Exhibition Description
Anthony Marcellini
Cities of Restless Objects
April 29 – May 29
View images in this exhibition
Simone DeSousa Gallery is pleased to present Cities of Restless Objects, Anthony Marcellini’s first solo exhibition in Detroit.
Within all cities are restless objects, things existing in a seemingly static state, yet boiling with energy, possessing a potential for action, assembly and redevelopment, which have also lived a history of that same process. Balanced between a constructive prior life and an unknown hereafter, these objects maintain, they keep on keeping on, they stay and work, resolutely and blindly for they are basic, made for and driven by labor, and oblivious to obstacles and conditions. Yet one day all seemingly immobile objects can suddenly activate, or are activated, and become political emblems, weapons, tools, or evidence of a concealed and forgotten past full of holes.
Cities of Restless Objects explores narratives of persistence and fracture within the urban habitats in which certain objects live. Speculating on the stories objects tell about life in cities, rising and falling, and rising and falling, a cycle of tides driven by economics, politics and industry.
In gallery 2, Marcellini has curated Grammars of Place an exhibition of artworks by a group of national and international artists, that use language to investigate spatial conditions, known and unknown. Through video, sound, artist books, and installation, each artist explores how language and intention can both build and unravel specific contexts. Participating artists: Anthony Discenza (US), Malak Helmy (EG), Effi Weiss & Amir Borenstein (BE/IL), Adva Zakai (EB/IL), and Wesley Taylor (US).
Anthony Marcellini is an artist, writer and curator. His practice is based on creating artworks and performances that negotiate relationships between objects and people. He is interested in moments when objects seem to shift in their relationships with humans, things that fall away from their history or purpose and are caught in a state of conversion or transition, a frozen stage of transformation, from one form into another. He looks towards moments of collapse or failure as periods of focused concentration into an object’s condition. Specifically how our understanding changes when something crashes, breaksdown or looses its purpose. It is only when the doorknob malfunctions that we begin to question what it is as a thing in the world.
His work has been exhibited internationally at museums, galleries and art institutions, including Harmony Murphy Gallery, Los Angeles (2016), The Experimental Media and Performing art Center, Troy (2014), Galerie Michael Janssen, Singapore (2014); Witte De With, Rotterdam (2013, 2014); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2013); The Gothenburg Konsthall (2013); Wilkinson Gallery, London (2012-13), amongst others. And in biennials and festivals such as the 9th Annual Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2013), Gagnef Festival, Sweden (2012) and Sequences Art Festival, Reykjavik (2011).
Anthony has held residencies at EMPAC, Troy 2014; Valand Centre for Artistic Research, Gothenburg (2012) and the Sparwasser HQ residency program, Berlin (2010).
His writing has been published in Paletten Art Journal, the web-based publication Nowiswere, the online journal Art Practical, and he is a featured contributor to the Detroit based art journal Infinite Mile. He currently lives and works in greater Detroit.