#Eduardo Secci

[pikasus-artenews]

Catharsis Cinque artisti internazionali esprimono nelle loro opere quell’esperienza emotiva che solleva lo spirito dopo sentimenti angoscianti legata al concetto di catarsi.

[sheltiechicago]

“Black tide” (2023), broken laminated glass from vitroplus , black lacquer, nails, wood, medium, silicone, and tape, 3.5 x 10 x 9 meters. Installed in Maison Hazeur for Passages Insolites in Quebec, Canada.

Tons of Broken Glass Flood Architectural Spaces in Captivating Site-Specific Installations by Baptiste Debombourg

All images © Baptiste Debombourg

“(R)evolve” (2017), windshields, wood, nails, screws, and paint, 8 x 8 x 4.5 meters. Installed at Eduardo Secci Gallery in Florence, Italy

“Aerial” (2012), 33/2 laminated glass from Glas König, wood, nails, and white paint, 3 x 12 x 4.5 meters, two ons of glass. Installed at Brauweiler Abbey in Pulheim, Germany

“Acceleration field” (2015), white laminated glass, wooden structure, screws, nails, paint, silicone3D, 11 x 7 x 1.8 meters, 250 meters2 glass at four tons. Installed at Fondation Antoine de Galbert in Paris, France, with technical assistance from Léa Marchalwith the support of Wellmade and Saint-Gobain

[ganhosdoelefante]

Florence - 09 de junho de Ano 3 - Sábado - Doc - 27 anos

07:00 - Acordamos e nadamos:

07:40 - Tomamos café na piscina:

08:10 - Voltamos, tomamos banho e nos arrumamos. 09:00 - Saímos. 09:20 - Visitamos um museu: Museo Bellini

10:00 - Tomamos um sorvete: Gelateria La Carraia

10:20 - Andamos de bike:

10:50 - Visitamos: Piazza Goldoni

11:10 - Visitamos uma loja: Bottega Giotti Leather Goods

11:30 - Relaxamos em uma praça e ficamos de papo: Piazza Ognissanti

12:20 - Almoçamos: Nerocarbone Bistrò Toscano

13;40 - Fazemos umas comprinhas: PALLANTI - Jewelry Atelier - Bottega orafa

14:00 - Outra: D.A.T.E. Flagship Store Firenze

14:20 - Vamos a uma galeria: Eduardo Secci Firenze

15:00 - Voltamos ao hotel e dou uma estudada.

17:00 - Subo e relaxo, vendo filme com Pi. 18:30 - Tomamos banho e nos arrumamos para sair. 19:40 - Jantamos, nós dois: Locale Firenze

21:30 - Voltamos e dormimos (L).

[junow-honours]

Oral Presentation 3/3

Slides and accompanying script

1. Artificial Generated Image (Top)

A decision that I made within my process was to use Artificial Intelligence to regenerate my existing images into new iterations. This is both a decision based on efficiency of time, but also for the quality of my content. Allowing the AI algorithm to wash over and revisualise my images allows the work more potential and possibility than the limits that my own personal imagination would offer. I am interested in how AI understands and perceives my ideas, manifesting them into deformed, grotesque, and sinister representations rich with complex, esoteric language and symbolism. I decided that every feature, texture, image, and character design I create will go through a 'wash' of AI, as it both perfectly distorts and intensifies my ideas, making them more disturbing, ambiguous, and other-worldly.

2. Artist model: Simon Denny (Middle left)

Simon Denny, a contemporary New Zealand artist based in Berlin, utilizes the archetype of the game in his exhibition ‘The Founder’s Paradox’, at the Michael Lett Gallery, in 2017. This exhibition employs the structure of the ‘game’ to reflect the complex fractured and fractious social climate destabilized by competing political visions and the uncertainty of new technologies. This exhibition utilizes world-building strategies to illustrate the imagined utopian futures of Silicon Valley’s techno-libertarians on New Zealand land- believed to be safe havens for when the end of the world comes.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the tabletop strategy role-play game called ‘Founders’, heavily influenced by the colonialist language, objectives, and aesthetics of the game ‘Settlers of Catan.’ The aim of Founders is to not only evade and settle new territories, accumulate resources, and accomplish objectives, but to prosper and pursue immortality and god-like statuses of ‘Founders’. 

