CAR DRDE is pleased to present the solo show by Elia Cantori (Ancona, 1984). The exhibition compares three series of newly created works that expand and deepen the research at the base of his artistic production for ten years, both formally and conceptually, an investigation into the documentary possibilities of the form in its ability to adhere to the phenomenon in which matter is understood as the field of action of physical laws and the chamber for recording their effects.
Elia Cantori’s research is often a challenge for the viewer. The eye is constantly questioned, invited to carefully observe, stimulated to imagine the entity of the generation process of the work. Cantori’s practice (which includes sculpture, installation, video, and photography in different modulations) frames scientific worlds such as that of celestial phenomena, the effects of light, kinetics, in a perfectly balanced aesthetics. If in the previous works, the result was a plastic or visual analogous of a process phase subtracted from instantaneity and turned into an object in its own. In this latest works there seems to be a further evolution: a physical/chemical/mechanical trasformation process applied to a starting object in order to discover hidden capacity or force it to reveal itself. However the outcome of this operation creates different objects from the starting one, but representing the negative of them and at the same time they are autonomous and mysterious entities, governded by other semantics.
The serie exhibited Untitled (1:1 Map) 2019, consists of aluminum casts of cartographic maps, which in addition to being a challenge to the perception of the beholder is at the same time an accurate investigation of matter and form, in poetic and experimental terms. Elia Cantori has a strong interest in recording an instant, registering or freezing elementary actions stopping time. For instance in the serie exhibited Untitled (Photopsyche) 2018/2019, the artist uses photography not as a medium but as matter, using the photosensitive paper to record and impress the light as a "mold", using it as a material. Finally, the environmental installation Untitled (Double Absence) 2020, materializes an impossible double absence, that of the matrix object (a crushed glass sheet whose splinters have been replicated in aluminum) and that of its original shape, imperfectly reconstructed by the linear arrangement of the fragments.
Elia Cantori (Ancona, 1984) lives and works in Ancona (Italy). He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from The Slade School of Fine Arts, University College London and a bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Goldsmiths College London. In 2008 he is selected for the international workshop at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy, with visiting professor Yona Friedman. Among the artist’s solo shows, we mention: Spazio Leonardo, Milan (2019); Banca di Bologna, Bologna (2018); CAR DRDE, Bologna (2016 and 2013); Crisp, London (2009). Group exhibitions he has participated in include: That's IT!, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, MAMbo, Bologna (2018); Cosmic Pulses, Repetto Gallery, London (2017); Versus - Challenging the artist’s model in a century of photography and drawing, Galleria Civica di Modena (2016); The Camera. On the Materiality of the Photography curated by Simone Menegoi, Palazzo De’ Toschi, Bologna (2016); Zodiaco, Marsèlleria Milan, Klemm's Gallery Berlin and Hopstreet Gallery Bruxelles (2016); Spin-Off. Works from Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, Centro de Arte Contemporanea de Quito, Montevideo y Luis Davila, Ecuador (2015); Focus on Contemporary Italian Art, MAMbo, Bologna (2011); 21x21: 21 artists for 21st century, curated by Francesco Bonami, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2010); Italian Open, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2009); La fioritura del bambù, curated by Milovan Farronato, Viafarini DOCVA, Milan (2009).