RISORGIMENTO Milan Virtual Art Summer - a project hosted by Massimo De Carlo VSpace presenting exhibitions by the most interesting contemporary art gallery and spaces in Milano.

Monte Amiata, the project by Patrick Tuttofuoco and Andrea Sala for Massimo De Carlo VSpace, was born from a necessity for criticism and observation: how two artists, whose research is mostly related to materials, techniques, forms and the physical relationship between body and space, can approach an intangible environment that is everything but physical? How can you create a feeling of reality in a digital, impalpable context?

A crystal clear answer to this question came up when the two artists visited an iconic building in Milan, a place that tells of a city just about to cross the threshold of post-modernism in the 1970s: the Monte Amiata al Gallaratese housing complex, the result of the collaboration of two renown architects Carlo Aymonino and Aldo Rossi.

The artists, in a sunny afternoon in June, let themselves be guided by the game of layers, primary forms and most of all colours. The prevailing grey and white of the concrete function as the background where red and yellow hallways are inserted, defining, as if in a video game, the paths that intersect the entire structure. Colours play with light through the complex system of openings, balconies and overlapping planes, generating continuous chiaroscuro effects.

The combination of the experience of such a powerfully abstract space with the possibilities given by virtual technology has allowed Tuttofuoco and Sala to explore the relation between works of art, space and viewers in a new challenging way. Therefore the architectural study of the Monte Amiata site is not a simple scenographic device but the driver for a new experience made possible by the new technologies.

On the red walls the drawings on paper by Andrea Sala, the Balconies, are the representation of a time, of a moment, the expression of the necessity for a new point of view, an invitation to observe: what Sala discerns, even in this case, is not the real world but suggestions, imagined images, vaguely anthropomorphic and erotic.

Emerging from the yellow side, Patrick Tuttofuoco's marble and steel sculptures are shaped in forms borrowed from classical statuary: their intensity and expressive power are combined with the highly contemporary technological performance required to create them. Tuttofuoco's arms and hands arise from the same assumption that guided the virtual project of Monte Amiata: the desire to intercept a new language, acquire its rules in order to thoroughly investigate the evolutions of the most traditional human aspirations and the dynamics in relation to the rapid changes imposed by new technologies.

Patrick Tuttofuoco’s (Milan, 1974) practice is conceived as a dialogue between individuals and their ability to transform the environment they inhabit, by exploring notions of community and social integration in order to combine immediate sensorial allure with the power to trigger profound theoretical responses. Tuttofuoco melds Modernism and Pop; he presses figuration into abstraction, using man as the paradigm of existence, as the matrix and measuring unit of reality. From this interpretative and cognitive process, infinite versions of man and the context of his existence are produced, from which shapes able to animate the sculptures are generated. Patrick Tuttofuoco participated in the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Manifesta 5 (2004), the 6th Shanghai Biennale (2006) and the 10th Havana Biennal (2009). His works has been exhibited in several institutions such as Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2006), the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2008), HangarBicocca, Milan (2015), OGR, Grandi Officine Riparazioni, Turin (2017), Casa Italia, Pyeongchang (2018) and Maxxi, Rome (2018). In 2017 it was selected by the Italian Council announcement with the ZERO project presented in Rimini, Berlin and Bologna (2018).

Andrea Sala’s (Como, 1976) artistic research, inspired by the traditional aesthetic and the XIX Century’s avant- gardes, in particular in Architecture and Visual Arts, finds fulfillment focusing on the essence of shapes and on the use of traditional techniques applied to industrial materials and vice versa. The selection of materials plays a fundamental role in Sala’s practice: the artist carefully chooses them because of the intrinsic characteristic of each matter, which may change during the production process. Looking at it closely, the process itself is a narration, assembled with separate pieces combined together, enigmatic yet manifested. This attitude allows to overcome the completeness of the initial source of inspiration to make room for works “corrupted” by various influences. Sala investigates the world of industrial products, where the function of objects is gradually lost because of the disengaging effect of the artistic process. He dissects the world of things with obsessive scrupulousness transforming it into a personal alphabet always monitoring the reason behind his own work. His works have gained international attention and have been exhibited in several venues, including the 9th Venice Biennale of Architecture (2004), the MAMCO Musée d’art moderne et contemporain in Geneva (2003), MACO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca (2007), Kaleidoscope Space in Milan (2010), La Maison Rouge in Paris (2012), the Musée d’art de Joliette (2012) and the Fondation Guido Molinari in Montréal (2012). His works can be found in the collection of the MAXXI - National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome, at the Banca Albertini Syz, Milan and private collections. Some of his works have been exhibited as part of the latest Triennale of Milan.