WALKING BACKWARDS
SERPENTINE GALLERIES

Walking Backwards, Alex Cecchetti
14 Sep 2019 - 11:00 AM to 15 Sep 2019 - 6:30 PM
SERPENTINE GALLERIES
Myddelton House Gardens, Enfield EN2 9HG

Artist, poet, choreographer and gardener Alex Cecchetti presented the incantation, Walking Backwards (2013-ongoing), specifically re-conceived for the eight-acre, historical garden of the little-known and enchanting Myddelton House, once the home of gardener and botanist Edward Augustus Bowles.

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Inspired by the remarkable biodiversity of the vegetation, guides led audience members, one by one, on a backwards walk. Accompanied by the whispers of a guide, as plant species, pathways and thoughts came into unexpected view, Walking Backwards weaved together dream, botany, poetry, intimacy and trust. 

Produced by Emily Rudge. Curated by Lucia Pietroiusti as part of General Ecology.

Featured Image: 
Alex Cecchetti, Walking Backwards, 2019, commissioned by the General Ecology Project at Serpentine Galleries, Myddelton House Gardens, 14-15 September 2019. Photo by Talie Rose Eigeland.

From the Home to the Museum
From the Museum to the Home
Homages to the Works of the Cerruti Collection
Chapter 2

CASTELLO DI RIVOLI

From 08 July 2019 to 06 January 2020
Castello di Rivoli
Museum of Contemporary Art
Piazza Mafalda di Savoia 
10098 Rivoli - Torino

Castello di Rivoli inaugurates the second chapter of its program of contemporary art commissions in homage to the Cerruti Collection, initiated in May 2019 to celebrate the opening to the public of this extraordinary collection. New artworks by Ed Atkins, Alex Cecchetti, Nalini Malani, and Michael Rakowitz join the works by Anna Boghiguian, Camille Henrot, Liu Ding, Giulio Paolini,Giuseppe Penone, Susan Philipsz, and Seth Price, presented last May in the first chapter of the series.

Interested in the unseen side of the Cerruti Collection – the collector’s “desire” –, Alex Cecchetti presents a delicate fabric made using some of the artist’s paintings – stitched together like precious cloth. They portray plants and sensual flowers valued for their healing properties, yet commonly considered as undesirable weeds to be ripped out. Another work by Cecchetti also addresses the erotic nature and intelligence of plants. Both a cabinet and a collection with over sixty erotic drawings, it is displayed as a counterpoint to the fabric and resonating with the Cerruti Collection. Untitled (2019), a painting on board realized for the occasion by Ed Atkins, offers another, personal interpretation of the art collector’s “desire” – an ironic and uncanny image of the collection as a self-portrait by proxy, an autobiography and public display of one’s inner world.

Inspired by one of Francisco Goya’s renowned etchings from the series Los caprichos (1799) in the Cerruti Collection, a new video by Nalini Malani interprets a tragic episode of recent Indian news. Goya’s figures and Malani’s silhouettes overlap and uncover each other, merging just to then dissolve into the cry of protest of a society where violence and oppression seem never-ending. Trough collaborative processes and rituals that involve the repair or transformation of damaged objects, the reactivation of lost memories and intangible cultures, Michael Rakowitz implements new means through which overcome war trauma – from the destruction of works of art to the fleeing of entire communities. In homage the wealth of expertise Francesco Federico Cerruti brought to Italy in the late 1950s thanks to his bookbinding business Legatoria Industriale Torinese (LIT), the artist had a book from his personal collection whose binding had been destroyed re-bound in Turin. This prayer book, written in both Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic and printed in 1935, belonged to the now departed Jewish community of Iraq, from which the artist himself hails. Since the original binding is damaged beyond repair, according to tradition, it must be buried. However, Rakowitz decided to have it sent to Turin to renew the pages proximity to one another, and “repair its words” in order to give birth to a new work.

Conceived by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev with the curatorial coordination of Sara Catenacci and the assistance of Elena D’Angelo to the production.

