Alex Cecchetti

Natural-dye and Eco-print on cotton and organza silk, copper bar. Each 145x250cm

ALEX CECCHETTI 2023

Each Almond has been dyed and painted using only plants, roots, flowers, leaves and tree barks. Almonds shaped figures can be seen in many cultures around the world as symbols of creation, peace, joy, the place where the divine dances and plays, the organ of reproduction or the third eye. Geometrically, an almond, is the encounter of two circles, of two polarities, is a symbol of non-duality and much more. All of these ideas are suggested by and contained in the simple shape of a seed.

Jungle Lab is the Natural Dye laboratory of Alex Cecchetti. None of these colors are polluting, all come from roots and plants. We don’t use plants, we collaborate with them.

Eco-print and Natural-Dying is the art of losing control and let other species, as plants and trees, to take over the creative process. The final result is always a surprise. Colors may change because of so many factors as: season and time of harvesting, species of plants and their maturity. Other factors are based how plants will react between them, water ph, temperature and umidity at the moment of the composition. There is no isoleted process, everything is done with the world.

Stripped willow, metal, hemp rope. Diameter 180cm. The visitors are welcomed to swing.

Alex Cecchetti 2023

As the waves come and go, as the days come and go, as the seasons come and go, and as the sun and the moon come and go, and as passions, pleasures and pains come and go, we also come and go. To go and come back, this is the magical pastime of life. One day we will leave, and another day we will return, but if after having gone, I happen to come back, I would like to come back as a dolphin.

Hammocks. Natural dyeing and ecoprint on silk, organic cotton, wool. Hemp rope, neon light. Variable dimensions.

Alex Cecchetti 2022

Let yourself be lulled by the jellyfish, a sort of water placenta. Being composed of 98% water, jellyfish are like the ocean trying to embrace itself.

Solid rovere oak wood, 5 glazed ceramic, hemp rope, poem. Seat 80 cm x 50 cm x 4cm variable height for the ropes. The audience is invited to swing.

Alex Cecchetti 2022.

As the waves come and go, as the days come and go, as the seasons come and go, and as the sun and the moon come and go, and as passions, pleasures and pains come and go, we also come and go. To go and come back, this is the magical pastime of life. One day we will leave, and another day we will return, but if after having gone, I happen to come back, I would like to come back as a dolphin.

Poem on glazed ceramic, plants and dry flowers on the floor.

Alex Cecchetti 2022

Each poem is a vase that collects life, inside each vase there is a plant. Each plant is a mystery, like the Medinilla Magnifica which is a vegetable architect who builds castles with flowers. Each vase is a form shaped by poetry Each poem is a manifestation of consciousness. On the ground, around each vase lies a profusion of dried flowers and scented herbs to intoxicate the senses.

Orange glazed ceramic vase:
Poem: Nothing Begins, nothing ends, everything is welcome.
Plants: Phlebodium davana fern. On the ground: rosemary and meadowsweet.

Yellow and green glazed ceramic vase:
Poem: Inhale to live, exhale to sing life.
Plants: Fuzzy Kalanchoe. On the ground:Agastache, Heather and St. John’s Wort.

Blu glazed ceramic vase:
Poem: In the blossoming flower lies the hope of the tree.
Plants: Peyote Cactus. On the ground: Agastache, Heather and St. John’s Wort.

Red glazed ceramic vase:
Poem: In times of fear death and destruction you must sing of love, like the Camellia who blooms in winter.
Plants: Medinilla Magnifica. On the ground: Agastache, Heather, and St.John’s Wort.

Unglazed ceramic vase:
Poem: You are not your country, your not your religion, keep your heart open to the world, for to be open to the world is the best religion, and the world is the best country.
Plants: Begonia. On the ground: Provins roses.

Unglazed ceramic vase:
Poem: I owe the word light to the Sun, and infinte to darkness.
Plants: Japanese Aralia. On the ground: Hawthorn, Bee Balm.

SENTIERO, Alex Cecchetti’s most recent walk based project, takes audiences on one-on-one experiences along a mountain path that brings together spirituality, ecological sensitivity and more-than-human poetry. Moving between poem, love story, incantation and myth, SENTIERO accompanies audiences and their guides through encounters with non-human persons (plants, animals, minerals), their stories, their different forms of worldmaking and experiencing sensations. Part place-based intervention, part-community project, SENTIERO creates new paths among the mountains as an archetype for a journey towards the unknown, guided by human and non-human knowledge forms and accompanied by collaborators including plants, seasons and stars.

