Massimo De Carlo presents Buco, a new solo exhibition by Gelitin opening on January 28th in the Milan spaces of the gallery.

The new works in Buco have been realized during a six-day performance presented at the 21er Haus Museum of Contemporary Art Wien in the summer of 2013. A gigantic cube of Styrofoam placed in the middle of the exhibition hall gave the Gelitin the material necessary to sculpt new works in negative: this monumental monolith has been assaulted, sculpted and shaped during a performance with the participation of artist friends and musicians close to the collective who accompanied it with energy, live music, theatrical gestures, massive transfers.

The Styrofoam block has been progressively eroded, perforated, penetrated, and consumed creating a number of empty spaces – negative spaces – that the artists filled with plaster. The resulting michelangiolesque sculptures, came out from controlled and powerful actions, are at the same time abstract and domestic. The sculptures in Buco recall the philosophical and literary image of the cave. For Gelitin, in fact, the hole is the symbol of an eremitic life, a place where nothing needs to happen and where, paradoxically, there is no need for action. Everything can happen, or anything at all, it makes no difference. The act of destroying a huge cube of polystyrene goes beyond the idea of creating and building something and generates a short circuit between the passive wait for something to happen opposed to an action determined positively and with full consciousness.

The act of digging, eroding and perforating the polystyrene happens once again in the exhibition Buco, but this time the Gelitin group assaults a wall to create a passage to a private space of the gallery, where the artists screen the video Gelitin LOCH by Angela Christlieb documenting the performance in Vienna, visible whilst sitting on Untitled, 2013.

In the upper floor of the gallery Gelitin exhibit a new series of three-dimensional drawings, an unconventional hybrid between drawings and sculptures. Crinkled paper sheets, on which hundreds of small characters, landscapes and objects are drawn, are stuck in their disordered form thanks to a layer of papier mâché and plaster. Also in this series of drawings, the Gelitin question the boundaries between determination and chance.