Roses & Lillies
Jacopo Miliani
Alphabet brunch & Tarot card Major Arcana Reading & Drawings
With Roses & Lillies, a special project that Jacopo Miliani (1979, Florence) presents at Kunstverein Milano, the artist continues his interdisciplinary research on the language between performance, collage and photography.
01.12.2019 - 19.01.2020
@ TABSP Milan
The divine reading of the Tarot will come about through a drawing, created on the spot by Jacopo Miliani and strictly by appointment!
To book your slot we recommend writing an email indicating the time of preference between 1 and 6pm on Sunday, December 1, 2019 to: info@kunstverein.it.
One session including a drawing foresees a minimum contribution of €20.
Jacopo Miliani (*Florence 1979) is a visual artist living in Milan. His practice addresses performance as an expanded methodology which aims to investigate the connections between language and the body. He is the founder of an independent publishing project that focuses on sexuality and language: Self Pleasure Publishing. He has collaborated with different performers including Jacopo Jenna, Antonio Torres, divaD, Benjamin Milan, Mathieu LaDurée, Eve Stainton. His projects have featured professionals from various disciplines including the filmmaker Dario Argento, the fashion designers Boboutic, and the music producer Jean–Louis Hutha. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at GAMeC, Bergamo (2019), Centro Pecci per l’arte Contemporanea, Prato (2019), Galeria Rosa Santos, Valencia (2018), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017), David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2017) Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2016), ICA studio, London (2015), Studio Dabbeni, Lugano (2015), Frutta, Rome (2014), MADRE, Naples (2011).
Roses & Lillies are the flowers on the Magician card of the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck that will be interpreted by the artist through a reading-drawing.
The opening will begin with an afternoon brunch and will end in the late afternoon.
For the occasion, on Sunday 1 December 2019, the headquarters of The Book Shop Art Project hosts the customized reading-drawing sessions of the Major Arcana of the Tarot by the artist Jacopo Miliani.
Does a parrot repeat what he hears or understands the words?
An all-too-human question that replaces the body with thought.
Where do we come from?
Who are we?
What will we be?
Past, present and future will be guessed between the letters of an alphabet
and the automatic writing of a tarot reading ...
Simultaneously on show Easy as...or simple as... (2014) by Miliani, a series of 25 photographs in which the letters of the alphabet are performed and danced.
The work will remain on display until 19 January 2020, and takes its cue from the book Abeceda (1926), designed by one of the leading figures of European modernism Karel Teige (Prague, 1900-1951). The Abeceda can be understood as an effective example of the Gesamtkunstwerk (Cfr. R. Wagner). The book, based on the poem of the same name by Vitezslav Nezval, combines experimental poetry, avant-garde dance, photomontage and typography. It is a visual alphabet, a typographic ballet, composed of letters performed by the dancer Milca Mayerova and photographed by Karel Paspa.
In Easy as...or simple as..., Miliani re-stages Teige’s entire alphabet creating still-lifes containing constructivist references in the scenography and costumes from the early twentieth century.
Miliani invites a performer who wears a mask with the head of a parrot to 'dance' 25 letters of the Western alphabet (the Q and J were the same in Teige’s original) in order to render the ideas of repetition and representation even more explicit.
The parrot, symbol of fire, sun and exoticism also personifies those who repeat ideas and concepts, who speak on behalf of others, and so conceals what the words really mean. With the photographic series of the alphabet Jacopo Miliani thus elaborates a synthesis between literature, dance, costumes, photography and still-life.
Each typfoto, as Teige called it, is a combination of dance and typography and within the image, movement and language evoke both the magic of the alphabet and the abstract nature of photography.
Easy as...or simple as... like when Michael Jackson sang ABC.