On a warm Spring evening of the 19th of June 2003, contemporary art in Palermo was full of expectations and hope for its historic city centre, in spite of ruins (bomb damage from World War II, ed.) and general abandon, to develop a better quality of life. That same evening, the 17th century salons on the top floor of Palazzo Gravina di Rammacca, in piazza Garraffello, in the heart of the Vucciria market, opened their doors to art. The large audience crowded up the spiral staircase, illuminated by candlelight, for the opening of the first exhibition in the newly born Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea Gallery.
The first exhibition was a double solo show of Marco Cingolani and Alessandro Bazan, friends and teachers at Palermo’s Fine Art Academy, painters, both born in the 60s in Milan and Palermo respectively, the latter with his studio on the lower floor of the same building of the gallery.
Their artistic paths, different but focused on painting as a medium, brought them to a singular affinity, confronted within the exhibition.
The canvas “Amici al Garraffello. L’incendio di cuori”, by Marco Cingolani, dates back to that first exhibition. A large painting, in which the colour red builds shapes, through nuances and overlappings. The fluid paint becomes fascinating and the colours and shapes interlace the filaments of an event.
And it is starting from this work, that the exhibition today can create a “portrait” of the gallery, on its 10th anniversary, like a mosaic whose tiles are the numerous exhibitions by various artists who, through those occasions, established strong ties with our city, with its stories and contrasts.
Marco Cingolani and Alessandro Bazan’s support was crucial in the initial phase of the gallery, backing – with conviction – the decisions of Francesco Pantaleone and of his then business partner, Pamela Erbetta, anglo-piemontese by birth but “palermitana” by choice.
From New York’s Gagosian Gallery, hub of worldwide contemporary art market, Francesco came back in 2000, dreaming of making the Vucciria – the Palermo market of Arab origins, famously painted by Renato Guttuso – the starting point of a double challenge: to win the cupio dissolvi that, despite of any international experience, each Sicilian has inside himself, aiming to support young art; to create within the space and clamour of the market, unfortunately already going downhill, an art market whose original merchandise would reach the world, starting precisely from an old capital.
The singular, metonymic, Palazzo Rammacca in the Vucciria, a place committed to artistic avant-garde in the 90s, was the not secondary part of what, in the future of the city, would have been made possible by the gallerists’ commitment and artist’s works of art.
FPAC (Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea) launches in 2005 its collaboration with Laura Barreca, curator of the first solo exhibition of Manfredi Beninati (Palermo, 1970) who, in the second show presented a site-specific work: “il 6 di agosto del 1975”evoking memories of the past, a vanishing space with crepuscular style. An illusive and allusive reality, fading like a dream on awakening. A big environmental installation with a stage effect, experienced today by the audience by way of a photographic reproduction set on a light box.
In 2006, Italo Zuffi (Imola, 1969) explores the theme of art as personal action and conscious choice in the group of four texts, created by the artist in 1999 e resolved graphically in Palermo for his solo exhibition. In the same year, under the decorated ceiling of the first hall of the gallery, Loredana Longo (Catania, 1967) blows up, with gunpowder, a table lavishly decked with cakes. This performance, “Explosions # 8 Sweets”, marks the beginning of the collaboration between Loredana and the gallery. This year she exhibited the latest series of her works, “Carpet”, where phrases taken from speeches of the politically powerful of the world are burnt on carpets, provoking and dazing the gaze. On show a new carpet made for this exhibition and another two works from the same series, presented here for the first time, arriving from Bad New Business, the off space of FPAC in Milan, curated in collaboration with Agata Polizzi.
The artists, the residences, the city: Domani, a Palermo (2007).
Within a few years the gallery becomes a meeting place and melting pot of local and international contemporary creativity.
Through exhibitions, fairs and not a few difficulties, the gallery promoted important and original collaborative projects such as the one with Aleksandra Mir (Lubin, Poland, 1967) who in 2007, curated the second solo exhibition of the Palermo collective Laboratorio Saccardi, “Donna/Woman”, where their classic “bad-painting” desecrated the icons and themes of the feminine world. Within the exhibition their sharp irony revolves around the art world and its myths, from Picasso to De Dominicis.