WALKING BACKWARDS
FOG FESTIVAL - TRIENNALE MILANO - TEATRO DELL’ARTE
Alex Cecchetti

24 — 26 MAY 2019
Secret Place

Premiere
Friday and Saturday every 30’ from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Sunday every 30’ from 11 a.m. to 12.30 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Limited availability. Performance for 1 participant at a time
Duration: 30'

“In a garden everything is green and nothing is the same.Tree after tree, step after step, the story of this garden and its plants is revealed, until it merges with our own. When we walk backwards, we leave the future behind, and the past presses in the distance in front of us, on the horizon. We have the chance to say your goodbyes. And if a branch touches our back, or a flower gently caresses our hand, suddenly it will become apparent that images do not depend on light – as we dream with our eyes closed, don’t we?” In this site-specific work by Alex Cecchetti, the spectators are invited to walk backwards along a narrative path. With a guide walking on their side and stories of trees, plants and herbs whispered in their ears, they are accompanied in this immersive experience until they become the garden itself and realise that there are no beginnings and no ends: the path welcomes all choices.

Alex Cecchetti is an Italian artist, poet, painter and performer based in Paris. His performances have been presented in museums throughout Europe, including the Centre Pompidou, the Jeu de Paume and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Serpentine Galleries in London, the MAXXI in Rome and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. In 2012 the CAC in Vilnius hosted his solo exhibition. In 2015, on the occasion of FIAC in Paris, he developed the project Voices of Urgencies at the École de Beaux Arts, blending poetic interventions with the social sciences. In 2017 two solo exhibitions at CCA Ujazdowski in Warsaw and at the Ferme du Buisson in France showcased his latest “post mortem” work Tamam Shud. In 2018, Spike Island in Bristol (UK) and Void in Derry (IR) have hosted exhibitions focusing on his research on musical sculptures, “At the Gate of the music Palace”. The Serpentine Galleries in London will present this year The Astronomic Weather Choir, a choir singing atmospheric events. Forthcoming this year are also collaborations with Castello di Rivoli in Turin for the Cerruti collection.

Credits
Concept: Alex Cecchetti
With: Alex Cecchetti, Edoardo Di Maria, Laura Dondi, Laura Finozzi, Claudia Gambino, Gil Giuliani, Aurora Beatrice Mamprin, Marta Zito, Fabio Zulli 
Production: FOG Triennale Milano Performing Arts
With the support of: Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati - Fondazione franco-italiana di sostegno alla creazione contemporanea
In collaboration with Francia in Scena, artistic program of the Institut français Italia / Ambasciata di Francia in Italia

PLANTSEX

Serpentine Galleries

Ciné Lumière at the French Institute / Institut français
12 Apr 2019 - 6:30 PM to 10:30 PM
17 Queensberry Place
London SW7 2DT (map)

Fully Booked - click here to watch live

 The Serpentine Galleries' General Ecology project presents an evening of talks, screenings and performances reflecting on the long and deep relationship between botany and eroticism. Participants include Chloe Aridjis, Alex Cecchetti, Emanuele Coccia, Jenna Sutela, Laurence Totelin and more, as well as films by Melanie Bonajo, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Victoria Sin. The evening will also mark the launch of a special, co-edited issue of MAL journal, also titled PLANTSEX.

PROGRAMME: 6:30-10:30pm

Melanie Bonajo, Night Soil: Fake Paradise (2015, video, 32')
Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos, Introduction
Maria Dimitrova, MAL
Chloe Aridjis, Uprooted
Dineo Seshee Bopape, Feelin Cosmic (2008, video, 2')
Emanuele Coccia, Sex through a Third Party: Flowers and Pollination
Jenna Sutela, Let's Play: Life, 2015, audio broadcast, 3’11”
Laurence Totelin, Orchids and Lettuce: Plants as Sexual Aids in Antiquity
Alex Cecchetti, Belladonna (2016, video and live performance, singers, foley artist)
Victoria Sin, If I had the words to tell you we wouldn't be here now (2019, video, 22')
Jenna Sutela, Oceanic Feeling

PLANTSEX is curated by Lucia Pietroiusti (Curator, General Ecology, Serpentine Galleries), writer and editor Filipa Ramos and Kostas Stasinopoulos (Assistant Curator, Live Programmes, Serpentine). Producer: Holly Shuttleworth.

