PALERMO: DUO EXHIBITION 'SPINNING IN MIRRORS': Palazzo Imperatore, Italy

Bringing the world to Sicily, and Sicily to the world. This is the aim of RES.IN “Residenze Internazionali", the project conceived by the artist Edoardo Dionea Cicconi (Rome, 1985). This new model of residence aims to build a network of exchanges between international artists using the languages of contemporary art, while offering a unique opportunity for cultural enhancement of the city context and promotion of the territory, through the interaction of new generations of artists.

 

The project, realized with the contribution of the Sicilian Regional Assembly and in collaboration with Scuola Gibel, showcases the result of the residency that saw Ellen Sheidlin and Edoardo Dionea Cicconi collaborate, from Friday, May 28 to Thursday, July 1, in the rooms of Palazzo Imperatore, home of the studio of the Roman artist, who arrived in Palermo in 2018. This is the first edition of RES.IN, which aims to continue its program with a cycle of four multidisciplinary residencies during 2021.

 

Palermo, crossroads of the Mediterranean, represents the ideal place for a project of contamination, where artists from different countries of the world, different areas of contemporary art and music, meet to work together. The historical and architectural context of the city and of Palazzo Imperatore, a 16th century residence overlooking the eclectic Cathedral of Palermo, becomes the premise for a visual investigation of the city through the interaction between the urban spaces and the languages of the two artists.

 

Ellen Sheidlin (Saratov, Russia, 1994), a conceptual artist from St. Petersburg, opens the program of RES.IN, living through an unprecedented Palermo during the lockdown. Ellen’s work combines dream world, realism and virtual in a style that she defines "survirtualism", in which photography, video and painting mix and mingle as complementary mediums. During the residency, the artist has created a series of site-specific works, resulting from performances in which she herself is the protagonist. These images are made exclusively through analogue techniques. The absurd and the impossible are reified in a DIY (do it yourself) perspective, where everything is real and made by hand. The exhibition, alongside individual works of each artist, will present works that the two artists have created together during RES.IN #01: unique works that synthesize their visions and their research related to the Sicilian territory.

 

Edoardo Dionea, dealing with universal themes, experiments with new techniques, using innovative materials and creating installations, sculptures, and audio that take the viewer into a timeless dimension. Interested in the perception of light and the spacial geometry, Edoardo Dionea studies the forces that govern reality, trying to find a synthesis between Art and Science. His research, aimed at the interaction with the viewer, investigates the perception of time through objects, that the artist calls kinetic mirrors. These kinetic mirrors interact with the surrounding space, and, therefore, also with the works of the Russian artist, distorting reality as a black hole does.