GIULIO SQUILLACCIOTTI

FEBBRUARY 19 / MARCH 31, 2010

Otto Zoo gallery presents Giulio Squillacciotti's solo show, connected to the project room program (OTTO ZOO PROJECT) started in September 2009.

Giulio Squillacciotti (Rome, 1982) uses a philological approach in his artwork. Since highly influenced by his Medieval History studies, he looks to the past as if it was based on a novel that can be narrated in the present. Squillacciotti collects old pictures, postcards, documents, newspapers, and books. He mixes them up like a senseless archivist or a visionary demiurge to create installations, videos and photographs.
In doing so, the artist brings colorless and anonymous objects back to life and gives them a narrative quality. Following a meticulous selection of documents, the artist also reconstructs situations, moments and objects whose traces were lost.
Throughout Squillacciotti's reconstructive and analytical work – imaginary and pungent at the same time – his stories, dissociated from their historical context, become real, authentic, lyrical and sharable.

The Otto Zoo gallery installation consists of three artworks.
Far From Where We Came is a video recreating a family situation. It is imaginary but also somehow autobiographical. It was constructed using 54 photographs randomly collected in a two-year journey between Turkey and Spain.
San Vincenzo Al Volturno documents the daily life of archaeological lab technicians in the village near the noted archeological site. The artist collected a series of photographs and placed them in a Moleskine – a kind of diary of the archeologist.
A Moveable Aesthetic is a video interview where the artist places his subjectiveness onto someone else; based on his thoughts and experiences he chooses an artist, a foreign woman artist, who represents Squillacciotti's experiences and their impact on others.

What OTTO ZOO PROJECT program aspires to is promoting young Italian artists, especially video artists, offering them a chance to compete in a site-specific installation in a gallery environment.