For SENTIERO, a cohort of guides harking from different disciplines and harbouring different passions – from dance to music, speaking to birds, studying dreams – has been trained to accompany audience members along their journeys to a place of shelter at the end of the path, a specially-constructed architecture echoing that of a yurt, created through eco-printing techniques, where the sensory experiences of food, smell, sound and colour are all derived from the artist’s deep engagement with local communities and ecologies.

Alex Cecchetti pays attention to the small yet significant shifts of meanings, sensations and perceptions which open up audiences to imaginative experiences of inner transformation. His artworks, which he refers to as incantations, turn play, poetry and collaborations with more-than-human beings into catalysts for near-mystical experiences of the everyday.

SENTIERO, BIENNALE GHERDEINA 8, curators Lucia Pietroiusti & Filippa Ramos, Ortisei 2022

SENTIERO by Alex Cecchetti is among the winners of the tenth edition of the Italian Council, the program for the international promotion of Italian art promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.

SENTIERO di Alex Cecchetti è tra i vincitori della decima edizione dell’Italian Council, il programma di promozione internazionale dell’arte italiana promosso dalla Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura.

Photos: Tiberio Sorvillo and Luca Meneghel

Watercolors on paper, 18 fabrics dyed with Indigofera tinctoria, calendula officinalis, onion, cochineal, rubia tinctorium, tagetes, olice, fig, pepper tree, cosmos, acorns. A forest of poems in variable dimensions.

Alex Cecchetti 2020 – 2023

Dervish Skirts for Witches (Botanical Mysticism)

Four skirts in linen colored with natural dye and natural printing techniques some of which are more than 6000 years old.

Please leave your shoes, your thoughts and worries. Wear the skirts and dance yourself out of yourself.

Alex Cecchetti 2021

Solo Show, “Everything is Welcome” at Casa da Cerca, Almada, Portugal 2021

The skirts have been treated, colored, hammered and printed with the following plantsa : Artemisia Annua, White Oak, Tansy, Eucalyptus, Maple, Morning Glory (Ipomoea nil), Sunflower, Rose, Curcuma, Indigofera tinctoria, Banana, Hibiscus, Bellis perennis (Daisy), Calendula officinalis, Viola tricolor (Pensée sauvage), Trachelium caeruleum, Prunus (plum tree), Coreopsis tinctoria, Onion, Cochineal, Rubia tinctorum, Marigold (Tagetes), Olive, Fig, Pepper Tree (Schinus mole), Cosmos (Sulfur cosmos), Larkspur, Scabiosa, Zinnia, Hortensia, pomegranate flowers, cockscomb (Celosia cristata), acorns.

Everything comes from these plants, their leaves, bark and flowers. Life, colours, perfumes, beauty, imagination and ideas have been squeezed out and hammered in from each one of them, with care and love. This incantation, in the form of a show, is dedicated to them.

Thanks to Annette and Tinctorium Studios for working together. We achieved such great results by sharing our knowledge and concentrating our efforts.

Alex Cecchetti 2021

English title: As the moon is sometimes seen in broad daylight

Dervish skirts, dresses, ceramic dance floor, choreography, original music, choir.

“A total work of art: “As the moon is sometimes seen in broad daylight” by Alex Cecchetti who combines dance, music, performance, painting, sculptur, fashion, inviting the public to dance wearing the skirts of the whirling dervishes of the Sufi tradition, created in collaboration with the maison Laura Biagiotti, on music conceived by Alex Cecchetti himself and interpreted by six students of the School of Dance of the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome and by the Cantoria of the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome directed by Maestro Roberto Gabbiani.”
MAXXI MUSEUM, ROMA

The motifs of the skirts are inspired by the mushrooms of the Trametes Versicolor species, a mushroom that grows in trees. Its variations in colour and shape follow concentric structures, and are reminiscent of the circular waves that propagate in a pond, or the waters of a river entering the sea. Motives so hypnotic that it is sometimes believed to see the universe expanding. Fungi deal with the decomposition of organic material, transform death into life, and regulate soil fertility through their intricate web of mycelium. Fungi then appear in their symbolic character as givers of life, and regenerators of death, essential elements of the life cycle.

Dervish skirts can be worn by everyone: men and women without any gender exclusion, the important thing is to dance. Dancing the skirts open and reveal the painted motifs hidden in the folds of the fabric.

A chorus of human voices sings a waltz, composed starting from the study of the resonances of the planets and stars of the universe recorded by NASA. The voices of the singers will be the voices of the planets and the stars. The waltz will be danced by the audience and professional dancers. On the ground, in the center of the room, there will be a mosaic with concentric motifs reminiscent of plant, animal, mineral forms, chemical bonds and celestial movements, thus combining all the forms of the universe in a design.

