Tomaso de Luca – Salopp gesagt schlapp

29 March – 8 June 2014
Opening: Friday, 28 March 2014, 8 p.m.

Welcoming speech: Angela Piplak, executive director
Introduction: Fanny Gonella, artistic director

In ancient Rome, the forum was the central venue of public life. The most famous of them, the Forum Romanum, now stands as a ruin in the heart of the city. Despite this nostalgic touch, the word 'forum' underwent a significant comeback in the digital world. In its online version, information, rumors, and polemics are disseminated and deformed without hierarchy. Private stories and public facts are approached on the same level.

As if taken from one of these random online conversations, the title Salopp gesagt schlapp has a clear oral character. It announces the casual tone of the exhibition, which combines relicts of the consumer society with manifestations of individual desires. For the Künstlerhaus Bremen, Tomaso De Luca (b. 1988 in Verona, lives and works in Rome) has produced a fragmentary composition, which intertwines mattresses, towels, stickers, ailing palms and posters. The first solo exhibition in Germany of the young Italian artist explores irruptions of the private sphere in the public space.

Tomaso De Luca employs formats here that are usually found on the street: Most of his pictures were transferred to stickers or posters and scattered across the entire space. Original artworks are hardly to be seen. De Luca's experiments with formats and supports weave urban visual language together with elements from the domestic realm, hence blurring the boundaries between studio, home, street and exhibition space. His solo show reflects the relationship of a younger generation to a public space that has been turned into the site of expression for individual preferences and yet still echoes the longing for a community.

PROGRAM:

30 March 2014, 12 a.m. Breakfast with  Tomaso De Luca and Marita Landgraf. Guided tour of the exhibition followed by a conversation with the artist (in english).
27 April 2014, 12 a.m. Guided tour of the exhibition with Fanny Gonella
11 May 2014, 3 p.m. Workshop with Tomaso De Luca
4 June 2014, 7 p.m. Discussion Vom Denkmal zum Windrad with Rose Pfister (Referentin for Art in Public Space beim Senator für Kultur Bremen) and Stefan Rettich (Architect, Karo*, Leipzig; Prof. at the  School of Architecture Bremen).

The exhibition is supported by:

We would like to thank Deutsch-Italienische Gesellschaft Bremen e.V.