Marcello Maloberti

Luigi Franco Arte Contemporanea, Turin
Through April 28

Marcello Maloberti’s expressive language entails a curious blend of photography, video, performance, and installation. For his latest show in Turin, the artist created a new series of work that continued to explore the theme at the root of his entire oeuvre: the quotidian as experienced in a state of displacement, and thus raising troubling questions about the precarious nature of existence.

The gallery rooms were connected together create the impression of a single exhibit space. In one room Maloberti displayed three color photographs taken in the railway depot of his hometown. The subject of these images is a girl on a bicycle. She is either depicted with a rucksack on her back wearing a raincoat or sheltering under a cover that, when stretched across her shoulders, forms a sort of backdrop.

The first room is linked to the second by means of a bright red carpet, similar to those found in the entrance halls of turn of the century apartment buildings. At the sides of the carpet there is a Walkman—playing the obsessively repeated phrase, “ants get tired in the snow”—and, for the performance, a very tall man. Maloberti maintains that the contrast between object and living being is thus emphasized. The video Alda plays in a niche in the wall. In it, a young girl stands on a riverbank making banal gestures. It is these, often insignificant, details that constitute the fundamental element of each work and underline the impossibility of encapsulating reality in a standardized, harmonious vision.

The link leading to the basement rooms is a created by Scottish tartan wool rugs, identical to the one which forms the background in one of Maloberti’s photos. On the opening night, a person stood in front of this rug wearing a Walkman from which a background of continuously repeated expressions played, producing the effect of a litany. The title of the installation, L’infermiere con la faccia rossa (The Nurse with the Red Face), has no apparent connection to the work itself. This has an unsettling effect the visitor, which is accentuated by the fact that, to see the work in its entirety, one is obliged to follow a standard, alienating route.




Tiziana Conti
Translation by Rosalind Furness