16th Premio Cairo
The award ceremony for the 16th Premio Cairo, curated by the editorial staff of Cairo Editore's monthly magazine Art, was held on 21 October in Milan.
Selected artists
Selected artists: Alek O., Francesco Arena, Stefano Cumia, Camilla de Maffei, Flavio de Marco, Ettore Frani, Omar Hassan, Agostino Iacurci, Carlo e Fabio Ingrassia, Lorenzo La Rocca, Tiziano Martini, Jacopo Miliani, Mattia Novello, Francesca Pasquali, Alessandro Piangiamore, Mariagrazia Pontorno, Caterina Silva, Santo Tolone, Cosimo Veneziano e Lorenzo Vitturi.
The Jury
The Jury: Luca Beatrice, critico d’arte e curatore; Gabriella Belli, direttore della Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia; Vincenzo De Bellis, direttore artistico della fiera MIART di Milano; Claudia Dwek, presidente di Sotheby’s Italia e vicepresidente di Sotheby’s Europa; Gianfranco Maraniello, direttore del MART di Rovereto; Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, presidente della Fondazione Re Rebaudengo e Andrea Viliani, direttore del MADRE di Napoli.
The winner
Alessandro Piangiamore wins the 16th Cairo Prize with the work ‘La XXI cera di Roma’, 2015, paraffin and melted beeswax candle residues, iron, two elements cm 203x113x3 each.
Born 1976 in Enna. Lives and works in Rome.
Exhibitions include:
Piangiamore Spring, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2014;
Meteorite in the Garden, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2014.
Al centro Urbano Cairo, presidente della Cairo Editore con Alessandro Piangiamore, vincitore del 16° Premio Cairo e Michele Bonuomo, direttore dei mensili Arte e Antiquariato
Alessandro Piangiamore, vincitore del 16° Premio Cairo e Urbano Cairo, presidente della Cairo Editore Foto Massi Ninni
remnants of melted kerosene and beeswax candles, iron, two elements cm 203x113x3 each
Award-winning work
Fascinated by the idea of limit, Alessandro Piangiamore, through a multiplicity of languages ranging from sculpture to performance, represents elusive natural phenomena. Exemplary is the series of winds entitled Tutto il vento che c'è, begun in 2008 and still in progress, or La gravità dell'arcobaleno (2006), an overturned plaster cast of a puddle of water juxtaposed with a photograph of an iris, itself overturned.
The artist measures himself against physical laws while exploring the possibilities of archetypal forms, sometimes landing on impossible solutions, such as the ideal fall of the rainbow. In his work, visual paradoxes are generated between the apparent and the actual, between conceptual procedure and formal composition, between reality and imagination.
The work in the competition, titled The XXI Wax of Rome, is made by melting remnants of wax candles, recovered from churches in the Capital or from the homes of acquaintances. The form of a symbolic object, through a process of transformation of the material, is thus dissolved into a sculptural image with marked pictorial connotations. The material layering and the random expansion of color characterize an undefined geography, evoking, on both an aesthetic and semantic level, a ritual without celebration, almost sacrificing its original meaning.
Award citation
Alessandro Piangiamore won the XVI Premio Cairo; his work "The XXI Wax of Rome" was judged the best with this motivation: "A formally accomplished work, representing a concrete evolution of the pictorial device, with a skillful use of materials."