PURE DISCLOSURE. An interview with Zoe De Luca and Andrea Magnani

SILIQOON, a project born one year ago in Bologna, is an art label and a creative consulting agency. It aims to promote collaborations between contemporary artists and local companies, investigating the relationship among art and the new concepts of material, design and workmanship. I interviewed the two curators of Pure Disclosure..

Eleonora Salvi: At the beginning Siliqoon was supported by local companies and sponsored by confederations and cultural institutions, and then it grew more autonomously. Tell us about new patnerships like Marsèlleria and this first year of the project, about the aspirations reached, and the future.

Zoe De Luca: The collaboration with Marsèlleria was essential to square the circle of this first experience. We decided to show the final works in a different context (the residency was made in Bologna, the exhibition in Milan) to extrapolate the works from their scenario and allow a framless analysis, and to present the project to a wider audience. The artworks are not the core of the residency: our focus is the process of blending the elements together and, as the press release says “An analogy draws the involved crew together, proving a greater meaning beyond the sum of the parts: Marsèlleria, place of contemporary culture and domicile of Maison Marsèll, Siliqoon as art label, and Pure Disclosure as the outcome of a production incubation”. Now we are planning the next production, that will have the same format with different coordinates, and we are working on side projects and releases.

Daniel Keller & Ella Plevin, Seaside Figures (Polypool), Pure Disclosure, Marsèlleria, Milano

ES: You put together a group of artists that demonstrated the ability of working synergestically with one another. What are the reciprocal aesthetic influences, the congruences and differences of expression?

ZDL: All artists are linked by their research, polarised on post-capitalist culture and contemporary issues such as ecology, visual communication and technologic evolution. Their aeshtetics swings between design and display standards, future features and illusory strategies which culminate in a heterotopical panorama.

Daniel Keller, Seaside Figures (Polypool), Pure Disclosure, Marsèlleria, Milano

ES: Daniel Keller represents a near-future where labor, consumption, marketing and leisure, sometimes are combined with a contemporary interpretation of the organic finds, particularly in this case for “Seaside Figures (Polypool)”. What meaning you give to this commixture?

Andrea Magnani: Few weeks before the show, Daniel asked us to collect some sea garbage from the beach where we went for a walk during the residency. Materials naturally processed by the sea: this kind of ‘swills’ or ‘organic finds’ are interesting in his practice because they represent near future resources for human beings. Bio-recycled materials, as well as generators of eco-energy (like the spirulina algae) will sooner or later become fundamental everyday life outlines.

Timur Si-Qin, Display (Peace) and Untitled, Pure Disclosure, Marsèlleria, Milano

ES: In their visual immediacy, Timur Si-Qin’s artworks explicate a complex aesthetic, more and more present and often taken for granted. In your opinion, what is really understood of his art?

ZDL: Timur’s interest for visual culture properties is driven by a research of deep undertanding of the subject, wich represents even more structured and broad issues in itself. His language is very clear and minimal, and since it uses the same communication references of the reality he puts into question, the result is usually a very subtle gap between what we are supposed to be looking at and we are really seeing. Therefore the artwork in somehow beyond this issue, and the understanding (and incomprehension) don’t actually matter in their traditional meaning.

Timur Si-Qin, Untitled, Pure Disclosure, Marsèlleria, Milano

ES: Alessandro Agudio is a versatile artist with a clear reference enviroment. Can you describe it and his experience in Siliqoon?

ZDL: Alessandro’s relationship with materials is very important in his practice, both aesthetically and conceptually. During the residency, thanks to the cooperation with Aida Bertozzi and Geraldine Blais, he had the opportunity to work with ceramic for his very first time. This new meeting produced a work composed by a precarious balance of misunderstandings, incubated during a year of work and investigation. In “Forever (grave)” each material plays hides and seeks with his true nature, in a neverending research of a precise feeling. A stylish failure where everything is ‘represented’.

Alessandro Agudio, FOREVER – Dead in the Bathroom (feat. Summer Katie Fox), Pure Disclosure, Marsèlleria, Milano

ES: Andrea, in this project you plays a dual role of curator and artist. It isn’t the first time that we see this kind of encroachment in your work. A practice that is attracting more and more attention in this period. Trying a curatorial and artistic self-analysis, how to describe this your approach?

AM: With Siliqoon, basically I define myself more as a producer. I’m interested in the process that comes before the show, helping the artists and myself as well in the creation of better works. This approach is naturally related to my practice as an artist and designer, because it allows me to get in contact with stories, materials and technologies.

PURE DISCLOSURE at Marsélleria . Permanent Exhibition, Milan. A project by SILIQOON. 10 April 2015 – 10 May 2015.