The Last Supper by Alice Olimpia Attanasio at Paola Rescio Gallery

Bloody Mary, 50X70, plastered digital print, courtesy the artist and Paola Rescio Gallery

From Thursday May, 5 2011 to June 11, Paola Rescio Gallery presents the second show in the space of Via Rasori 6, the solo of Alice Olimpia Attanasio entitled The Last Supper, curated by Paolo Meneghetti (1979), contemporary aesthetics critic.

Born in 1985, the young artist works on the compromised and restrained relation between freedom in conscience and being affiliate to Catholic Church: the show insists on it by starting from the rite of Christ’s Body and Blood sharing in the Sunday celebration. It is in Milan, thus, that the famous homonymous painting, The Last Supper, by Leonardo Da Vinci rests; it is in Milano that Alice Olimpia Attanasio lives and work by dealing, since her first shows, with remarkable social and political themes, veined with philosophical traces and demands.

The solo show – that is composed by 3 plastic coated digital images (50X70 cm) and some Indian ink drawings (light box) of same or minor dimension on paper or on light – is dramatized by a live installation that holds the centre of the gallery: a table, as a nude spiritual lunch, is put side by side to a continue pouring of a liquid from a suspended tea pot that is threatening on consciences, on free will, on the destines of mankind.

The artist seems to laically mock on doctrinal cannibalism of Catholic Church, that would impose the Truth of the Dogma: this alienation is historically occurring, even further any personal opinion on it.

Paola Rescio, gallery owner: “ I follow Alice Olimpia Attanasio’s works since a while: I like her poetics therefore I asked her to exhibit in my new space”

Paolo Meneghetti, curator: “It seems Dogma first is pouring over the mankind critic spirit, then is able to tow it (until eating it). The French philosopher Georges Bataille highlights that, in the Catholic tradition, the mystic will reach the Truth of God only by completely erasing himself. By building her irony on the dogma imposition, Alice Olimpia Attanasio also questions the scarcity of critical spirit in the believer. The image of the chalice is assuming importance from a mere laic perspective. It seems that the believer is literarily drinking the religious dogma, while the Church is sucking his free will”

A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH OLIMPIA ATTANASIO

Alice Olimpia Attanasio (1985), since starting her young carrier, deals with complex and such actual themes as relation occurring among the society of image, the body perception, the dystonia traces in contemporary times, innocence and childhood, religions and rituals – using painting, drawing, photography, and complicated installations that express a great maturity in mixing media and composition. From 2008 to nowadays, when she has been invited to exhibit at Paola Rescio Gallery, she participated to various collective and solo shows as well as fairs in Italy; she presented 4 solo shows in Milan (among these, at Blancheart, San Lorenzo and Maelstrom galleries).

Awarded at the last Premio Laguna under 25, she has been winner or shortlisted at the recent editions of the main and best Italian prizes dedicated to young artist or to Italian painting.

Do you have a focus on social and political issues or do you like to deal with individual situation and thus you deal with common sphere themes because you like to explore the individual action?

Surely I like to explore the individual action, but my focus is the study of human psyche, as first originator of all the effects we then see visible in our contemporary society.

Do you prefer a peculiar style or media?

I am eclectic, this is my main character: I like to use drawing, sculpture and video. Any media is time by time chosen in relation to the message I like to share with the audience, especially for the way I like it has to be perceived. I mainly concentrate myself on the installation for the reason it has not any limitation of technique, substance and material, space.

At which value, since now, have your artworks been purchased?

It is depending from the genre I choose: we range from Euro 300 for little drawings to the Euro 5000 of sculpture/installations of bigger dimensions.

Show title: The Last Supper, Alice Olimpia Attanasio solo show

Where: Paola Rescio Gallery, via Rasori 8, 20145 Milano

Curatela: Paolo Meneghetti

Dates: Thursday May 5, 2001 – Saturday June 11, 2011 (Tuesday-Saturday 3.30-7.30 pm or on appointment)

Opening and cocktail: May 5, 2011, 6-9 pm

Information to publish in articles: www.paolaresciogallery.com infoprgallery@gmail.com + 39 333/5661161

How to reach Paola Rescio Gallery with public transports:

From Linate Airport: 73 express bus until San Babila stop, then Metro: 1/red Pagano or Conciliazione stop

From Malpensa or Orio al Serio/Bergamo Airport: bus until Central Station, then Metro 2/green until Cadorna, then Metro: 1/rossa Pagano or Conciliazione stop

Tram: 16, Piazzale F. Baracca stop