Dervish Skirts : designed and painted by Alex Cecchetti, produced by Biagiotti Group by Laura Biagiotti

Choreography: Alex Cecchetti

Music : Musical concept and artistic direction by Alex Cecchetti, composition by Brian Shank based in part on themes by Alex Cecchetti

MAXXI Art Collection

Dervish Skirts, painted or printed on cotton, silk, organic satin, diameter 230 cm each

Alex Cecchetti 2020

Unique skirts hand-painted or printed. Visitors can wear the skirts and dance in the space. By spinning and twirling visitors will become paintings, sculptures, and performers, and the poems with the painted motives will be revealed.

“Dance and spin around yourself so fast until back and front are no longer concepts, past and future disappear, and in rotating you become a sphere.”

Exhibitions:

This Event, SEMA, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea.

Dance First, Think Later; Artasperto, Batiment d’Art Contemporaine, Geneve, Swiss

Public collections acquisitions:

Frac Franche-Comté, four printed skirts with copper disk, in the collection since 2021

Spring Summer 2021
Collaboration on the SS21 Show, Poems and handmade motives and design.

Alex Cecchetti x Koché 2021

“At the Spring Summer 2021 fashion show, Christelle Kocher reflects on the concept of physicality by staging an event co-directed by Alex Cecchetti. Compatibly with the historical moment we are experiencing, Christel Kocher decides to bring a physical show to Paris Fashion Week because: "Physicality is not dead, physicality is evolving, as it has always been. An endless Metamorphosis". The Spring Summer 2021 collection is the absolute protagonist of the Buttes Chaumont park, a meeting place for communities in the heart of Paris. At the show there were also 3 projectors and a live performance of bagpipes because for the designer the sound of these instruments moves people's bowels. The fashion moment was co-directed by Alex Cecchetti, a contemporary Italian artist who consecrated the show with a sort of performance that combined with his poetry. Christelle in her manifesto reflects on the dynamics of fashion with the contemporary, which at this moment is between reality and representation and believes that in the future fashion will be represented only through two-dimensional images and concludes by saying: "Maybe there will be no more fashion shows years to come. So fuck it and enjoy this!”

L’OFFICIEL
30.09.2020
by Simone Vertua

*

“Christelle Kocher went back to her roots with an outdoor show staged at the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris, where kids in their fashion-week finery mingled with mothers pushing prams under a light drizzle. Handcrafted touches included a lilac cape tufted with tiny feathers, and a Hawaiian-style shirt hand-painted by Alex Cecchetti, who also wrote the poems painted on strips of paper held by models as they emerged in pairs for the finale. “What I missed the most during lockdown was returning to nature — something very romantic where poetry and emotions have an important place,” Kocher said. Or as her show notes explained: “Maybe there will be no more shows for the years to come. So f–k it and enjoy this one.”

WWD
Women's Wear Daily
By Joelle Diderich on September 30, 2020

An artistic and solidarity collaboration, started during the first covid19 lockdown, in support of women’s rights led by: Alex Cecchetti with Thanks for Nothing and the generous support of Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo, Fiorucci Art Trust. Special thanks to Lucia Pietroiusti and Asli Samadova.

GET T-SHIRTS HERE

What happens when the place where we live is not a safe place?

Today, Thanks for Nothing and POETRY SAVED MY LIFE wish to protect women who, confined at home, are victims of domestic violence.

“This project emerges in this time of urgency and under high emotional pressure. We would like to act as quickly and efficiently as a haiku; straight to where help is needed. But all we can do will also depend very much on the support of each and every one of you. Let’s help poetry save lives together.”

For this project, T-shirts will be printed with the phrase of a poet, sold at 35€ and which the entirety of the proceeds will go to 2 associations defending women’s rights in France and Italy:

La Maison des Femmes: Inaugurated in June 2016, located at the entrance of the Centre Hospitalier Delafontaine in Saint-Denis, La Maison des Femmes welcomes all women who are vulnerable to or victims of violence. From contraception to abortion, to FGM care, to rape or other forms of physicial and mental abuse — within the family context or another — teams offer the latest and most appropriate care.

Donne in Rete contro la violenza (D.i.Re) : The D.i.Re association was born with the aim of building a national political action which, starting from the experience acquired in different local realities, promotes actions aimed at triggering a cultural change of transformation of the Italian society regarding the phenomenon of male violence against women. D.i.Re intends to give visibility to the methodology and activity of the Anti-violence Centres present on the Italian national territory, to initiatives aimed at the knowledge of the phenomenon of violence, to the elaboration of research projects, in a perspective of reflection on experiences and of continuous and generalized training for the Centres and for the Italian territory.