In partnership with the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni and with the support of Fluxus Art Projects.

MAL's special issue: PLANTSEX is co-edited by Maria Dimitrova, Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos and Kostas Stasinopoulos. 
MAL is supported by Feeld, the dating app open to all genders and sexual identities.

CONCERT PERFORMANCE

NUIT DU ROSSIGNOL

UNE SOIRÉE POÉTIQUE POUR FÊTER LE PRINTEMPS : CONCERTS, PERFORMANCES, DJ-SETS, ATELIERS, BAR ÉPHÉMÈRE...

Jeudi 21 mars 2019 à 19h00
Musée de la musique - Cité de la musique
Paris

Programmation dans le Musée, entre 19h30 et minuit 
Alex Cecchetti - performance Song of Solitude avec appeaux d'oiseaux
Jean-Boucault, Johnny Rasse, chanteurs d'oiseaux et Shani Diluka, pianiste
Molécule - création électronique autour des oiseaux
Élèves du Conservatoire de Paris - concert et chorégraphie ornithologiques
Installation d’oiseaux naturalisés du Museum national d’histoire naturelle.

Pour sa première Nuit du rossignol, le Musée de la musique expérimente un parcours jalonné de concerts, chorégraphies et performances insolites autour des oiseaux.

Le temps d’une nuit printanière, le spectateur déambule dans la collection du Musée, devient lui-même rossignol et découvre la puissance de l’imaginaire suscité aujourd’hui par les oiseaux. Dans la Rue musicale de la Cité de la musique, animations et dégustations prolongent l’expérience dans une ambiance festive et décalée.

En collaboration avec le Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, l'École de Condé, la Fondation Gecina, le Lycée Octave Feuillet, la Ligue de Protection des Oiseaux, le Musée de la chasse et de la nature, le Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle

Love Bar
Alex Cecchetti

OPLÀ. PERFORMING ACTIVITIES
ARTE FIERA BOLOGNA

1+2+3 February 2019
Opening hours: 17.30>19.30
Location: the Costituzione (main) entrance to the art fair

A collection of “stories to drink”, the Love Bar has existed since 2012, an apparition, a strange temporary mirage, a wild apparition. The exchange of stories and drinks – made from herbs and local plants collected by the artist himself – takes place at the bar counter, a sort of proto-theatrical stage where the role of spectator and performer becomes indistinct. In this countrified, almost renaissance setting, Cecchetti has created a place in which the speaking and the drinking happens in the mouth at the same time. Every love story told will be rewarded with a cocktail, an elixir, a potion, or another love story. For it is said that every potion is also a story, a remedy or a question. People meet at the Love Bar on leaving Arte Fiera at the end of the day in a liminal area between two worlds, a haven amidst the flow of visitors in a mental sunset that never finishes.

Alex Cecchetti is an artist, poet and Italian performer based in Paris. His artistic practice is difficult to classify. Some call it the “art of evasion”. Invisible choreographies, phantasmagorical narrations, objects that produce experience for and with the spectator are all part of his modus operandi. His performances have been presented in museums throughout Europe, including the Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the MAXXI in Rome, and the Serpentine Galleries in London.

LOVE BAR
and BOOK LAUNCH TAMAM SHUD
Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Performance 31/10/2018 19:00
Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art
Warsaw

Love Bar is a collection of stories that can be drank, and is presented as a feral apparition, a temporary wild mirage. The exchange of stories and drinks happens at the bar table, a sort of proto-theatrical stage in which the role of the spectator and that of the performer is blurred. A place in which the speaking and the drinking happens in the mouth at the same time. For each love story told there is a cocktail, a potion, an elixir, or another story.Every preparation is made with local herbs, gathered and harvested by Alex Cecchetti. It is told that each potion is at the same time a story, a remedy,and a question. Do you drink Justice or Love?

