Museum Installations
Neue Galerie (Graz, A)
Mart (Rovereto, IT)
Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, A)
Galleria Civica Arte Contemporanea (Palermo, IT)
Antonio Riello thinks the real "symbolic form" (according to Erwin Panofsky) of this present time is a paradoxical and genuine ambiguity.
As part of his artistic practice, the artist subversively transforms the spaces and architecture of different museums, masking them, camouflaging them or even proposing a different approach to their normal use.
DAS SPIEL IN DER KUNST
Neue Galerie Graz, Graz
01/09/1995 – 22/10/1995
Cured by Chiara Bertola, Marion Piffer
V. AGNETTI, S. ARIENTI, A. BOETTI, C. BONOMI, M. CATTELAN, E. FANTIN, P. MANZONI, A. MARTEGANI, A. MONDINI, G. PAOLINI, C. PARMIGGIANI, P. PASCALI, M. PISTOLETTO, A. RIELLO, SALVO.
In the group exhibition DAS SPIEL IN DER KUNST, where some outstanding Italian artists show a particular ironical attitude belonging to Italian Contemporary Art, Antonio Riello made the installation “Bombing”. A furnished luxury table for 12 people decorated with falling bombs.
AIRMART, MART
Rovereto (Italy) 2005
25/02/2005 – 24/04/2005
Cured by Giorgio Verzotti
The artist transforms, in an ironical and very detailed reinterpretation of Mario Botta’s architecture, the MART in an airport (setting up all the details of a working airport) The installations involves all the visual, acoustic and functional aspects and of an airport.
At the same time the artists turns up a real airport (Aeroporto Catullo in Verona) in a sort of temporary museums hosting some artworks of futurist artist FortunatoDe Pero.
The results is an artistic experiment of “mixed realities”.
FLAKTURM DOWN
Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (Austria) 2005
Space Project, Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz
22/03/2005 – 02/05/2005
Cured by Gerald Matt, Marion Piffer, Jurgen Weisshauptl
During the Second World War the national socialists established three pairs of flaktowers in Vienna made of reinforced concrete – always consisting of a “Leitturm” guidance tower and “Gefetchtsturm” heavy gun tower. They served on the one hand as enormous “survival islands” for thousands Viennese with self-sufficient current and drinkable water supply, air conditioning system, as well as a hospital. On the other hand they were conceived for the defense of the approaching allied bomber relays.
Since 1945 these memorials of war are again and again subject to – partly – intensely discussions. Only recently the Italian artist Antonio Riello sought to free the Viennese from the psychological load of these towers by a reproduction from sugar cube with their following destruction by the visitors.
ERETICA/HONEST JOHN
Galleria Civica Arte Contemporanea Palermo, Palermo (Italy)
Piazza S. Anna 21, Palermo
01/08/2006 – 28/10/2006
Cured by Gianni Mercurio, Demetrio Paparoni
Antonio Riello made for this show a site specific installation named "Honest John" (a real size copy of a US Ground-Ground missile of the 60thies named in the same way).The missile has stricken the cloister ground of the Convent that hosts the museum. The missile is handpainted mixing several details from famous frescos of Italian Art History ( expecially from Michelangelo and Tiepolo frescos) concerning religious scenes. All the people portraited there are falling down to the top of the missile attracted by gravity. So all has fallen and set up like in a post-earthquake scene. A metaphorical artistic point of view of contemporary Italian culture (and its traditional values).
