Claire Fontaine, a French collective that has gained critical attention for its politically engaged Conceptual artworks, here offers a project that unfolds in both locations of the Neapolitan gallery. “Taccuini di Guerra Incivile” (Uncivil War Notebooks) is extremely clear and rigorous, comprising a few simple elements thematically linked by their reference to the tragic events that rocked Italy during the anti-G8 demonstrations in Genoa in 2001. An enlarged image of a Milan-Genoa train ticket issued on that fateful day and a tourist map of Italy, its captions rendered in Arabic, both take the appealing form of a light box. On the floor between them is the sculpture that lends its title to the exhibition, an opus incertum (a building technique using irregularly shaped stones) created with an assemblage of bricks and heterogeneous materials. This work, in turn, corresponds to the writing, created with fire, on the gallery ceiling: “20.07.2001 Genova io c’ero” (20.07.2001 Genoa I was there). In the other gallery location, a single neon piece has great visual impact. Ibis redibis non morieris in bello, 2006, updates the enigmatic prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl (either “You will go, you will return, you will not die in war” or “You will go, you will not return, you will die in war,” depending on the punctuation) through a clever play of discontinuities. Double meanings run through the exhibition, highlighting the ambiguity of political resistance in our age.