Love Bar is an ongoing project since 2012. Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw will host Love Bar on the occasion of the book launch of Tamam Shud. The book was an art project in the form of a novel by artist Alex Cecchetti that spanned more than two years, and was published in 2018!

Tamam Shud has emerged through a series of episodic performances and an exhibition featuring guided tours, seminars on poetry, synesthesia piano concerts, tarot readings, and dances on river stones—all of it sprinkled with mystery, humor, literary references, and biographical tidbits.

Tamam Shud is the post-mortem investigation of the victim into his own assassination. The only clue that detectives have recovered—found in a secret pocket sewn inside his trousers—is a fragile piece of paper torn from the pages of a book with the words Tamam Shud, “this is the end,”written on it. Experts, antiquarians, and opium smokers have been consulted. These are the last two words in the Rubaiyat, an ancient collection of esoteric poems written by a Persian poet named Omar Khayyam.

The art project and the artist’s novel are linked together as much as the life of the victim is connected to the piece of paper found in his pocket.

Join us to hear stories and to drink savoury coctails in Love Bar, before you read the novel!

CETACEANS
THANKS FOR NOTHING

Le Pont des échanges
Nuit Blanche 2018
Pont ALEXANDRE III

Le Pont des échanges
Saturday 6 October 7pm – 2am
Cetaceans (Human/Whale Choir) by Alex Cecchetti 10pm
Nuit Blanche // 2018
Pont Alexandre III 
PARIS

At the heart of the Invalides Constellation and the Super Kilomètre, created by Gaël Charbau, Artistic Director of this year’s Nuit Blanche, Thanks for Nothing will be on the Pont Alexandre III, exceptionally reserved for pedestrians for the occasion.

In the spirit of Thanks for Nothing’s previous projects, Le Pont des échanges creates a dialogue between the art world and civil associations.

From 7pm to 2am, Thanks for Nothing has created an exceptional programme with performances, readings and screenings for the visitors of Nuit Blanche.

Marie-Claude Pietragalla, Julien Derouault and the Théâtre du Corps will present an exceptional performance of their next creation Lorenzaccio, to discover at Salle Pleyel from February 1 to 10, 2019.

8 contemporary artists – Wael Alkak, Uriel Barthélémi, Alex Cecchetti, Valérie Mréjen, Melik Ohanian, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Laure Prouvost and Noé Soulier – will present works created especially for this occasion.

In parallel, Thanks for Nothing invites 5 NGOs that work towards the integration of underprivileged communities through access to culture: Fondation Abbé Pierre, agency of artists in exile, Libraries Without Borders, Cultures du cœur et Music Fund.

Thanks for Nothing also organizes a giant collection of cultural objects on the Pont Alexandre III. A list of material needs for activities and workshops organized by the NGOs has been established: books, textbooks, crayons, different pens, musical instruments, and more. Visitors of Nuit Blanche are called upon to participate in solidarity and make a donation of these objects. The programme and performances are immaterial acknowledgements for participating in the collection.

Le Pont des échanges is designed by architects and scenographers Jasmin Oezcebi and Franck Vinsot. The project is a nod to inhabited bridges, a contemporary translation of the historic Pont au Change. Spatially, the modules housing the associations are arranged on the Pont Alexandre III, creating visually and symbolically the link between the projects, artists and the visitors between the two banks of the Seine.

THANKS FOR NOTHING : Bethsabée Attali, Blanche De Lestrange, Anaïs Ds, Marine Van Schoonbeek, Charlotte von Stotzingen. With: Paula Delaplace and Katarina Jansdóttir 

Le Pont des échanges is made possible thanks to Carnibird, la Fondation Abbé Pierre and le Perchoir.

LOVE BAR
FEY RENCONTRES D’ARTS

Friday 5 October 2018 from 7pm untill the last drop
Château du Feÿ
Villecien, Yonne, 89300
France

Find the Love Bar in the middle of the forest. For each love story we have a cocktail, a potion, an elixir or another story. Every preparation is made with local herbs. Do you drink Justice or Love?

