We are accustomed to rapidly putting to use what we see; everything is resolved within a few minutes. This is emphatically not the case, however, with “Mind the Gap,” Marisa Albanese’s exhibition of recent work. Viewers find themselves immersed in a world populated by small men made of white clay, each with unique features: pilgrims continually searching for a landing place that probably does not exist. Whether whole or mutilated, blinded or seemingly endowed with hypervision, young or old, each seeks to flee the fractures, discomforts, and incongruities of the contemporary world while crossing a long red aluminum footbridge that traverses the entire exhibition space. Albanese is casting light on globalization, after which ties to place no longer exist.
In The White Home, 2006, the men are arranged along the edge of a cement basin, bored and wearing helmets to protect themselves; this is a borderline situation between so-called normality and the precipice. The exhibition also includes two video installations. Here, images run without pause: metropolitan scenarios, mostly of anonymous young people dashing through the streets or along subway platforms with suitcases, like thousands of others upon whom the phrase MIND THE GAP is unfailingly inscribed.
Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.