Simon Denny, as one of the most significant artist models for my practice, both influenced the visual outcome of my work, and the complexity of the relationship between the game aspect and the contextual ideas it represented. Where my practice deviates from his is the personal and emotional investment I have established with it, where it may have started as an individual project, it has currently become a practice-wide methodology. Allowing myself to become entirely invested and carried away within the creation of the lore and worlds has brought me to a point in which it has become personally important. 

Simon Denny utilizes games and gamification as a tool to communicate his ideas within a series of projects within his wider practice, and where Denny’s work can be read as slightly ironic, my work is intended to be read more seriously.

3. Artist model: Theo Triantafyllidis (Middle right)

Theo Triantafyllidis is a contemporary artist based in Athens, Greece, he exhibited the show Radicalization Pipeline at Eduardo Secci’s Project Space in Milan, October 2021. Triantafyllidis’ work draws inspiration from video-games and recent events of civil disorder in America, he makes connections between gamification, fantasy, political radicalization and internet ‘wokeness’. 

Following the aesthetic of video-games, this exhibition presents ceramic weapons that are reminiscent of the exaggerated forms in video-games, which is compared to the exaggerated extremist ideologies which internet culture has accelerated. 

This exhibition also featured a large screen display playing a live simulation called Radicalization Pipeline, which features two seemingly endless hordes of characters clashing into a violent brawl of protest and violence. 

I am interested in Triantfyllidis’ work because of his connections between real social issues and internet culture, specifically within the realm of video games. Compared to Simon Denny, Triantafyllidis’ work seems to embrace the notion of the ‘ridiculousness’ that exists within both these cultures and the camp aesthetics of fantasy and geek culture.

4. Mid-year work Campaign (Below Middle left)

This is the work that I presented for the Whitecliffe mid-year exhibition in June, which I titled ‘Campaign.’ 

It further focuses on the trope of ‘The Game’, by incorporating elements of world-building, archetypal characters, social systems, storytelling and esoteric lore to develop the premise of my constructed world. At this moment in time I understood that I was using this game as a manifestation of my attempts to understand the world around me. The process of creating it granted me the opportunity and allowance to explore the various complexities of the human condition, aiding me in the discovery of finding a sense of purpose or direction in life.

As written in my accompanying artist statement; I see the world around me as one that is driven by technology, artificial intelligence, consumerism and mainstream entertainment. I believe that our modern world is characterized as disenchanted. This is maintained through the demystification of wonders and marvels from the lense of science and logic, and is heightened by global events of war and pandemic. It is within this world that the desire for ‘wonder’ arises. Wonder exists within fleeting moments of enchantment, which can be accessed through forms of entertainment, escapism, and deep emotional and spiritual connection to things.

5. Mid-year work Campaign, second slide (Below Middle right)

I find that the archetype of the ‘tabletop board-game’ was an appropriate vessel to explore the complexity of all these concepts. Within a game we are presented with choices, we must make decisions, decipher riddles, accept consequences, and find triumph in victory. The board game allows us to take control and gain agency of our own decisions without any risk of significant consequential loss. The popular table-top roleplay game Dungeons & Dragons immerses players within worlds driven by fantasy, occultism, and esoteric lore. These gaming practices open passages to wider influences around ancient mythologies, allegorical tales, recurring motifs and common archetypes of gods, monsters, and heroes.

Becoming the architect, or ‘Dungeon Master’ of my own constructed world allows me the sense of agency that I feel is lacking in reality. I wish to re-contextualize the enchanting and allegorical nature of ancient mythologies into the context of our disenchanted modernity today. Where does technology and mythology intersect and empower one another? Are table-top gaming practices a ritual in itself that allow deeper, spiritual enlightenment to the possibility of higher powers, divinities, and alternate universes?

6. Lit review: Jane Bennett’s The Enchantment of Modern Life (Bottom left)

In The Enchantment of Modern Life, philosopher Jane Bennett describes the phenomenological experience of ‘enchantment’ as a pure state of wonder, a spell-binding moment of complete transfixion or immobilization. To be enchanted is to be struck and enamored by moments of the extraordinary that lives amid the everyday, often prompted through events, entities and objects. Enchantment is something that may be encountered unexpectedly, that appears before us in given circumstances, however it can also be fostered through the deliberate use of strategies, such as ‘gamification.’ 

