the european biennial of contemporary art
manifesta 7 logo

artists

Riccardo Previdi

1974, Milan, IT Lives in Berlin, DE

The Last Desire, 2008 3 billboards (420 × 210 cm each) located in front of the former Manifattura Tabacchi, ex-Peterlini and at the railway station of Rovereto The Reconstruction of the Trephor Tower, 2008 In collaboration with Gianni Pettena, 4 framed photographs, 100 × 70 cm each and a poster

ROVERETO

Big_cigarette_ii_opt

For Riccardo Previdi the artistic act is a volcanic process and all artworks are open, unfinished products waiting to be completed by new actors who are yet to take the stage. From spatial interventions and performance to platforms for other artists’ actions and sculptural installations, his work is a set of confrontational eruptions, crowded with references to minimal sculpture, modernist utopia, 1960s counter-culture, experimental architecture and radical design. The Last Desire is a series of billboards in public spaces in Rovereto, based upon the seminal 1968 project by Hans Hollein, Golden Smart , and a photomontage featuring a gigantic cigarette floating over the landscape. Forty years later, Previdi has decided to light up the cigarette and to perform an act of smoking in the billboards every two-weeks, until the cigarette is smoked out. This is the artist’s silent, though “fiery,” tribute to the failure and impotence of revolutionary acts and radical movements; indirectly, it is also his homage to the Manifattura Tabacchi, Rovereto’s industrial monument that after 150 years of operation has completed its original mission. The Last Desire functions like an hourglass, announcing the end of utopian thought and the new era of transformed society. Additionally, the artist has collaborated with one of the founders of Architettura Radicale, Gianni Pettena. Their ambitious action of rebuilding the slipped-down mountain top of Torre Trephor in the Dolomites by “completing” it with a PVC foil silhouette, results in a series of photographs taken from the viewpoint of Tofana di Rozes in South Tyrol, recording the two artists, “as if” holding the reconstructed mountain.


Location

ROVERETO

ADAM BUDAK: "PRINCIPLE HOPE"

EX PETERLINI, VIA SAVIOLI 20 – MANIFATTURA TABACCHI, P.ZZA MANIFATTURA 1 -STAZIONE FERROVIARIA, PIAZZALE ORSI, I-38068 ROVERETO, ITALY

more