From October 5 to October 7, 2018, Feÿ – Rencontres d’arts transforms the historical Château du Feÿ into a new creative and experimental platform just 1 hour and 30 minutes away from Paris. A three-day artistic laboratory, this multidisciplinary festival gathers about a hundred artists and presents their works in a unique, otherworldly environment. Cinema, publishing, music, gastronomy, performance and visual arts encounter one another to create an ephemeral village in the green hills of Burgundy.

The Château du Feÿ was first built to serve as a second home for one of Louis XVII’s councillors. Having welcomed both Ninon de Lenclos, a French courtesan and freethinker, and Saint-Vincent de Paul, this 17th century castle is classified as a Historical Monument. It is just steps away from Joigny, a city renowned for its gastronomy, wines and architecture (19 listed monuments). It is located within a hundred acre forest and overlooks the Yonne valley, offering a breathtaking view of the Jovinian. During the last thirty years, the British author and culinary historian Anne Willan organized cooking classes with renowned chefs in the château. By opening the doors of this monument to the public for the very first time, the domain’s recent acquisition in January 2017 and the organization of Feÿ-Rencontres d’arts both participate in the revitalization of this rural French region.

info@fey-arts.com

THE ASTRONOMIC WEATHER CHOIR
ALEX CECCHETTI
VOID

Culture Night
Friday 21st September
Off-Site: Walker Plinth, Derry City Walls, IRELAND
7pm – 7.40pm: The Astronomic Weather Choir by Alex Cecchetti

Join us as a choir sing every variation in a landscape as if they were in front of a music score. From the clouds in the sky, to the breeze on top of the trees, from the celestial movement of the moon to the flickering appearing of the first stars of the evening, the choir will sing atmospheric events like rain and fog and also astronomical events that will happen in front of them, such as the movements of astral objects.

In association with the Derry Walls, the Siege Museum and Derry 400

H
PERFORMANCE
ALEX CECCHETTI

CENTRE NATIONAL DES ARTS PLASTIQUES (CNAP)
LA NOUVELLE ADRESSE

Le Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap) ouvre exceptionnellement, avant travaux, les portes de sa « nouvelle adresse » les 14, 15, 16 septembre dans une configuration sans lendemains ni précédents. Performances, musiques et paroles live, œuvres in situ, salon d’écoute et cinéma éphémères sont à découvrir tout le long du week-end dans cet entrepôt de 25 000 m2 , qui accueillera le nouveau Cnap en 2022.

Toute la programmation : www.cnap.fr/lanouvelleadresse

Événement Facebook 

PLUS D'UNE CENTAINE D'ARTISTES RÉUNIS AUTOUR DE 25 PROJETS

Œuvres de la collection et commandes inédites cohabitent, disposées sur le plateau du rez-de-chaussée comme sur une place publique. La peinture/lumière murale de Flora Moscovici, le dessin aérien d'Esther Ferrer, les instruments de Tarek Atoui, le gonflable Video Ozone de Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Bernard Joisten, Pierre Joseph et Philippe Parreno constituent autant de stations, activées ponctuellement lors des trois jours d’ouverture.

Les sculptures, installations et performances de Nicolas Moulin, Amalia Pica, Cécile Paris, Davide Balula et Alex Cecchetti semblent émaner du bâtiment, évoquant un passé volontiers fantasmatique.

Une programmation composée par Juliette Pollet,
avec Pascal Beausse, Philippe Bettinelli, Pascale Cassagnau, Sandra Cattini, responsables de
collection (Cnap), Max-Louis Raugel pour le Cneai (programmation LIVE = de La nouvelle adresse), Aymar Crosnier et Fany Corral.
Production artistique : Marc Sanchez, directeur du pôle développement culturel, partenariats et éditions (Cnap).