Aleksandra Mir has been a passionate supporter of the gallery since 2005, also donating her collection of contemporary art books that today forms the core of the library open to public within the new space.
On show a group of collages from “Il Sogno e la Promessa” series, resulted from the relationship between Aleksandra, the gallery and the city. In these works on paper, the singular and peculiar anthropological sensitivity of Mir results in creating a symbiotic space where sacred images (inspired by the religious objects on display in the windows of the Pantaleone Arte Sacra), and profane illustrations of rockets and astronauts from American magazines of the 70s, share the “same sky”.
In 2007, the residency formula becomes a strong point of the gallery, when Francesco Pantaleone creates, along with curator Laura Barreca, the project “Domani, a Palermo”, highlighting the potential of an enchanting city.
With a loose reference to Daniele Ciprì and Franco Maresco’s film “Enzo, domani a Palermo”, the aim of the project was to provoke a different and positive outlook on the future, through the subtle hints collected by the artists in residence, in a city where everything always tends to recall the past.
The empathy with which Palermo manages to enter into close contact with the artists is demonstrated by Stefania Galegati Shines’ experience (Bagnacavallo, 1973). Protagonist of the first residency of the series “Domani, a Palermo #1”, after the exhibition, Stefania moved to Palermo to live and start her own family. The same year, Marcello Maloberti catches the spontaneous energy of piazza Garraffello, in the performance “Circus”, here presented in a video work on monitor.
It must be underlined how the occasional, the lack of orderliness and the weakness of both institutional, and not, initiatives typical of our city, did not involve the project“Domani, a Palermo” that, with continuity has created residences, productions and exhibitions of artists such as: Per Barclay, Flavio Favelli, Christian Frosi, Adrian Hermanides, John Kleckner, Andrew Mania, Liliana Moro, Milena Muzquiz, Francesco Simeti, Sissi, Gian Domenico Sozzi, Joanne Robertson and, recently Julieta Aranda.
So, the gallery’s activity continues and in 2007, welcomes as a new business partner Francesco Giordano, physicist – involved since the beginning in the enterprise – who brings an “external gaze” to the venture, while the network of artists living in the city, and inspired by it, continues to grow.
In “Pisa” (2009), oil painting on canvas by Andrea Di Marco (Palermo, 1970 – 2012), the artist describes a world of discarded objects, weakened and denied (maybe infected ?), from where man separates himself before the end determined by his blind intrusiveness.
Human effects on landscape are the hub of Francesco Simeti’s (Palermo, 1968) work who has created “Fayetteville” (2013), sculpture inspired by the famous small rococò “theatres” by Giacomo Serpotta, elaborating a dramatic image from the New York Times of the facade of a house destroyed by a tornado in North Carolina in 2011. The different media used by Simeti, from sculpture to photography, overlap here in the latest wallpaper created by the artist, “Gigli, gladioli, briganti ed emigranti” (2013), part of the collection of the Gallery of Modern Art of Palermo. Natural landscapes by Francesco Lo Jacono and old pictures of emigrant families are overlapped by the artist, creating a pattern which represents the contradictions of Palermo’s Belle Époque period. To this, the artist has added decorative Liberty style elements, and enriched the work for this occasion, with the use of three-dimensional plaster clouds applied on the wall paper.
The indifference of man to what it is going on around him is the stage for Adalberto Abate’s works (Palermo, 1975), shaking unconsciousness and awakening attention to current events, as in “Dies Irae”, from the series “Rivolta”, a cobble-stone engraved by the artist before the Arab Spring. Facing this, “Ritratto di massa”, where the artist reuses an old advertisement, revealing the ambiguity of our past, in order to make a new start (“Tutto da rifare” is the title of this series of works, in fact).
In 2008, Liliana Moro (Milan, 1961), well known artist in the international scene, presented “Canile”, on a classic theme of artistic iconography, first uncovered in“Underdog” (2005): animal conflicts as metaphor of human conflicts, where defeat often results in death. This art work is now indelibly tattooed, on the arms of Francesco Pantaleone.
