Alejandro Cesarco / The Family Novel
The Measures of Memory, Alejandro Cesarco’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, flirts with the possibilities of memory as both the object and instrument of our desires. The exhibition puts in relation different methodologies of documenting, describing, and accounting for the passage of time and the forms used to recall it. As is characteristic of Cesarco’s practice, the exhibition carries a rather romantic and melancholic tone and furthers his exploration of notions of personal narrative, style, aging, influence and inheritance. The Measures of Memory includes the following works:
Alejandro Cesarco / The Family Novel
Der Familienroman (The Family Novel), 2017. Four framed archival ink-jet prints, 102 x 134 cm each. A photographic re-reading of the artists fathers Spanish edition of The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Cesarco simultaneously reads Freud through the lens of autobiography and looks at his fathers underlining and notations of Freuds texts as a script (both descriptive and predictive) to his own family history and dynamics.
Alejandro Cesarco / The Inner Shadow
The Inner Shadow, 2016. 8mm film transferred to digital, color, sound, 6:00 minutes. An intimate conversation between two people who are aware they are being listened to. A conversation that could well be a monologue. The couple take turns using words they like. Their tone is intimate but in the sense of intimation. The camera watches them and cant help but judge them. The camera is, to a large extent, their consciousness or witness. The hand-held camera documents a theatrical, rehearsed, ceremony depicting a complete and ideal love, or its breakdown. What is seen is the attempts of sustaining desire over a long term. What is negotiated is the difference between who we are and who we were.
Interlude, 2017. 8mm film transferred to digital, color, sound, continuous loop (2-minute cycle). A short and tender portrait of the fleetingness and involuntary nature of memory.
Alejandro Cesarco / A Portrait of Sherrie Levine
A Portrait of Sherrie Levine, 2017. Two framed archival ink-jet prints, 76 x 56 cm each. A portrait of Sherrie Levine is created by way of the checklist to her retrospective exhibition, Mayhem, at the Whitney Museum of Art (NY, 2012). As mentioned previously, the politics of alignment, placement, historical crushes, admiration and influences are recurrent and central motifs in Cesarco’s work.
Forty-Seven Drawings by Marion Milner, 2017. Framed archival ink-jet print, 43 x 61 cm. A descriptive listing of all the drawings included in the English psychoanalysts classic text on creativity and its impediments, On Not Being Able to Paint (1950).
The Difference Between Thirty-Two and Forty-Five, 2017. Framed two color silkscreen, 13 x 19 cm. A humorous and literal depiction of the artists fears regarding aging as well as a direct wink towards the work of Larry Johnson.
Alejandro Cesarco / Wendy’s Hands
Alejandro Cesarco / An Abridged History of Regret
Two other recent works, Studies for a Series on Love (Wendy’s Hands), 2015, and An Abridged History of Regret, 2012, will also be on view.
The Measures of Memory / Alejandro Cesarco
November 30, 2017 – February 28, 2018
Galleria Raffaella Cortese / Stradella 7-1, Milan
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