EN+IT

Spending a day at the ER with a friend is always tiring and painful. Best case scenario you go home relieved it’s nothing serious but still totaled. To me it’s the tension, the anguish, the mind that can’t remember the lyrics to the prayers you learnt in school and wonders if it’s even ethically ok to do it occasionally  ( it probably is): either way a loved one on the other side of that sliding door that can only be opened by badges and nurses and doctors commands everything else to stop, to pause at least. Not for a minute. On the other side of the river, a few meters away, il giro d’Italia, bicycle racing, people cheering, life goes on. The room was crowded with people you wouldn’t normally meet or notice. We’re all loving our bubbles allowing so little else in. Huge guy, his son in jail, ended up in a brawl, was hospitalized for internal wounds, had gotten beaten hard, his bedpost guarded by penitentiary police, his girlfriend calling frantically, his mother hating everything and everyone, and the innocuous yet heavy and gratuitous kindness people offer just to distract themselves from what’s going on. Two tourist girls from the Netherlands and a father of three from Ecuador came holding their belly in pain, distressed. An elderly woman, her body pushed on a stretch came down from an ambulance, her three kids in tow. The daughter in her early fifties washed the sole of her sleepers in the common lavatory sink, while her brothers couldn’t wait to get back to their lives.

I know this: behavior can be misleading. We don’t know enough, we don’t know the before, we don’t know the whys, the motives.

But I also know this: recently I was able to recover from my phone tons of txt messages and voice messages I exchanged with my dad the year before he died. His voice turning lower and lower in tone, making no effort conscious or otherwise to dissimulate the illness, the life abandoning you but by bit, every breath closer to the end. I regret those texts I didn’t promptly reply to.

All those things we never said to each other seemed to weigh tons, all of a sudden, and translated in empty watsapp lines, in silence. Alberto was one of a kind, we will be honoring him with a residency prize to his very name in partnership with the curatorial staff at the Phair. The first winner of this newborn prize was, unanimously, Mr. Paul Cupido, represented by MC2.

Last friday, while I was sitting in the waiting room at the ER, absorbing mio malgrado the cross section of the city I live in, we opened a show by Elena Cucci. The day after, me still sitting on that hospital chair, was rather calm but the day after again we moved the gallery from its premises in Porta Portese to Monteverde Vecchio. To the very same old secondhand bookstore joint I used to hide to when skipping high school felt necessary or mandatory.

It’s a comeback to the very neighborhood I grew up in, which, to be honest hasn’t changed much. We did. I did. If I carry heavy stuff, now, I start puffing. I can’t eat spicy foods anymore, or at least, I shouldn’t.

It takes me ages to recover from anything that spikes up and tastes of life. I’m cautious when riding my bicycle and in my weird, convoluted way, I still talk to the guy ( girl ?) upstairs when I feel resourceless.

I have a conversation with myself at all times, that pauses when I meet other people, the opposite of what was happening during the first 50 years of my life.

Peter Meehan introduced me to Szechuan food a while ago, and exposed me to a few other memorable things that have shaped the way I see and feel.

I owe the man and I’m honored to call him a friend. One that has sent me a throve of mail art over the course of the years, some of it so good, we couldn’t let it languish on my shelves. We open his pop up on the 11. A few days earlier we pop up a few new sculptures by one Erendira Reyes. Come say hi to our new location: Via Busiri Vici 32, Rome, Italy. All are welcome, good vibes only. FLYERS BELOW as reminders.

Ps: la domada che tutti mi hanno fatto per due settimane è stata: come è andata a The Phair? Quello che veramente chiedono è: hai venduto delle opere, sei diventato ricco? Hai conosciuto gente importante? La risposta a tutte queste domande è: io non lo so come sono le persone ricche e importanti e come si vende a quelli che contano. Io vendo alle persone d’oro che seguono questa galleria atipica dall’inizio. Lo posso fare alle fiere ma potrei farlo anche dal baule della macchina. La fiera è stata memorabile per il premio a papà, per le persone che mi hanno dato una mano, per lo staff, per la grinta di Paola e Roberto, per quel pazzo di Lorenzo. Comprare da noi non è facile. Non basta tirare fuori la carta o il cash. Bisogna sorbirsi uno dei miei spiegoni, averne la pazienza, la voglia, e uscirsene con gli occhi lucidi, pensarci molto, tornare e ritornare. Attraversare il piano padano infuocato in moto ( grazie Luca ), oppure Torino bloccata prima di un derby ( grazie Bruno) e grazie Emilio per la bella dedica al tuo libro.

Bisogna comprare opere per portarsi a casa un pezzettino di quella storia li’, un pezzettino del patchwork. Per poterne parlare, per poterla ripetere ad altri, perché questo ci distingue dalle capre che pascolano: il sistema dei segni, il graffio sulla superficie di granito di questa caverna del cazzo. Senza quella roba lì, kids, è solo pietra.