On the other hand, Bennett’s definition of the disenchanted modernity entails the existential resentment, victimization and tragedy experienced within the human condition. It is reflected through the numerous binds and systems we are tied to; the struggle of living up to impossible ideals and the unattainable futures we project for ourselves. We suffer undeserved punishments, acts of violence and inequality, while searching for an indefinite sense of safety and comfort. We harbor the weight of personal and moral responsibility, and follow systems that dictate the path of our lives to the inevitable and ultimate final destination of death. 

Bennett states that, to accentuate the effect of the enchanted experience, one needs to recognise and “resist the story of the disenchanted modernity.” Although I agree with this statement, I believe that resisting disenchantment in favour of enchantment, that I would define as ‘escapism’, limits the potential and sacredness of the enchanted experience. The temporariality of this state is what makes it more impactful. Acknowledging the disenchantment of our world is key to experiencing enchantment to its full effect, as that cynicism contributes to and consequently elevates the magic of this experience. 

7. Lit review: Rene Girard’s I see Satan fall like Lightning (Bottom right)

Within my second review, I will be analyzing the writing of the seminal Christian thinker René Girard, through the text I see Satan fall like Lightning. This review is focused primarily on his thoughts around the personality archetypes and origins of the ‘Victim’ and ‘Satan’ models. These archetypes are pivotal topics within this text’s wider anthropological discussion around the origins of violence and ‘mimetic desire.’ 

The ‘Victim’ and the ‘Satan’ archetypes can be extrapolated to represent the Christian ideas of God and The Devil which are commonly understood to represent the spectrum of good versus evil. This dynamic encompasses a significant aspect of the human condition; morality. In accordance with this spectrum, the ‘Victim’ and ‘Satan’ are commonly understood as polar opposites; each representing and withholding an extreme side. However, I find the most interesting note that Girard makes is that this spectrum is ambiguous, that both the ‘Victim’ and ‘Satan’ archetypes are dependent on one another, and actually coexist with and within one another. 

The archetype of the ‘Victim’ comes into existence through the moment in which they are accused, betrayed, ostracized, and in many cases sacrificed, by the collective community they had once belonged to. Girard refers to this as the ‘single victim mechanism’, but it is also referred to as ‘scapegoating’. 

The archetype of the ‘Satan’ represents an ideology encompassing personality types such as aggressors, oppressors, accusers and torturers. ‘Satan’ represents the seductive power of accusation, of deceit and desire, he “exists always as a parasite on the being of humankind.. and on the being of God.” ‘Satan’ is imagined as a person to symbolize the manifestation of satanic power and the mechanism of accusation. 

8. DEMO exhibition work Realm Maps (Bottom)

This is my most recent work, from the Honours DEMO exhibition, this was a very helpful experience because I had the opportunity to explore different presentation options. It features the deconstruction of the existing Campaign game into dissected layers, which I then nailed in place flush to the wall. Rather than creating a sense of narrative or gameplay, I was more focused on the design and visual aspects of the board mats, presenting them in this way allowed for an easier way of engagement, while also still implying that it exists in a gaming context. This project was beneficial in that it introduced new methodologies of presentation following systems of logic, where each piece has its own established place. I like this way of organizing information, as if it were a dissected diagram.

[italiaefriends]

"All'Harris Bar, del Lungarno Amerigo Vespucci di Firenze, con Enrique Martínez Celaya" maggio 2023

La naturalezza nei rapporti interpersonali è la massima espressione d’Arte…. Enrique Martínez Celaya, una bella persona, un grande Artista.Venerdì 6 maggio 2023, dopo l’inaugurazione della bellissima Mostra personale di Enrique Martínez Celaya alla Galleria Secci di Firenze, Eduardo Secci, Ilenia Rubino, Andrea Paoletti, Lea Codognato, Caterina Briganti a cena all’Harris Bar, del Lungarno…

[nuncaestarassolo]

Hippie Breaker, 2021 Glazed Stoneware, Overgrip Tape, Untreated Wood 50 x 22 x 22 cm 19 3/4 x 8 5/8 x 8 5/8 in

