Innesti
A personal exhibition by ROBOCOOP.
From December 18th until December 23rd, 2016 in via Baccina 84, Rome.
Curated by Rosamaria Campisi and Camille Innamorati from radioarchitettura and produced by CultRise, INNESTI is a personal exhibition by the Rome-based urban art duo ROBOCOOP, active since 2012 through urban art paper paste-up interventions, that concern a site-specific installation and some unreleased series of works inside The Popping Club, a contemporary art gallery in Rome, transformed from an ex-Atac substation into an innovative cultural centre.
The ink-on-iron sheets, showed in the exhibition, represent some old Piranesi engravings, melted and grafted with some modern Roman architectures, built by the Italian architects from 50s to 80s of the last century.
What does innesto means?
The original term comes from the botanic language, meaning a new plant operation into an old one: if it acquires a figurative sense, this grafting becomes a project tool, a practice of a formal research. That’s why INNESTI could be considered a practice research that melts art and architecture through graphics mash-ups and collages, raising up Rome and watching to the its future through the old and modern architectures.
Critic texts:
Let’s discuss again.
“You are God, Silvan”.
Without underestimating the chance, he replies: “God doesn’t cheat, I do”. Educated people, we are talking about philosophy of a certain level here.
(from “Tony Pagoda and his friends”)
It is on these certain levels that the fascinating work of ROBOCOOP sets its ground.
It sets precariously on a paper that time can easily remove.
The life of these works might be ephemeral but the research behind them is deeply rooted.
The two architects, lent to the street art world, lay down their choices.
We can discuss again about an intellectual vision, something that in Rome has been missing since way too long.
And every piece is recomposed harmoniously. These graftings are nothing more than the progression of a history.
The History of thinking and developing architecture, that in Rome right through dangerous extensions touched, a few decades ago, its peek.
The schizophrenic additions on the buildings Alatri (1948-49) and Astaldi (1954-55), work of Ridolfi, as well as the complex of Passarelli in Via Campania (1963-65) — that looks like competing with one another — reveal of a brave Rome keen to reconsider itself.
It’s with INNESTO#6 that everything makes sense.
When the Palazzina San Maurizio (1962) of Luigi Moretti ends up as third landscape of the Tempio di Giano, ROBOCOOP quotes implicitly a later Moretti: the Complesso per Uffici in Piazzale Flaminio
(1972-75).
The last roman work of the architect it’s the final and decisive act for the action of the grafting.
With an unscrupulous act, the work of Moretti is inserted into his own architecture, finalizing the curtain wall with portions of Saracena borrowed from the seaboard.
Equally fearless, the contemporary etchings realized by ROBOCOOP are able to face Piranesi thanks to an archive, both digital and mental, composed by great architectures.
Jacopo Costanzo - Warehouse of Architecture and Research
Mentioning means thinking.
No kind congratulations. No praises led by sentiments and emotions.
Just an objective overview: the ROBOCOOP case is a rare example of smart. It is not an aesthetic citationism, as OZMO makes when he merges Mickey Mouse, Nike’s logo and the Mantegna’s San Sebastiano portrait, in search of an unified structural composition. It is not even a casual citationism, as in many today’s collages, weak heirs of brilliant dada’s assemblages, where nonsense was intentional, not accidental.
ROBOCOOP is an aware and educate citationism that knows strongly how to combine different ages and explain why: it looks at the shape but to content, too.
Their works aim to argument and look for answers. Why they should graft a Nervi’s architecture into an old Piranesi engravings?
Let’s think about that...
Guerilla SPAM – Urban art Torino-based collective
