StraightUp @ExtraDry
ExtraDry is an exhibition of video art born from the desire to draw contemporary art out from its usual expositive spaces and onto
the walls at Dry, Via Solferino 33, and the new Dry, Viale Vittorio
Veneto 28, in Milan.
Following the ExtraDry project curated by Peep-Hole for three editions from 2013-2016, CaseChiuse arrives at Dry with a new format and presents StraightUp@ExtraDry, an award for young artists.
In step with the ideas of the founders of Dry, StraightUp@ExtraDry wants to give visibility to the creativity emerging from the extremely current research of young artists expressing themselves through video.
As well as giving visibility, the award is designed to support their future research by the assignment of three different awards and the acquisition of the winning work.
The name “Straight Up” is a blend of English slang and bar vocabulary. It implies something honest and fresh that aims for the top, just like the synergy we wish to create between the award, the artists and their future.
Dry is defined by its strong contemporary feel. It offers the very best quality while remaining accessible and informal, making it an ideal location to exhibit video art and create a new kind of synergy between the work and the public. With the launch of StraightUp@ExtraDry and its commitment to art project since 2013, Dry proves once again that the space is ideal to exhibit videos and offers a chance to show contemporary art to a wider public.
The selection committee for the StraightUp@ExtraDry award consists of Simone Bertuzzi and Simone Trabucchi, the Invernomuto duo, and Paola Clerico, creator of CaseChiuse project.
The jury consists of Ilaria Bonacossa, director of Artissima, Paolo Zani, founder of Galleria Zero, and two of Dry’s founders and art collectors Bernardo Attolico and Tiziano Vudafieri.
Coordination and curatorial assistance by Ginevra D’oria.
Each artist selected to participate will have to present at least three videos which will be projected at Dry Via Solferino and the new Dry Vittorio Veneto.
October 2nd - December 18th 2017
Ruben Spini
Ruben Spini is the second artist selected for StraightUp@ExtraDry. His work seems to develop around ancestral concerns as much as contemporary speculation, mostly surrounding questions of theology and the grey areas between the natural and the human realms. Spini’s expanded approach to art - encompassing fields he's actively involved into such as music and technology - naturally inform his works.
Deer hunting in the United States has reached the spectacular standard of contemporary entertainment. Concerned by the maximization of their trophies’ score, professional hunters monitor the local fauna positioning multiple trap cameras in a chosen area. When the prey passes through, infrared or motion sensors automatically start a brief video recording, that often get shared online by the hunter as documentation of the pursuit. What You Left Behind is a found footage selection from the artist’s personal archive, a visual rendition of a completely extraneous horizon of existence, in the pre-critical dimension of thought that the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux calls “Great Outdoors”. Short writings mark the clips sequence, pieces of a love letter towards a Deus absconditus. The audio of the footage has been processed through spectral manipulation software and assembled in a continuous environmental track.
By mounting webcams near the nests, researchers and enthusiasts have the chance to monitor different bird species behaviour over several days, seasons and years. This cyclicity is recorded and broadcasted without geographical limitations, every stream a Creation’s morphing cut-outs. The horizon line tilts every time the wind rises, since the camera swings with the tree it is bounded to: like the perspective of a new-born in his cradle.
A work in development concerning the overflow of images produced during the most recent total solar eclipses. From Ancient Greek ἔκλειψις (ékleipsis, “eclipse”), from ἐκλείπω (ekleípō, “I abandon, got missing, vanish”), from ἐκ (ek, “out”) and λείπω (leípō, “I leave behind”).
Ruben Spini is born in 1994 in Valtellina, Northern Italy. He studies and works in Milan. His practice is an open research towards religious art and religious sentiment at large, scrutinised through the contemporary forms of human-nature interaction. Reading them as interfaces, they bring forward a complex system crossing different latitudes, communities and behaviours: an extended model of the human perceptual condition, within the wound between God and creation. Connections, objects and functions are analysed through the methods of second order cybernetics. By adopting unconventional video and audio sources, the documentary point of view - made of narratives, characters and symbols - is shattered. This process unhinges the scala naturae, pushing the human back to a encrypted, living matter.