Link to Tee-Shirts

Thanks For Nothing

Teemill

Poems under lockdown

Watercolor on paper

Alex Cecchetti, 2020

These poems emerge in this time of urgency and under high emotional pressure. I wanted them to be like arrows: quick and efficient as a haiku. Or like Jasmine flowers, little, many, with a unique scent.

Video 5 minutes

Alex Cecchetti 2020

One day, a flower whispered to you that “If words are sound, and sound is air, it may be worth listening to the wind”. Then, like many other things in your life, you forgot.

I have tried not to forget the teachings of the flowers, and here they are, whispered as if it was the first time.

“If flowers open at the heat of the spring, what makes you think they don’t feel pain? If one single petal is more sensitive than an eardrum, and vibrates to every breeze or buzz, how many secrets hold the rose?”

Glazed clay, heating system
Dimensions 40x40x20 cm

Alex Cecchetti 2020

These pussy flowers are connected to the heating system to warm up the space. Their magical purpose is conjuring and evoking a liberating and joyful Pussyocene.

Water containing system, pipe system, cymbals and drums.

Variable dimensions

Alex Cecchetti 2020

The water has made its way from the sky to the ceiling, and drips into the room, which is now flooded. What to do? Let's make a fountain that plays its own rhythm. Cymbals and improvised drums, instead of buckets, and let’s make music out of it.

Bas-relief, woodcarving of cypress, cedar and cirmolo, some of the most perfumed wood.
270x170 cm

Alex Cecchetti 2020

Trees eat light, and when they burn, they give back the same amount of sunlight they have eaten all their life. They give it back in the form of flames and heat. Otherwise, they give it back in the form of perfume. Stick your nose close to the wood: cypress, cedar and cirmolo may want to tell you something about death and time. In fact, when you cut a tree, you have tree rings. A wood ring is formed, with the difference in temperature, when from summer you go to winter, and that wood ring we call it a year. But on the equator, there are no seasons. When you cut a tree near the equator, there are no tree rings. No seasons, no tree rings; no tree rings, no time.

Wearable paintings for hugs, silk, wool, cotton

Alex Cecchetti 2020

This painting is a dress made for hugging, because we all need love in a garden. It is also a mandala, a temple, a poem, a recipe of one of the cocktails of the Love Bar and a vehicle. Thanks to the extreme decorative elements of the painting it is possible to become invisible. Decoration doesn’t mean making something nice. Decoration is about making something rhythmic and hypnotic, seductive like the intelligence of the flower. In the rhythmic pattern the brain starts to drift away from logic, and imagination is far more powerful than logic. In that moment, when you drift, hug someone!

FR

Ce tableau est fait pour se prendre dans les bras, car nous avons tous besoin d'amour. C'est aussi un mandala, un temple, un poème, une recette d'un des cocktails du Love Bar de Alex Cecchetti et surtout c’est un véhicule. Grâce aux éléments décoratifs de cette peinture, il est possible de devenir invisible. La décoration ne signifie pas faire quelque chose de joli. La décoration consiste à faire quelque chose de rythmé et hypnotique, séduisant comme l'intelligence de la fleur. Dans le schéma rythmique, le cerveau commence à s'éloigner de la logique, et l'imagination est la plus puissante des sciences. À ce moment-là, lorsque vous dérivez, embrassez quelqu'un.

Oil Paint on different fabrics stitched together with natural silk threads

Alex Cecchetti 2019

“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.”

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Exhibitions:

By Artists: 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, Rivoli, Italy.

Watercolor on paper sewn on linen cloth

Alex Cecchetti 2018

Krishna, the great trickster and seducer, was crowned with a peacock feather, the iridescent and kaleidoscopic beauty of the world, between animal, vegetable and mineral. The watercolor can be wrapped around itself, manipulated with the help of the public, and disappear from the exhibition. On the paper there is a spell in the form of a song, which can also be sung by the public. All I wanted to be...

Watercolors on paper, different dimensions

Alex Cecchetti since forever

How to be immediate and fluid in front of an idea, a project, a plant, a flower? The more you resemble water, the more you go wherever you want, and the more everyone comes to the spring to drink.

Watercolor is the most eco-friendly technique of painting and uses non-toxic organic binders, earth friendly. Gum arabic and honey are the most common binder found in most watercolor paints. Flowers and ideas go very well together, because flowers and ideas are something that bloom. And flowers go well with honey and water as well.

Choir singing the weather and astronomical events

Alex Cecchetti since 2018

The Astronomic Weather Choir has existed since 2018, and it sings the blue of the sky, the clouds or the breeze on top of the trees. It sings the rain when it rains, and the sun when it shines; the moon, the stars, Jupiter and Venus when visible, and sometimes the birds. Lately, new songs sprout out from random encounters with jumping frogs. For the first time this year, the choir will sing also the trembling of flowers and the waves of the high grass, some stories of plants and the unpredictable wild animals as well. With the mouth we eat, we speak, we breathe, we sing. Therefore, the mouth is not the place of the senses, but the threshold temple where things come and go. Life, in fact, is intermittent, it goes and comes constantly with the rhythm of your breath, for breathing is the foundation of the real, and the kiss is that of the soul.