Horaires et accueil du public :
Vendredi 14 septembre : 19h-5h 
Samedi 15 septembre : 12h-20h 
Dimanche 16 septembre : 12h-20h

Tout au long du week-end, accueil par des médiateurs. 
Buvette et restauration légère sur place.
Entrée libre

Transports

81 rue Cartier-Bresson à Pantin
Métro 5 : Église de Pantin
Métro 7 : Aubervilliers – Pantin – 4 Chemins
RER E : Pantin

Des navettes circuleront tout le week-end entre La nouvelle adresse et l'ESMOD.

Signature Alex Cecchetti Tamam Shud

Palais de Tokyo

Le Palais vous invite à la signature de Tamam Shud, libre d'Alex Cecchetti

7 septembre 2018 de 19h à 21h.
Palais de Tokyo
13, avenue du Président Wilson
75116 Paris

Je suis mort sans identité. Les étiquettes des vêtements, les empreintes digitales, la taille des chaussures ont été décousues, supprimées, lavées, blanchies, et livrées à l'oubli. Seul indice, un petit morceau de papier caché dans une poche secrète du pantalon. Écrit-là, les derniers mots d’une poésie persane : Tamam Shud. Ceci c'est la fin (en persan).

S'emparant d'un étrange fait divers, et invoquant la musique, la littérature et la danse, Alex Cecchetti interroge les mystères de l'identité et de la disparition.

Copublié par Sternberg Press et Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Varsovie
Commissionné par The Book Lovers
Traduit de l'italien par Johanna Bishop
Design de Jakub de Barbaro
Publié en Juin 2018, anglais
11,7 x 18,7 cm, 268 pages, couverture souple
15,00 €

Alex Cecchetti, La Chapelle aux cent mille yeux

FRAC Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur 

Solo Show / Exposition Personelle

Du vendredi 31 août au dimanche 14 octobre 2018
plateau expérimental
Vernissage vendredi 31 août - 18h30 à l’occasion de la nocturne
Nocturnes jusqu’à 22 h vendredi 31 août et samedi 1er septembre
Entrée libre de 18h30 à 22hCommissaire : Pascal Neveux

En partenariat avec Paréidolie, 5e édition du Salon international du dessin contemporain

"J’essaie de créer des chapelles dans tous les centres d’art ou toutes les expositions auxquelles je suis invité. Ces chapelles fonctionnent comme des espaces qui concentrent et accentuent le caractère de la vie auquel elles se réfèrent. L’exposition La Chapelle aux cent mille yeux évoque l’érotisme et la sexualité et leur rapport aux souvenirs et aux expériences partagées. Le cabinet érotique, avec ses scènes d’amour mythologiques revisitées, et ses copulations fantastiques, a été inspiré par les fleurs. Il s’ouvre comme une fleur, pétale après pétale, invitant le spectateur à entrer de plus en plus dans sa structure. Voile après voile, pétale après pétale la récompense est aussi un piège, et une vue de l’extérieur se révèle dans le dernier dessin du cabinet."
Alex Cecchetti

At the Gates of the Music Palace

Alex Cecchetti

SOLO SHOW

VOID, Derry, Irland

4 August - 22 September 2018
 

Void is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Alex Cecchetti. Cecchetti's multi-disciplinary practice explores the senses through the experiential nature of his work. His exhibition brings together performance, drawing, painting, sculpture and sound installation.  At the Gates of the Music Palace is conceived as a 3-dimensional music concert; the different sound pieces will be set in order to respond and resonate to each other and constitute a kind of composition. Music Palace exploits the logic of exhibitions to create an environment that accompanies the spectator in an unexpected sensory pathway.

There are polarities within his work where drawings become ethereal sounds and both presence and absence emerge. The slippage in his work is where the poetics reside and the narratives become material. In its regard one becomes at once both the performer and the viewer, this playful exchange is what titillates and remains an integral part of his work. This emphasis in positioning the viewer as central to the work has led Cecchetti to create space for the imagination where works can be experienced in a multitude of ways and we become part of a wider play.

