Tomaso De Luca | Something Out of It
Casa Venezia, Venezia
10 aprile – 24 aprile 2022

 

Something Out of It, the LIAF 2022 preview programme in Venice curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, continues in the Castello district by breaking into a domestic environment. The courtyard of Casa Venezia, residence of the collectors Massimo Adario and Dimitri Borri, hosts a new video installation by Tomaso De Luca(Verona, Italy 1988). This has been produced in partnership with CASE CHIUSE by Paola Clerico.

Winner of the 2021 MAXXI Bvlgari Prize, De Luca continues his investigation into the crisis of modernism—as the promise of a functional life for all—and processes of gentrification, linked to socio-natural phenomenons, such as the AIDS epidemic or the most recent climate change.

Consisting of sculptures, photography and a video, the installation debunks the myth of comfort, transforming the house into a treacherous place. Furniture and everyday items are transformed into potentially lethal traps—the activation of such traps being shown through a visual grammar that is both threatening and comical.

De Luca’s project is inspired by a news story. In February 2019 in Philadelphia, a real estate developer escaped a guillotine device, hidden in one of his properties and designed to kill him.

The artist links this news event to the consequences of climatic gentrification that is sweeping the American city. The violent act is read as an extreme and desperate attempt to resist increasingly brutal economic dynamics.

Location: Casa Venezia,
Calle Seconda dei Orbi, 5201 Castello, Venezia
April 18–24, 2022, 10am–6pm
Press reception: April 20–22, 9–11am