Alcantara, glass, metal, copper, story, wind chime, performance

Alex Cecchetti 2018

This abstract form is a three-dimensional line drawing and within it, a brass and glass wind chime softly sings in the passing breeze. If we imagine the movements of handwriting until they are visible as larger and larger circles and ellipses, then every writer can be considered a dancer. This sculpture is a writing in space, and tells two stories. One about the beginning of the world and two musicians, one of whom was in love with the other. The other about the endless transformation of things from clouds to rivers, birds to eggs, hate to love. A performer may come to tell you one of these two stories, it will move like a dancer or a writer following the curves of this ribbon floating in the air, suspended in a moment of a narrative.

Images from the installation for the solo show At The Gate Of The Music Palace at Spike Island, Bristol 2018

Photo credit Stuart Whipps

1000 unique blown glass pieces, waterphone, iron structure, lights, music score, performance

Alex Cecchetti 2018

The chandelier of the music palace is a cylindrical sculpture, a source of light and a musical instrument made of a cascade of colourful hand-blown glass bird beaks, each one touching the other to make a sparkling jingle when it is played. Toucan, parrot, hummingbird, ibis, pink flamingo, robins, these are just of the few birds that can be recognised in the vertiginous flock.

A soprano is invited to use the chandelier as an instrument to accompany her while singing “Fern Flower”, a song written by Alex Cecchetti especially for the Singing Chandelier. Visitors can enter the chandelier and play the instrument if they are delicate.

Images from the installation for the solo show At The Gate Of The Music Palace at Spike Island, Bristol 2018

Photo credit Stuart Whipps

Massive oak, glass, watercolors, totemic legs in linden, amethyst

Alex Cecchetti 2018

Private collection

Watercolors on paper 40x60 cm

Alex Cecchetti 2018

A story is like a tapestry, a tapestry is like music. Inspired by the motives of different carpets in the world, these images are the visions of the Music Palace.

Exhibited:

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Spike Island, Bristol, UK 2018

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Void, Derry, Ireland, 2018

Copper cone, electronic circuit, crystal watercolours

Co-commissioned by Spike Island, Bristol and Void, Londonderry

Technical realization: Omnivors!

Alex Cecchetti 2018

It is said that every step you take inside the Music Palace is transformed into a note. Some people move with music, some people move in noise, but grace can be reached by everyone who listens carefully to the melody of life.

The space around you is here transformed into a musical instrument, and as you pass through the gallery space your movement will produce notes from the Chinese pentatonic scale. The music of your body is played out from the copper cone which floats upon your head: a sort of gigantic Theremin that transforms the space into a music field.

Along the wall you can see five watercolours, they are views of the music palace, and their respective positions mark the pure five “notes” of the Chinese pentatonic. It seems that these are the notes that created the world. Use your body to make your own music. A dancer inhabits this space, dancing the music created by her dancing, in a direct circular relation, creating melodies as she creates choreographies.

Images and performance from the solo show At The Gate Of The Music Palace at Spike Island, Bristol 2018

Photo credit Stuart Whipps

69 works mixed techniques, furniture in solid oak wood and frames

Alex Cecchetti 2016 - 2017

A series of erotic paintings framed labyrinthically in a piece of wooden furniture. Visitors can open the cabinet and scroll the frames to discover more paintings and drawings. The paintings are made in different styles and techniques, because eroticism is an art of agreement, as a music between two desires, yours and that of the other.

Exhibitions:

La Chapelle Aux Cent Mille Yeux , Frac Provence Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA), Marseille, 2018

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Spike Island, Bristol, 2018

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Void, Derry, Ireland, 2018

Tamam Shud, La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, 2017

Tamam Shud, Centre For Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Varsovie, 2017

Wall painting, poem, performance

variable dimensions

Alex Cecchetti 2017

A strange signature appeared on the wall, after some investigations the detectives discovered the image of a penguin between the letters, suddenly the signature was not a signature anymore but a story:

Everything starts with Noah's Ark

And since I was little

Every time I think about Noah’s Ark

I cannot picture myself inside

And if you are not in the boat who are you?

?