Alex Cecchetti (1977-2014) was an artist, a poet, and a choreographer. Difficult to classify, his work can be considered as the art of the un-representable: tactile and poetic, aesthetic and materialistic, it creates mental and physical environments in which the spectators are often part of the work. Invited to walk backwards into a garden, to sleep at the sound of a choir singing in the deep of the ocean, or taking dance class from stones and staircases, the spectators are no longer defined to the role of the beholder. The artist died for the first time in 2014 for unknown reasons, though he keeps producing new works, present new performances and publish new poems.

TAMAM SHUD
ALEX CECCHETTI

AN ARTIST'S NOVEL

Commissioned by The Book Lovers
Published by the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw)and Sternberg Press
In the frame of the project The Novel As Fantasy.

Tamam Shud, the artist’s novel written by Alex Cecchetti, is finally out in April 2018! Throughout an art project that spanned over two years, during which the writing process and the artistic process intertwined, feeding each other as they evolved, a narrative was created that altered the meaning of the artworks while at the same time dictating the contents of the artist’s novel. Tamam Shud has emerged through a series of episodic performances and an exhibition featuring guided tours, seminars on poetry, synesthesia piano concerts, tarot readings, and dances on river stones. All of it sprinkled with mystery, humour, literary references, and biographical tidbits. As if the only way to understand death was through an inquiry into life, what arises when reading Tamam Shud is not the account of an individual life, but rather a reflection on the phenomenon of existence.

Tamam Shud is the post-mortem investigation of the victim into his own assassination. The only clue—found in a secret pocket sewn inside his trousers—that detectives have recovered is a fragile piece of paper torn from the pages of a book with the words Tamam Shud, 'this is the end,' written on it. Experts, antiquarians, and opium smokers have been consulted. These are the last two words in the Rubaiyat, an ancient collection of esoteric poems written by a Persian poet named Omar Khayyam.
The art project and the artist’s novel are linked together as much as the life of the victim is connected to the piece of paper found in his pocket. A work of fiction only exists at the moment of its reading, its text is necessarily actualized through the reader’s imagination. Now that Tamam Shud is published, the artist only asks for it to be read, and enjoyed.

I dreamt of a lake, and I knew there were fish inside, even if I saw none. She said jump, and her voice was that of a bird, and I knew she took lessons from parrots. An artist’s novel functions just like a dream, is inside and outside of itself, and is so rich of meta-narratives it looks like a vanilla mille-feuille.

The publication of Tamam Shud is occasioned by the project The Novel As Fantasy at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, 2016–17.

Translation from the Italian: Johanna Bishop
Graphic design: Jakub de Barbaro
Photo credit: Bartosz Górka

Volcano Extravaganza 2018
Total Anastrophes

2 – 6 February 2018

Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh

A project by Fiorucci Art Trust

In collaboration with The Vinyl Factory

Curated by Milovan Farronato

Artistic Leader: Runa Islam

Cecilia Bengolea, Alex Cecchetti, Patrizio di Massimo, Haroon Mirza, Tobias Putrih, Osman Yousefzada

With contributions by: Alec Curtis, Liliana Moro, Chiara Fumai, Anna Boghiguian, Chus Martínez, Delia Gonzalez, Diana Campbell Betancourt, Joana Escoval, Christodolulos Panayiotou, George Henry Longly, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, Roberto Cuoghi, Katharina Fritsch, Stella Bottai, Mathilde Rosier

AT THE GATE OF THE MUSIC PALACE - SOLO SHOW
VOID
DERRY, IRLAND
UPCOMING AUGUST 2018

AT THE GATE OF THE MUSIC PALACE - Solo Show
SPIKE ISLAND
Bristol UK
04 May / 08 JULY - 2018

SPIKE ISLAND
133 Cumberland Road
Bristol BS1 6UX

Alex Cecchetti is an artist, poet and choreographer. Over the last decade, he has developed a unique practice which he characterises as the art of avoidance, where representation and concealment go hand in hand with the tactical and the poetic, the visual and the material. His works often begin with a poem which is transformed into an object, a performance or a situation, focusing on how the construction of a narrative can be experienced both physically and emotionally. This emphasis in positioning the visitor’s experience as central to the work has led Cecchetti to introduce resources such as rhetoric, storytelling, music or dance, to establish a non-mediated relationship with the work, transforming the figure of the spectator into a visionary participant.

