One wall a web through which the moment walks
curated by Jonathan VanDyke
October 2023 – January 2024
Carla Accardi, Nadia Ayari, Dadamaino, Gino De Dominicis, Carla Edwards, Kenji Fujita, Piero Gilardi, Hwi Hahm, Ellie Krakow, linn meyers, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Carol Rama, Julianne Swartz, Jonathan VanDyke
1/9unosunove is delighted to announce the opening of a major group exhibition, entitled One wall a web through which the moment walks, curated by New York–based artist Jonathan VanDyke. Pairing important 20th-century works by Italian artists with 21st-century works by artists based in the US, the exhibition provides a unique opportunity to explore intertwined themes across cultures and generations. Through frequent research trips in Italy, VanDyke – whose first solo show appeared at the gallery a decade ago – has studied Italian modernism’s relationship to the work of his contemporaries.
The exhibition is organized around the idea of “subtext” – that which lies under the surface, is emerging into perception, and is sensed but not said. VanDyke conceives of the exhibit as an antidote to the pressure placed on contemporary artists to define themselves through identifications that can be easily categorized and purposes that can be quickly summarized. The show is built around artists who complicate and “trouble” these expectations, who refuse to pinpoint what a work of art is “about” or to assure the marketplace that they represent a consistent “brand.”
In an era of entwined global political and environmental crises, disinformation, enabled by social media algorithms, overwhelms nuance with noise. How could artists’ insistence on ambiguity, complexity, and doubt serve as an imaginative alternative to the reactionary and the attention- seeking? In a 2021 essay in the publication Shifter (a journal founded by artist Sreshta Rit Premnath, who also appears in the exhibit), VanDyke argued for works of art that preference “warmth, reserve, attentiveness, maintenance, thoughtfulness, and receptivity,” prioritizing slowness and emergence rather than products or results. One wall a web through which the moment walks manifests these ideas in real time and space.