A fish

And as soon as you are a fish you understand few things

First of all, fish do not give a fuck about the flood

And second, when you are a fish

You understand that up there in the Noah’s Ark

There are only heterosexual animals

All quick paired together by Noah himself

A very sad situation indeed

But here below the sea

We the fish

With all this water

I saw things

I saw whales fucking oysters

Oysters fucking crabs

And crabs fucking jellyfish

And jellyfish fucking octopuses

And octopuses fucking penguins and dolphins at the same time

And I saw herrings

A large vortex of five hundred thousand herrings

swirling and whirling in vortex

all five hundred thousand herrings together fucking a hippo

Which I know very well is not a fish,

but the herrings fucked him as soon as he fell off the boat

And that’s how sea lions were born

Engraved table and chairs, 5 printings, menu and poems

Alex Cecchetti 2017

Dinner table and chairs are modified versions of Enzo Mari Autoprogettazione furniture. They have been engraved by Alex Cecchetti, each with the image of one card of his new tarot deck. Around the table are hung the five prints produced with the wood cut. Spectators can reserve the table for a dinner or a lunch in the exhibition. The lunch and dinner happen in that thin space between the matrix and its copy. The menu is conceived by the artist, the dishes are described only with poems. Spectators become performers. A letter written by hand is posed on the table. Those who reserved a meal may want to read it out loud and eventually write back a letter of reply…

Light sensors, algorithmic program and computer box, sound vibrators. Music window technical realization Emilien Ghomi and Simon Larcher, trublion.org

Alex Cecchetti 2017

Each window is connected to a light sensor and a vibrator. The light sensor sends information to the algorithmic box, data are transformed into music and sent to the vibrator which accelerates the vibration of the glass in the window to reproduce the sound of the light. In the room there are books of poetry to be consulted.

Exhibitions:

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Spike Island, Bristol, UK, 2018

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Void, Derry, Ireland, 2018

Tamam Shud, La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, France, 2017

Tamam Shud, Centre For Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2017

Oil paintings on crystal paper and rice Japanese paper, synesthetic musician, music composition, music instrument

Alex Cecchetti 2017

The painting dialogues with music. A production of over 50 paintings made according to a complex system of folding and unfolding papers and colour printings, transferring forms and colours information from one painting to the other following the system of genetic transfers in plants. The oil paintings are then set up in space so that a synesthetic musician can easily translate them into music. The first 500,000 Azaleas concert was presented for the Tamam Shud personal exhibition at the CCA in Warsaw, the composition was written by Natan Kryszk.

Door, wood, piano chords

Alex Cecchetti 2017

When opened or closed this door plays like a music instrument. Let’s listen to your desire to enter, to exit, or just to go through.

The idea of the door comes from a studio visit I had with another artist in a dream. Everything in the dream was vivid, and I still remember the music the door played when I entered the studio of the artist who lives in my sleep.

ARABESQUE AND DANCE FLOOR

Modified walnut wood handrails and seven riverstones on a copper dance floor

Alex Cecchetti 2014 – 2016 - 2017

Wooden staircases have been modified to become dance ramps. The public is invited to touch them, follow their curves, let themselves be directed by these objects in the dance.

DANCE FLOOR

7 riverstones on a copper dance floor.

DANCE ROOM

3 Arabesques and a River Stone dance floor

The "Arabesque" sculptures are inspired by the movements of ballet and contemporary dance. By touching the handrail and following its curves, the public perform dance figures and movements. The public is invited to touch the guardrails and follow their curves, encouraged to do so by closing their eyes. River stones is a dance floor made of copper plates and seven river stones used to slide on the copper surface. The stones become instruments for dance with a simple and intuitive vocabulary. To rethink the qualities of stones, question their immobility and move their use from simple projectiles to vehicles.

Collection: CNAP Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris/Pantin

Bread, 24k gold, kintsugi

Alex Cecchetti 2017

I have baked my own bread, I let it dry then broken it, then put the pieces back together with gold, following the ancient kintsugi Japanese technique. When the bread becomes rotten and gone, only its cracks will survive in the form of thin golden net. The inspiration for this work is the legend of Gilgamesh and his quest for immortality. The original title of the work was “When you sleep the dough grows and the bread goes rotten” . Gilgamesh adventures to Dilmun to ask Utnapishtim for the secret of immortality. He must stay awake six days and seven nights, but "a mist of sleep drifted over him.

