may 19 - septembER 13 2021

 

Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art is delighted to welcome Michele Ciacciofera for an exhibition occupying the entire castle space, his first solo show to take place in a French museum. Michele Ciacciofera (b. 1969 in Sardinia) creates work that is graphic and sculptural, often deployed in extensive programmatic ensembles concerned with memory and archaeology, a sense of history and passing time.

Sans commencement et sans fin [No Beginning and No End] refers to the name of a collected edition of philosophical Essays written by Michel de Montaigne throughout his life. In the present exhibition at Rochechouart Michele Ciacciofera presents a compilation of more than a hundred works made over the last ten years. Some of them are emblematic pieces, reactivated especially for this occasion, in particular his impressive Janas Code installation which featured in the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.

The works are displayed on all three floors of the museum accessed via the castle’s spiral staircase, sending visitors on a winding journey that fuses organic and inorganic artefacts, and mixes fragments with fossils, politics, writing and archival records. Michele Ciacciofera has organised the exhibition to set up a network of interconnecting resonances, each piece linked by overarching issues of knowledge and our relationship to the sands of time as they incessantly deposit new layers of the past.
Emerging amongst forms and signs of ritual and magic are letters that evoke cuneiform writing and human figures suggestive of Mycenaean goddesses. Such profusion of historical references tends to compress the past until it begins to merge with the present, making us aware of an underlying collective unconscious, a common vision and way of thinking that mankind has always shared.

Recent major exhibitions of works by Michele Ciacciofera have included shows at the Museo Marino Marini (Florence), the 57th Venice Biennale and at Documenta 14 (Athens & Kassel) in 2017. The artist is represented by several galleries; Michel Rein (Paris/Brussels), Vitamin Creative Space (Guangzhou), Voice Gallery (Marrakesh) and Senesi Contemporanea (London).

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