning of the postmodern between art, cinema and theory, 1977-'83 (Mondadori Electa 2008), Italia Reloaded. Starting afresh with culture (Il Mulino 2011, with Pier Luigi Sacco), Italia Revolution. Reborn with culture (Bompiani 2013), Italia Evolution. Growing up with culture (Meltemi 2018), Traces of identity of Italian art. Works from the heritage of the Unipol Group (Silvana Editoriale 2018) and the Stories of Contemporary Art manual (Mondadori Education 2021). From 2004 to 2011 he directed the internal and essai columns on “Exibart”; since 2011 he has edited the practical column on "Artribune". He also collaborates with “minimaetmoralia” and “che-Fare”. Since 2017, together with Angela D'Urso, he has directed La Chimera - Contemporary art school for children, TEX, ExFadda, San Vito dei Normanni (BR). He has curated numerous solo and group exhibitions in public and private spaces.
Lorena Tadorni , free-lance curator, was born in 1977 in Turin, where she lives and works. He graduated in History of Art from the University of Turin and completed his studies with a doctorate in Art Criticism from the University of Macerata. He has collaborated with national and foreign curators and organized exhibitions in public and private spaces in Italy and abroad. He edited the section of young artists for the Dictionary of the artists of the 900, in preparation for the SKIRA publishing house, Milan, and the section of contemporary art museums for Italy of the Museums of the Italian Touring Club. Always interested in urban regeneration and the educational and participatory dimension of art, she increasingly directs her activity towards audience development and audience engagement projects, so that art becomes an increasingly accessible language.
Ginevra Pucci was born in Geneva (CH), where she obtained the defle and the master en lettres at the Ecole de langue et de civilization françaises (ELCF) - Faculté des Lettres Université de Genève -, lives in various European cities holding important positions of curatorship and coordination of Events, Exhibitions and Art Fairs including The Baroque from Caravaggio to Vanvitelli at the Capodimonte Museum, Certosa and Museum of S. Martino, Castel S. Elmo, Duca di Martina Museum, Pignatelli Museum and Royal Palace, Naples ; ROME, the Road to Contemporary Art, Rome, MINT and Miart in Milan. From 2004 to 2007 he was in charge of coordinating the exhibitions and conferences of the Volume! Foundation. From Rome. In 2011 he participated in the creation of the Fair dedicated to young art The Others. In 2013, together with Stefania Poddighe, he founded Situation Built, a creative industry specialized in Arts Management and Cultural Marketing with which in the same year he created the most contemporary fair of ancient and modern art: FLASHBACK, art is all contemporary.
Fabrizio Bellomo (Bari, 1982), visual artist, carries out his research in a hybrid and multidisciplinary way. His works have been exhibited in Italy and abroad in solo and group exhibitions, through public projects, film festivals and presentations. He has collaborated with various municipalities and institutions for the creation and design of works and public art operations and has won numerous awards including, in 2012, the Celeste Award with the video "December 32".
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