“I was very much into Gilgamesh story, especially his quest for immortality. Utnapishtim secret of immortal life was to stay awake without sleep for six days. Gilgamesh tries, but suddenly falls asleep. For every day he sleeps, one loaf of bread is baked and put close to him. When he woke up, he lost the possibility to become immortal, but I think he understood the lesson of the bread. The first bread was rotten, the last still fresh. Death and life are interconnected like being awake and sleep. The immortality is there for every fresh bread, and time is just a process. But the narrative deluded me a lot, I would have loved to know Gilgamesh dreams during those six days. Maybe my next work will be about those lost dreams. “ Alex Cecchetti

Exhibitions:

Tamam Shud, La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel (Novembre 2017)

Tamam Shud, Centre For Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (Septembre 2017)

Dancers, drape 7x7 meters

Alex Cecchetti 2017

A choreography for an achronic history of painting. Two dancers are confronted with different iconographies from Western and Asian painting. Without knowing those given to each other, when activating the performance, they will share a single drape to reproduce their own images. The result will be hybrid and unexpected forms, as if a painting by Giorgione could meet that of a Leonardo, or the lovers of Hokusai find themselves playing in between the drapes of the ascetic monks of Zurbaran.

Draperies, drapes and cloths as well as painting are always connected to the question of representation. If the form is the result and the synthesis of internal tensions, the drape in the paintings is the surface and the synthesis of what remains hidden and invisible in the image. But as in the dance of Salome, veil after veil, the unveiled image can only be invisible, for the nakedness of the image is its blinding absence. No more representation, no more eroticism.

In this non-linear history of painting, one can see a Koi swim. It is a Japanese fish, and also the metaphor of this project, where the drapes and bodies, the invisible and the visible chase each other, producing a blinking image on the surface. A baroque play of forms, for life with so many forms can only be baroque.

Dancers : Hélène Iratchet, Denis Terrasse

O! Watt up, de Watteau et du Théâtre, MABA / FNAGP, Maison d'Art Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent-sur-Marne

Concert / performance for choir, glass harmonica and waterphone

Alex Cecchetti 2017

Cetaceans in a polyphonic concerto for a choir, a glass harmonica and a waterphone. The concert/performance is conceived to accompany the public along a whole sleep cycle of one hour and a half, exploring dreams, dizziness, time lapses and lucid dreams, as states in which a different form of communication is produced. The music score is a hybrid composition in which music notation of choirs, holy music, poems and patterns of whale voices have been arranged together, intertwined, mixed and merged. A choir of singers have been trained to reproduce the sound of whales and to mix these non-human voices to the music.

Exhibitions:

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Spike Island, Bristol, 2018

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Void, Derry, Ireland, 2018

Nuit Blanche, Le Pont Des Échanges, PONT ALEXANDRE III, Thanks for Nothing, 2018

Soirée Sonore #4, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2017

Tamam Shud, Centre For Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Varsovie , 2017

Tamam Shud, La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, 2017

Cetaceans, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2017

Notte Lusoria, carte blanche, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2017

One of the 3 Editions of the sound installation features now in the prestigious collection of Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, bordeaux, France

Potions, elixirs, stories, poems, songs, tarot reading, herbs, plants, minerals to drink

Love Bar is ongoing since 2012

Love Bar is a collection of stories that can be drunk. It 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, a song or another story. Every preparation is made with local herbs, gathered and harvested by Alex Cecchetti, who can count on 10 years of experience. It is told that each potion is at the same time a story, a remedy and a question. Do you drink Justice or Love?

“The artist collects local herbs and researches the local historical use of those herbs. He creates a bar covered with these herbs and plants as a sublunar mirage. The exchange of stories and cocktail-elixirs take place at the bar counter. As in a proto-theatrical stage. Between rural dimension and Renaissance allure, Cecchetti tells love stories, reads tarots and prepares elixir.”

Exhibitions:

Love Bar, MAXXI National Museum of Contemporary Art, Roma, Italy 2020

Love Bar, Netwerk, Aalst, Belgium, 2020

Love Bar, Enter Art Fair, Curated by Irene Campolmi, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2020

Love Bar, Art Weekend Aarhus, Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark 2019

Love Bar, Teatro La pelanda, WeGil, Short Theatre, Roma, Italy 2019

Oplà, performing activities, Arte Fiera Bologna, Performance Program, curated by Silvia Fanti (Xing), Bologna, Italy, 2019

Volcano Extravaganza 2018 – Total Anastrophes, Fiorucci Art Trust, Stromboli, Italy 2018

Love Bar, Notte Lusoria, carte blanche Alex Cecchetti, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2017

Love Bar, Centre For Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2017

Reims, Scènes d’Europe, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, 2017

Love Bar, Teatro Valle Occupato, Caribic Residency, Love residency, Rome, 2012

Palais de Tokyo (Paris)

Carta Blanche Alex Cecchetti, Soirée perfor(m)ée

23/02/2017 from 5 pm till midnight

For one evening, the artist Alex Cecchetti is offering an immersion into his very own interstellar, magical world. sheltered inside large “tent-curtains”, artists give tarot readings or dance to the sound of a piano. Further off, a glass harp accompanies a choir inspired by whale song, while Cécilia Bengolea dances amidst the audience on Alex Cecchetti’s poems.

