Massimo De Carlo is pleased to present How To Live? a solo exhibition by American artist

Andrea Zittel. The exhibition will present five new works from Zittel's ongoing series, Prototypes for

Billboards, and a video titled How To Live?: A dynamic essay about liberation and it's complexities.

This new video portrays a settlement in the southern California desert, on a piece of land that no one seems

to own. It is free to live on this land and there are no restrictions on what people can or cannot do there.

With this glimpse into one community's liberation from mass society, the video touches on the existential

nature of freedom, as it's price, and meaning are called into question.

In contrast to the outdoor settlement presented in the video, the painted billboard prototypes depict

intimate and detailed interiors from the artist’s home, the ongoing site-specific project entitled A-Z

West, also located in the southern California desert. As the images of these domestic settings embody the

same questions that emerge in the video work, we see the artist carry the weight of these questions into the

everyday and every action.

The overarching question of How To Live? is lifted directly from the essays of Michel de Montaigne, who’s

life’s writings comprise a massive volume of essays and anecdotes on all the nuances of day-to-day

living. Zittel, like Montaigne, in a very personal and idiosyncratic manner, continues her life’s work of

asking these questions, constantly rewriting them, and allowing them to evolve in accordance to time and

place.