PNF 07 – ALICE ZANIN. circus circus

Headline: Alice Zanin. circus circus
Authors / artists: Alice Zanin
Texts: Emanuele Beluffi
Language: Italian, English
Translations: Stephanie Carminati
Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-88-6057-253-0
Size: cm 16,5×23,5
Binding: paperback binding
Cover: cardboard
Pages: 64
Price: € 25.00

Also available in ebook:
ISBN: 978-88-6057-254-7
Format: PDF
Price: free download

The catalog is published on the occasion of Alice Zanin's solo exhibition "Circus Circes", Gallery Bianca Maria Rizzi & Matthias Ritter, Milan, 14 October – 14 November 2014.

First of all, the title, circus circus: Circe is a mythological figure, the sorceress of the lost island of Eea who transformed men into pigs in the Greek epic poem Odyssey, lions and dogs, keeping them prisoners on the verdant island they had recklessly landed on.
Inversion man → animal that, in the Bianca Maria Rizzi gallery & Matthias Ritter, overturns - inversion of inversion! - in its opposite: Alice Zanin's animals mock non-human animals. While the circus, ladies and gentlemen, gay modern prison of creatures with tails and wings that have to satisfy the crass laughter of bipeds, here becomes the dilapidated context of the show: a real specific site creation, that is, conceived and made for this exhibition space, once an industrial space.
The walls of the Bianca Maria Rizzi gallery & Matthias Ritter, vestige on which time has left its breath, harmonize with paraphernalia - a pair of elegant and worn lady shoes, old colored balls recovered from the flea market, worn garden chairs, an old lampshade, whips, suitcases and a beautiful vintage bicycle - which accompany the papier-mâché sculptures by circus circus: Persian greyhounds, birds of paradise, zebras, giraffe, gerboa mice and african hedgehogs, crowned cranes and mongooses, placed as living pictures, truly out of the proper character of the play, in unusual and human too human poses.
Taken from the text “Circus Circes. The metamondo of Alice Zanin ”by Emanuele Beluffi.