Giuseppe Gabellone

• 20.11.–15.12.2001

The Galerie Martin Janda is showing the first solo exhibition of the Italian artist Giuseppe Gabellone from November 20 to December 15 in its exhibition space at Praterstraße 13 in the 2nd district. This is the first show at the gallery’s former location since its move to the Eschenbachgasse in the 1st district two years ago. Because Giuseppe Gabellone’s sculpture goes beyond the scope of the gallery’s space in the Eschenbachgasse it was necessary to resume showing in the Praterstraße. Parallel to the Giuseppe Gabellone presentation we are showing sculptures by Werner Feiersinger in the Eschenbachgasse.

The surroundings, the lighting and the placement of Gabellone’s sculptures are chosen with careful precision. Although he lives in Milan, it is always interiors or outdoor spaces of southern Italy which he uses as the settings for his pieces. Giuseppe Gabellone works for months on these sculptures and always devotes his full attention to only one project at a time. At the end of this intensive phase of working on development and construction, the sculpture is photographed in surroundings specifically chosen for this purpose and is afterward destroyed. A roller-coaster of wooden boards, cactuses and cars in an underground parking garage, a backyard, the objects (oil drum, car, etc.) found in it covered with a construction of metal sheets: these are situations in which elaborate structures and complex installations serve only for a momentary photographic image.

Alongside this, the artist also makes sculptural pieces which he presents as such.
Gabellone calls these pieces double sculptures, indicating that these sculptures possess additional “sculptural” qualities: a polyester box in a construction difficult to comprehend, oversized and reminiscent of a technical toy in the materials used; a piece made of plain jute in two different variations: either laid out in a 31 meter strip or folded-together as a simple cube.

In the reproduction of these pieces in periodicals and publications these ambiguities (is it a photograph of a sculpture or a photo piece thematisizing sculptural elements) bring about a humorous enhancement of the concept of sculpture and thematisize the handling of reality in different media.

In his show in Vienna, Giuseppe Gabellone exhibits two pieces: Pianta, a space-grasping sculpture of green polyurethane, and a photographic piece of work. In the photo piece his starting point is a found negative of palm trees and flamingos in a tropical landscape. Gabellone developed and enlarged this negative, mounted it on a billboard and placed it in a backyard in southern Italy.