July 17th, cortina – Epsonaldo & The Underdogs

Epsonaldo & The Underdogs

solo exhibit by Alessandro Sambini
curated by G. D’Incà Levis
with the assistance of Giovanna Repetto and Matteo Razzano and the advice of Gabriele Greco.

From July 17th to September 3rd
Cortina Cooperative and Sovilla Book Store
opening hours 10:00 AM-8:00 PM.

Opening: Saturday, July 17th, 5:00 PM
Cortina d’Ampezzo, La Cooperativa di Cortina, Corso Italia 40.

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The artist was engaged in the project in Cortina for a few months.
Supported by Dolomiti Contemporanee, by Cortina for Us and by the Municipality of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Sambini worked with the students and teachers (Mauro Menego, Luca De Moliner, Italo Pradella) of the Arts High School and the Carpentry Workshop, on the creation of several peculiar wooden objects through the reinterpretation of traditional techniques of the Ampezzo area, and transforming them into rampant devices of approach to the territory’s history and culture.
It is believed that a lively rose-y Chilean custodian will look after them.

Epsonaldo & the Underdogs is (also) a collaborative project on the theme of commercial packaging (the casing of the consumer goods we buy, and which we often have trouble getting rid of). The students of the terza and quarta classes (16-to-18-year-olds) of the Arts High School of Cortina have copied two abandoned packaging boxes, found inside the school, and transformed them into carved wood statues. A few personal messages for the future have been placed inside the statues, should anybody – either from Earth or space – decide to open them.

The title of the exhibit is a reference to Fitzcarraldo (and to Epson): the ship, in this case, is the re-wooden box which carries the messages and meanings expressed by the students of the school someplace else; someplace else, this journey, a journey of meaning, indeed, one that creates art in the beyond. The other reference is to the second lead who becomes the protagonist (underdog): the focus is on the packaging box, and that makes it the lead: why is that? The consumer object can quickly lose its commercial aura, having overcome the update, in the course of the bulimic chasing, or having been lost and broken, either way: resized. The box remains, an emptiness full of echo? You don’t know where to put it. What are you preserving with it? Collecting stinginess? Redoundant fetishistic psychism? The Eros of the case? Uncertainty and logistic flickering?

The work will be installed in a shop-window of the Cooperative in Corso Italia and at the Sovilla Book Store, the exhibit will be viewable during the opening times of the two stores.
Free admission.

During the opening, the artist will create a performance inside the Cooperative.

We wish to thank: the Regole d’Ampezzo, the President of Cortina for Us Franco Sovilla and Roberta Zafutta, the headmaster of the Mario Baldasso high school, the director of the Cooperative Emanuela de Zanna, the Culture Assessor of the Cortina Municipality Paola Coletti, the Aracnophilia Association.