Bruno Muzzolini
Frost 5, 2004
Video, color, sound, 3 min 05 sec
Edition of 3 + 1 A.P.
Courtesy of Banquet Gallery and the artist
The video project « Frost » alludes to what the artist calls a « slippage of meaning ». A kind of small visual deception in which the fixed frame of the camera or video camera shows the object in the foreground: it is an iron trap, of those commonly used for unwary beasts. The field of vision around is minimized, there is no connection with reality, and the traps become something else, temporarily losing physiognomy and recognizability. The object is decontextualized, deprived of its functionality, i.e., of the very reason for its being in the world, and in turn neutralizes the gaze of the viewer who embarks on an individual cognitive journey. The artist carries on his personal iconoclastic battle about the loss of identity of the object and the bewilderment of the viewer, disoriented by a conceptual anomaly and the impossibility of decoding the image. Bruno Muzzolini’s is an operation of unmasking or even »fleshing out » the object, elaborated from the choice of the object-image to its reduction in terms of matter, color (a white and gray monochrome), and every extraneous element in the composition.
Carlo Zanni
Save Me for Later, 2022
Code, Internet. Variable dimensions.
Edition of 2 + 1A.P.
Courtesy of Banquet Gallery and the artist
« Save me for later » (2022) is a bot browsing Amazon.com, continuously adding products to the cart that is visible in the right sidebar. When the cart reaches its limit, it automatically moves products to the « saved for later list », making room for freshly added new ones. This repetitive and almost hypnotic web performance, with apparently no beginning and no end, is both a pursuit of happiness, as society has taught us, and a place of escapism and daydreaming. « Save me for later » is consciously slow and cryptic, and as it is playing out in real-time, on the real Amazon website, the items that appear reflect our present time just as the subtle writings on the abstract « Check Out paintings » (2022 – ongoing) take us back to the world we are living in.
Bruno Muzzolini (Italy 1964) lives and works between Brescia and Milan. His practice, open to different media, crosses the territories of reality with a rough and essential language. Indocile to any rigid theoretical cataloging, his works are intertwined with discourses developed around the practices of desire, nature, and animal becoming.
His works have been exhibited in various national and international venues including: Listasafni ASI, Reykjavik – 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion, Corderie dell’Arsenale – Artericambi, Verona – National Gallery of Kosovo, Prishtina – SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico – at the National Gallery of Arts Tirana – at MAMM in Medellin, Colombia – The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland – DOCVA Milan – Fabioparisartgallery, Brescia Italy – Tirana International Film Festival – MART, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Trento and Rovereto – Co Pilot Istanbul – Centrale di Fies, Dro, Trento – Galleria Multimedia, Brescia – Closing Soon, Athens – De Nieuwe Regentes, The Hague, Netherlands. He studied at the Brera Academy in Milan and the IUAV in Venice. He currently teaches painting at the Brera Academy.
Born in La Spezia in 1975, Carlo Zanni is an Italian conceptual artist with a distinctive approach engaging in parallel practices of painting and web-based art, each exploring the same subject matter from different perspectives. A pioneer in the use of third-party Internet data, since 1999 his practice has explored the public space of the web creating time-based ephemeral works that combine a pronounced social consciousness with a primary focus on privacy, identity, and the self. As a painter, he focuses his attention on a new kind of “shared political landscape” that emerged with the Internet and that keeps transforming all human activities and relationships. Zanni has been the recipient of a Rhizome.org commission and he has shown in galleries and museums worldwide including: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Marsèlleria, Milan; Tent, Rotterdam; MAXXI, Rome; MoMA PS1, New York; Borusan Center, Istanbul; PERFORMA 09, NY and ICA, London. Carlo Zanni is the author of the book “Art in the Age of the Cloud”, and recently he has been invited to introduce his practice at the 10th edition of “Talking Galleries” in Barcelona. His work appears in more than 50 books and catalogs, as well as in hundreds of articles and interviews online.
Banquet is a contemporary art gallery dedicated to fostering the growth of mid-career and emerging artists. The gallery serves as a catalyst for explorations, providing a space where artists can challenge conventional artistic boundaries and embark on ambitious research-driven projects.
Banquet was established in early 2024 by Giangiacomo Cirla after a ten-year career as a contemporary art gallery director. With the aim of bringing together under one roof the paths begun over the years with the artists now represented by the gallery, Banquet presents four exhibitions annually within its 150 sqm, two-floor exhibition space in Milan, as well as external exhibition projects, talks, and video screenings.
The gallery represents Italian and international artists of different generations and using different media, ranging from the most innovative practices to the historicized ones that have been able to anticipate the times through avant-garde projects.