2. Father Stomper, 2021 Glazed Stoneware, Overgrip Tape, Untreated Wood 78 x 26 x 26 cm 30 3/4 x 10 1/4 x 10 1/4 in

3. Alpha Skiver, 2021 Glazed Stoneware 35 x 10 cm 13 3/4 x 4 in

4. Anprim Talon, 2021 Glazed Stoneware 32 x 6 cm 12 5/8 x 2 3/8 in

5. Chadslayer, 2021 Glazed Stoneware, Leather, Faux Fur 80 x 18 cm 31 1/2 x 7 1/8 in

6. Kristal Klaw, 2021 Glazed Stoneware 12 x 11 x 5 cm 4 3/4 x 4 3/8 x 2 in

7. Stormbringer, 2021 Glazed Stoneware, Overgrip Tape, Hair Extentions, Dice 157 x 54 cm 61 3/4 x 21 1/4 in

8. Wrong Side of Freedom, 2021 Glazed Stoneware, Handlebar Tape, Laser Cut Acrylic, Stainless Steel 164 x 42 cm 64 5/8 x 16 1/2 in

In Milan, from June 3 to September 25 2021, NOVO is pleased to present “Radicalization Pipeline”, a solo show of ceramics and software works by Theo Triantafyllidis. The exhibition opens the new location of Eduardo Secci’s project space in Milan.

For this new body of works, Theo Triantafyllidis draws inspiration from video games and recent events of civil disorder in America. Looking at phenomena such as the rise of QAnon, the artist suggests connections between gamification, fantasy, and political radicalization.

The gallery space brings together a series of ceramic weapons. These dark glazed stoneware works are adorned with decorative details like tennis overgrip tapes, hair extensions and laser-cut acrylics. With titles such as Chadslayer, Snowflake Skorcher and, Stormbringer, they are reminiscent of the exaggerated forms often seen in video games and extremist ideologies which the internet culture has accelerated.

The ceramic surfaces reflect the light from a large display playing Radicalization Pipeline, a Live Simulation piece that runs on a gaming PC. Two seemingly endless hordes clash into a violent free-for-all, swinging large melee weapons and shouting with distorted voices. A wide range of characters – from citizen militias to fantastical creatures – enter the screen only to kill each other, wave after wave, sinking their virtual bodies slowly into a muddy landscape. The mood occasionally lightens up by the medieval covers of familiar pop songs that complete the soundscape conceived by the composer and sound designer Diego Navarro.

Source: https://www.seccigallery.com/exhibition/radicalization-pipeline/

[abstracteddistractions]

Michael Staniak, “ Oxide Painting 180,” 2020,

Painting, Casting compound, iron oxide and acrylic on engineered wood panel, steel frame,

211 × 159 cm | 83.1 × 62.6 in.

Courtesy: Eduardo Secci Contemporary

[fridaynotes]

Complete Installation Images from Study of a Myth in Progress at Eduardo Secci Gallery, Florence, Italy 2017 http://www.fridaynotes.com/secci

[timplamper]

Security, installation view at Eduardo Secci, Florence, 2019

[eucanthos]

Paolo Grassino   (b. 1967)

Tumulto, 2018. Spugna sintetica e poliestere, resina e legno

artist’s site

Eduardo Secci Gallery, September 7th 2018, Piazza Goldoni 2, Florence, Italy.

thnx narcym-noesis

[pikasus-artenews]

The Sea Memory (Lost) di Enrique Martínez Celaya Cittadino del mondo, nato a Cuba ma formatosi negli Stati Uniti, Enrique Martínez Celaya è un fisico affermato e un artista di qualità

[minimalist-aesthetic]

Eduardo Secci Contemporary, July 13, 2019

[mu-th-ur]

Michele Gabriele http://www.ofluxo.net/the-missing-link-on-every-point-of-a-sphere-by-michele-gabriele-at-eduardo-secci-contemporary/

[tartagliaarte]

Andare oltre i confini dell’arte. La mostra di Maurizio Donzelli a Firenze

Andare oltre i confini dell’arte. La mostra di Maurizio Donzelli a Firenze

UN GIOCO DI LUCI, COLORI, RIFLESSI, LINEE RETTE E CURVE, REALI E IMMAGINARIE, NELLA MOSTRA DI MAURIZIO DONZELLI ALLA GALLERIA EDUARDO SECCI, CHE SI SVILUPPA COME UN RACCONTO SULLE POSSIBILITÀ ESPRESSIVE DELL’ARTE. UNA MOSTRA IN CUI EMERGE LA CAPACITÀ DELL’ARTE DI APRIRE NUOVE PORTE PERCETTIVE Maurizio Donzelli. The three gems. Exhibition view at Eduardo Secci Gallery, Firenze 2022. Photo Stefano…

[distinktionsfetzen]

Check out Matthew Ritchie, The Finite Being (2021), From Eduardo Secci Contemporary