NEWS

Jacopo Miliani - Male Male Malen

31 May 2017

Marsèlleria presents Male Male Malen, solo exhibition by Jacopo Miliani, that will take place in the venue of via privata Rezia 2 from June 1st to June 28th.
The exhibition will be launched through a performance on May 31st in the venue of via Paullo 12/A, from 7 pm.

“Pittura maschio maschio.”
Remember those walls I built? Well, baby they're tumbling down they didn't even put up a fight. They didn't even make a sound.
(Beyoncé Knowles, Ryan Tedder, E. Kidd Bogart)

“Lieber Maler” (Dear Painter)… a German painter said … “Male Mir” (Paint for me)*… Bringing painting to be not only a medium connected with looking, but also a gesture.

Jacopo Miliani’s show attempts to translate a personal universe through the painting medium, which has been taken on by the artist for the first time, with big irony.
In the exhibition, the body is at the centre of the representation: a carnivalesque explosion that, instead of masking itself, reveals its intimacy. Maybe, this is the proper role of the make-up and the mask.
Movements and gestures, whose documentation is included inside the artwork itself, activate different elements of abstract, monochrome and also figurative painting.

Melancholic and absurd figures (mime, Pierrot, geisha), collide with childish memories creating a half-serious aura, connected with the exhibition environment. In the show there are different collaborations with performers and artists, including Miliani’s mother: Antonietta Federici Miliani, whose pictorial style counterpoises and challenges the conceptual feature of her son.

The show reveals painting not only as external surface, but also as a game that contains an emotional dimension, where you could mirror yourself or where a new face will be revealed.

Between order and disorder, there is a chaos that brings forth several questions. Starting with the title of the show: “Male Male Malen” is translated by Google Translator as “Pittura Maschio Maschio” (from Italian Male Male Painting). But also in many other different ways… It depends on the selected languages.
Which is the relationship among translation, painting and manhood representation?

* Lieber Maler, Male Mir is the title of a painting series by Martin Kippenberger, dating back to the 80s, and the title of a 1968 song by Gus Backus

Exhibition texts by:
João Mourão and Luis Silva, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi and Sara Giannini

Jacopo Miliani was born in Florence. He lives and works in Milan.
The work of Jacopo Miliani is based on an interdisciplinary research involving different practices such as installation, performance, collage, photography; within a methodology that produce works whose comprehension is suspended on different levels of interpretation.

Solo exhibitions include: Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2016), Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona (2016), ICA studio, London (2015), videoteque of GAM, Turin (2013), EX3, Florence (2012) and the exhibitions at Studio Dabbeni in Lugano (2015 e 2010) and FRUTTA gallery in Rome (2012 e 2014).
He realized several performances at: David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2016-2012), Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2015), Museum of Dance, Stockholm (2014), CCSP, Sao Paulo (2014), ViaFarini/DOCVA, Milan (2014), MADRE, Naples (2011).