Cecchetti’s exhibition at Spike Island, At the Gates of the Music Palace, brings together performance, drawing, painting, sculpture and sound installation, turning the gallery into a three-dimensional concert in which visitors are invited to contribute to the musical score as they make their way through an unexpected sensory pathway.

Alex Cecchetti’s Singing Chandelier is produced with the generous support of Nicoletta Fiorucci, Founder of the Fiorucci Art Trust. Storyline is produced with the generous support of Traudi Messini.

Alex Cecchetti
Tamam Shud - Solo Show
La Ferme du Buisson

Opening: Saturday 11 November at 4 pm
from 11 Nov 2017 to 25 Feb 2018

Come aboard for a fascinating journey into the heartland of the imagination. Inspired by strange news item, Alex Cecchetti invites you to help him investigate a mysterious disappearance in a symphonic exhibition activated by synesthetic musicians, classical and contemporary dancers, mediator-detectives – and the artist and the viewers themselves.

"I died identity-free. Clothes labels, fingerprints, shoe sizes were unstitched, eliminated, washed off, bleached out and consigned to oblivion. The sole clue, a small scrap of paper hidden in a secret pocket of the trousers. Written on it, the closing words of a Persian poem: Tamam Shud. This is the end. This is all I am." Drawing on a strange news item, and calling on music, literature and dance, Cecchetti probes the mysteries of identity and disappearance.

"Tamam Shud" means "This is the end" in Persian, yet here it is the starting point for an adventure intermingling performance and poetry. Cecchetti gives his imagination free rein in the art centre's various spaces, in installations intended as chapters in a narrative combining the lyrical and the zany.

Interacting with each other from room to room, his multiple languages immerse us in a world that puts all the senses to work. At once an intimate space and the framework for a mysterious story, the exhibition has been designed as a vast musical score and becomes a locus for the merging of the fictional and the real. During the exhibition dancers, singers and musicians move into the installations to add to the poet's narrative. 

Curated by Julie Pellegrin

With the participation of
Dancers: Hanna Hedman and Shihya Peng
Synesthetic musician: Natan Kryszk
Chef Le Chevalier: Chloe Charles

Reserve your dinner on the tarot table in the solo show "Tamam Shud" at La Ferme du Buisson
You can order dishes by poems written by Alex Cecchetti and coocked by the greatest Chloe Charles (ex residente chef at Fulgorances!). Limited places, only 6 dinners from 11th of November till the end of February§
call La Ferme du Buisson 01 64 62 77 77

a coproduction with Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw

 NUOVO MONDO
Guided Tour of Heaven and Hell
The National Archeological Museum of Naples, Italy

Performance
15 OCTOBER 2017 7pm - duration 2H
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
Napoli, Piazza Museo 19

In the frame of the exhibition Amori Divini at The National Archeological Museum of Naples in Italy, Alex Cecchetti invites the public to a tour guide of heaven and hell. A seminary on poetry where poems are embodied along a walk that trespass prohibited places, through offices, archives, basements, and the secret corners which exist in every institution.

Amori Divini, explores the mechanisms of transmission and reception of Greek myth through the centuries by presenting around 80 works from the Vesuvian sites and Magna Grecia. The collection is enriched by works from some of the most prestigious Italian and international museums as the Hermitage of Saint-Petersburg, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

The exhibition is completed with some other 20 paintings and sculptures from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with works by Baccio Bandinelli, Bartolomeo Ammannati, Nicolas Poussin, Giambattista Tiepolo

From Greek literature and art, through the poem of the "changing shapes" of Ovid, to the most contemporary interpretations of psychology, the myths of Danae, Leda, Daphne, Narciso, to the extraordinarily complex story of Hermaphrodite.

The show is curated by Anna Anguissola, Carmela Capaldi, Luigi Gallo and Valeria Sampaolo. With the support of Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli and Electa.