New performances and collaborations with:

Marino Formenti (piano)

Milovan Farronato and Timothy Morton (Tarots)

Cecilia Bengolea (dancer in Clitoris)

Thomas Bloch (Glass Harmonica in Cetaceans)

Aphrodite Mélodie and Perle Palombe (Le club Pour l’Emancipation du Hasard)

Curated by Vittoria Matarrese

Photos credit Aurélie Cenno

Two dancers, poems

Alex Cecchetti since 2012

Conversation of the arrows is a duet featuring artist Alex Cecchetti and a dancer. The performance is a choreography for a sorcerer’s apprentices, in which a dancer and a word-crafter fall into the trap of representation. They are doomed to chase each other represented as dogs, arrows, birds, stones, stars and more. For a moment, Cecchetti’s sculptures become the spells that the apprentices cast against each other and the scenario for their labyrinthic roaming.

Performance by Alex Cecchetti, video-performance, whisperers and foley artist.

Alex Cecchetti 2013-2016

Belladonna is a film whose soundtrack is performed live by a choir of whisperers and a foley artist. Belladonna is based on Alex Cecchetti's previous performance ‘Walking Backwards’, which took place in the garden of Jardins des Plantes in Paris and at Serralves Foundation, as well as on a related film as a collection of stories of trees and plants narrated on that occasion.

Exhibited at :

Plant Sex, Generale Ecology program of Serpentine Galleries, London, UK, 2019

Azkuna Zentroa - Alhóndiga, Bilbao, Basque Country, 2016

Alex Cecchetti since 2016

I am dead. My body has been found somewhere between Los Angeles and Warsaw, dismembered. Murder, accident, suicide, detectives haven’t found anything relevant, my identity is still unknown and me also, I don’t remember much. This is why I have decided to investigate over my own death myself. Only clue, in a secret pocket sewn inside my trousers, I have recovered a fragile piece of paper torn from the pages of a book, written there, the words Tamam Shud, ‘this is the end’.

The show is a post mortem investigation of the victim on his own assassination. In this dark and grotesque stand-up comedy Alex Cecchetti is accompanied in the investigations by two singers, a countertenor or contralto and a glass harp. The soundtrack of this collective incantation contains classical baroque music, medieval music and gospel. Among the songs: Ecco la Primavera by Francesco Landini; O Solitude by Henry Purcell; Era Venus al termin del suo giorno by Paolo da Firenze, Miserere Mei by Gregorio Allegri etc...

Copy of Marie-Madeleine otherwise called Marie l’Egyptienne

Silicone rubber and plaster

Alex Cecchetti 1311-2015

Thanks to the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN) of France for making the copy possible.

Images from: The Printing House of Hell, Solo Show, Kunstraum, London, UK 2015

Victorian handrail, walnut wood

Alex Cecchetti 2015

Please touch the sculpture from the beginning till the end, and with eyes closed. The handrail will guide you to dance for a few seconds into a refreshing oblivion. Choreographic tool for spectators.

Oil on paper

Alex Cecchetti 2015

Repeated choreography of movements around a teapot, mimic a planet or a moon in orbit.

Watercolor or China ink or Oil Paint
Different dimensions

Alex Cecchetti since 2014

Every day I draw or paint a flower bouquet, following it from blossom to death. The drawings are shown positioned one after the other. Depending on the wandering of the spectator in the space, corridor or room, the flower blossoms and then dies or the other way round.

Oil painting on administrative papers

Alex Cecchetti 2016 / 2017

Fleurs d’ennuis arose from the simple consideration that the compost, feces, are one of the richest nutrients for plants. Following the simple technique of folding paper, I grow flowers from personal administrative documents, such as bank letters informing of a serious situation of my account, taxes, delayed payments or hospital records. Fleurs d’ennuis are exhibited with a performative protocol, scrolled by hand before the public one by one as the title of the document or its contents are announced along with the name of the species of the flower that appears above.

The flowers are usually exhibited with the “Reading Room”

Exhibitions:

At The Gate Of The Music Palace, Solo Show, Spike Island, Bristol, 2018

Tamam Shud, La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, 2017

Tamam Shud, Centre For Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2017

Nuvolari aims to incite a dialogue between diverse forms of expressions, culture, eras and intentions.

The exhibitions are designed in relation to various private and public spaces, putting into practice the cohabitation of objects among themselves and with humans, beyond the logic of the museum.

Within Nuvolari, objects reclaim their magical, metaphorical and cultural predicates and become inhabitants.

Nuvolari is an athlete created by Alex Cecchetti and Blanche de Lestrange, and makes exhibitions that excite your eccentricity.