Martina Simeti

Via Benedetto Marcello, 44, 20124 Milan

MON - TUE CLOSED
WED - SAT 2:30 / 6:30 PM
SUN CLOSED

ARTISTS:
Alek O.
Giacomo Balla (Collezione Ramo)

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Alek O. answers questions from
Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, curator of the Ramo Collection

Give a definition of what drawing is for you.

Drawing for me is a tool. I would have a hard time defining it any other way.

What is your relationship with drawing? And with the history of Italian art of the last century?

The history of Italian art, the history of the last century in fact, I thought I knew a little bit about it. I was born and raised in the last century like so many of my colleagues. My references are of course a product of that century, full of illustrious ancestors.
And then, like all of us I suppose, I realized how partial a history it was, full of the excluded. And that there was a world under the iceberg, which we are trying to bring out today.

On the one hand, I have a great curiosity with respect to what we will discover of that long-hidden world; on the other, I fear that there is little and fragmented of it left.
In the past I believed the imagery that sees the exclusion of artists as a source of stimulus-the more you suffer, the more you will have something to say-while over time I have come to realize that this is great nonsense, and that much of what we will not see under that iceberg is because it never had a chance to even be created.

Why did you choose this work from Collezione Ramo?

Among the many designs that make up the collection, I found a small, very beautiful, certainly decorative one. It is a floral arrangement by Giacomo Balla, a symmetrical composition of greens, yellows, and light blues. Despite its symmetry, the composition remains dynamic. It is a study for the decoration of the corridor of the artist's house.

In the past I have made works in which in a similar way dried leaves assembled next to each other covered the walls of the space. For this occasion I will present a small collage from the same series, where the leaves create a composition that could be part of a much larger whole.