An angle of 180 degrees is a straight line or half a circle/ GalerÃa Rosa Santos
An angle of 180 degrees is a straight line or half a circle is Aldo Giannoti´s
debut show for Spain at the Galleria Rosa Santos, giving an overview on the most
recent productions by the Italian artist, bases in Vienna.
Italian policeman patrolling at Munich’s Oktoberfest, an alien getting lost on
planet earth, Jesus Christ at the Viennese Prater, Swiss Guards at Kremlin and
Russian soldiers in front of the Vatican: Aldo Giannotti could be described as a
contemporary storyteller, transforming situations through improvisation into
words, images and sound. Through the lightness of the narration he tickles
complex structures of society, relations of powers, conflictual interests and
cultural attributions.
The exhibited project Carabinieri, Stazione Mobile by Aldo Giannotti in
collaboration with the artist Stefano Giuriati, questions the dynamics and the
rules connoting and defining the term “border†itself. The two artists, performing
two Carabinieri abroad, show the relationships between different cultural and
national identities within the European Community.
Through their symbolic relocation into a foreign city, the ordinary perception of
borders has been shifted and puzzled. Tracing new edges, they shape a
subjective geography bringing about different questions: what are the borders
defined by? What is tolerated within them? Which identities (national, cultural,
social, religious…) should be enclosed and protected?
In the same manner the work Vis á Vis (Aldo Giannotti & Stefano Giuriati)
questions which are the limits and criteria determining who and what can cross
borders and provoke thinking about alternative histories, if borders and power
structures are rewritten.
15 photographs form Few Steps Towards Redemption, is the title of a step-
by-step narration, through a sequence of images, representing the approach
towards emancipation of everyday codes and bonds. A redemption and a do it
yourself – liberation passing through the ironical exploiting of ordinary objects
and symbols belonging to the artist’s life. The postcard background depicting the
panoramic wheel in the Viennese Prater is processed in 15 movements and given
back to the eyes of the observer in form of a well-known iconographic image.
With An angle of 180 degrees is a straight line or half a circle -the work
that gave title to the show - the artist’s mother is “uplifted†to the universal role
of the mother. An almost religious image and a very Italian label transformed by
Giannotti into a catty and sadistic message, subversive towards the everyday life.
It perfectly indicates the core method the artist approaches: Observing and
overturning cultural clichés and stereotypes, juggling and turning upside down
reality and challenging the way we use to perceive what surrounds us.
References to his cultural origin and environment are points of linkage in
Giannotti´s works, especially in the examination of socially embedded arche- and
stereotypes. He makes undertakes the experiment of deconstructing
iconographical images and connected ways they are told, in order to test them in
a non-linear and undetermined narrative. An experiment, that makes shifts of
paradigms possible, without inscribing new ideals or patterns into the canon of
the story told, but underlining diversity and the variety of options.