After his solo exhibition in 2007, Flavio Favelli (Florence, 1967), extended his creation of a personal “Sicilian universe”, through a body of works where objects in common use are manipulated and assembled, deepening links between places, things and memories by using pieces of furniture, maps, magazine covers and historical, discarded shop signs.
Like an old fashioned traveller, Sissi (Bologna, 1977), takes notes describing places, objects, people, through numbered diaries and filed photographs from where these memories re-emerge transfigured into works of art. Like the series of the lunch-works, part of her life as performances, these edible installations are then “frozen” in photographs, as “Cena appesa” (2010).
In the photograph “Red carpet”, Gian Domenico Sozzi (Cremona, 1960), caught the radical intervention he created for the gallery in his solo exhibition in 2010. Once again, changing the space with just a singular, but crucial intervention: in this case the cutting off of the gallery’s balcony fence. A gesture that changes the perception of the place. A way out? An invitation to jump? Eliminating the protection exposes us to the inescapable memento mori, of the famous 15th century fresco from Palermo, “The Triumph of Death”.
Experimenting his “oil rooms” since 1989, Per Barclay (Oslo, Norway, 1955), floods the floors where he creates his works with water, industrial oils and other liquids. In the photograph exhibited, taken in 2010 at Palazzo Costantino at the Quattro Canti (adjacent to the gallery), Per Barclay fixes the splitting of the space obtained by covering the floor with a dark combustible oil which becomes a mirror of the frescoed ceiling depicting the “Trionfo di Costantino” by Giuseppe Velasco, of the late 18th century.
Ten years after: the new gallery at the Quattro Canti and the future.
For its tenth anniversary, FPAC opens itself to the urban space installing a selection of works in the shop windows along the Quattro Canti, the Cassaro and via Maqueda, to underline the link between the place of creation of the works of art and the relation between artists, city and the gallery.
The shop window space-limit, a border between the inside and out, diaphragm between public and private space, becomes a window on the works exhibited, offering them to view to the passers-by. Beyond the window, art is made visible – liveable maybe ? – and proposes itself together with objects in common use.
That is how Julieta Aranda’s (Mexico City, Mexico, 1975) small volcano print emerges among the shelves full of cigarettes of the old tobacconist at the Quattro Canti; “Il collezionista di cravatte”, painting by Alessandro Bazan, created for the windows of Barbisio, is the perfect companion for “Katia e le sue scarpe”, painted by the same artist in 2004; a photograph by Christian Frosi (Milan, 1973), flâneur for Palermo with his enigmatic “C” shape sculpture on his shoulder, welcomes the guests of the Hotel Quinto Canto.
Next to the ladies’ clothes of the Sartoria Maqueda, “Borderline Case”, an apparently figurative painting by Joanne Robertson (Manchester, UK, 1979), where the image dissolves, opening a dialogue about the female form and its relationship to power and anonymity.
For the Caffé Ruvolo, Stefania Galegati Shines, presents a new installation from the series “Bunker” (2004-2006), where these strange buildings from the Second World War, where the choice of the postcard size of some of the drawings and paintings refers directly to an unusual and unaware form of tourism.
The pencil portraits on paper by Benny Chirco (Marsala, 1980), influenced by cinema and American literature, are exhibited amongst the ties and shirts of the historical men’s shop, Pustorino Uomo. The portraits exhibited, presented in “Gentleman” (2008), refer to the photographs taken by the artist of the members of an American football team in Palermo.
Finally, the atrium of Palazzo Di Napoli is transformed into an experimental project-room by the site-specific installation, “Ciò che è in basso è come ciò che è in alto e ciò che è in alto è come ciò che è in basso”, by Ignazio Mortellaro (Palermo, 1978), who exhibits in the gallery for the first time. His artistic research, based on the relation between man and nature, investigates the world and its laws proposing it anew with an inspired artistic language which makes the universe and its celestial forms ascribable to human experience.
“Party with us”, neon text work by Lovett/Codagnone (John Lovett, Princeton, USA, 1962. Alessandro Codagnone, Milan, 1967) with an editing of the crowd noise at a Smiths concert, is the work linked to the solo show just ended in the gallery and it gives the title to this exhibition, celebrating the tenth anniversary of FPAC, a meeting place for the local and international art scene, a space that the city needs, today more than ever.
