Massimiliano Finazzer Flory – ConiglioViola at PAC

I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth and come out
among the people that walk with their heads downwards!
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

By observing and radically challenging the space we live in, contemporary art represents a dual driving force of identity and otherness that has the power to move our cities. From this point of view the role of art is a genuinely strategic one. On one hand it provides a screen for social tensions to project ideas, impulses and protests onto; on the other it gathers and conveys a free, topical cultural condition which is not present in that particular art market system that bows down to its own “centres of power”.
Drawing on this we wanted to engage creatively with the Giornata del Contemporaneo event staged by the Italian Association of Contemporary Art Museums and the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities. Together with the PAC we are hosting a singular, provocative anthological exhibition of the works of ConiglioViola.
The work of ConiglioViola, with its atypical history as an artistic brand that encompasses video art, experimental theatre, photography, performance art and the internet, represents the opportunity to contaminate cultural architectures with unsettling creations and “meta-works” that spark off disquieting symbolic implications and experiences.
The title of the exhibition, Sono un pirata / Sono un signore evokes the pirate attack on the Venice Biennale in 2007 and preserves the subversive power of ConiglioViola, which intends to involve visitors in “a sort of magical operation” which has the feel of an initiation rite, the crossing of a threshold which is closed but “openable”.
But to create worlds that can be shared it is necessary to go beyond the mirror, to cross over to the other side. As Lewis Carroll wrote, this must be done without fear, upturning one’s point of view, because everything might become its opposite.
What is apparent non-sense therefore becomes a deeper search for meaning, not without psychoanalytical and social implications.
The artistic journey of ConiglioViola reveals a multifaceted oeuvre, from its nocturnal, fantasy, dark side to its more melancholy, enigmatic or pop aspect. Visitors will be drawn into a broader exploration of the role of contemporary art. And they will discover an artistic presence that coexists with all the consequences of the difficult position of being on the margin, which is however essential (in my view too) for those who are never completely in, yet never completely out, in the quest for a different perspective on things. In the sign of indigo, the colour purple, a hue of the soul that is duty-bound to pursue a transversal approach, ever guided by a vision of the unexpected that is unsettling and thought-provoking.

Massimiliano Finazzer Flory
COUNCILLOR FOR CULTURE | City of Milan