Produced and supported by Art At work
April 18th - 24th, 2009 Ex-fabbrica Minerva, Milan
“As you enter the exhibition, you consider this a group show by an artist you don’t know by the name of Mr. Rossi” is an unusual exhibition project. It is the experience of over a year of research by artists and writers, translated into a show to be held at the ex-Minerva factory.
The imaginary starting point of the artists’ work are the writings of Edwin Abbott Abbott, nineteenth-century pedagogue and theologian whose present fame is owed to his novel Flatland – A romance of many dimensions. Flatland narrates the discovery of depth in a world of two- dimensional figures, suggesting viable methods to discover or imagine further dimensions.
Each work in the exhibition is somehow the reminiscence of a dimensional voyage, guided
by the instructions of those who already made or imagined the trip. Among them: Thomas Jefferson, Jules Verne, Raymond Queneau and Mr. Rossi. In Italy, Mr. Rossi bears everyman’s family name, but he’s also been the main character in a Sixties cartoon show. As a single artist, Mr. Rossi is the disguise of an artistic practice where ideas are collectively proposed and assessed. The elaboration process doesn’t follow the logic of relevance to a theme, but considers the idea’s development, its manifold deviations from a common track, as the work’s object itself.
For this show, over some time Mr. Rossi has invented surfaces, passages, panoramas and simple or complex permutations: rules holding in other dimensions, and paths to reach them. The core hypothesis of this unknown artist’s work is that the mere idea that all this could exist is, after all, inconceivable. Maybe this is why as you enter the exhibition, you’ll consider this a group show by an artist you don’t know by the name of Mr. Rossi.