A HISTORY OUT OF CONTEXT

Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani is pleased to present the first solo-show by American artist Ian Tweedy (born in 1982, lives and works in Milan) opening on Wednesday 25th October. The show, “A history out of context”, curated by Marco Scotini, will present at the gallery’s project room three new works – video, drawings and wall paintings- conceived as a unique installation.

Between Neo Rauch’s delirant painting and Hans Peter Feldman’s black and white photographic archives, Ian Tweedy’s imagery refers to a recent past, from which context and coordinates seem to be definitely lost. Originally a graffiti and street artist, Ian Tweedy accumulated images through the streets of Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Hamburg and Dusseldorf. After America, it was Germany his adopting homeland, while he scattered his signature “Dephect”, which brought him to the pages of Thames and Hudson bestseller “Graffiti World”.

Now he does his interventions on Cold War geographic maps, old book covers and documents from the past. Because, every centimeter of surface can be the memory of something and thus have a story. And as originally, he continues to intervene on the streets and public space. Though now as muralist, with social images stolen from history, group portraits lended from popular magazines such as “Life”, “Storia illustrate” and other titles: A strike by Chrysler workers in the 50s, a demonstration to free Sacco and Vanzetti in Chicago, a weapon fordist production system for Vietnam.

As if he were a hacker of history, Ian Tweedy invents a new time machine, a crossover of space and time, a series of cut-up associations of geography and identity. As many contemporary artists – from Narkevicius to Baladran- the large amount of photographic material he has collected in the last years shapes the basement of his mural and painting works. In Monument #1, already presented at Prometeogallery, he showed a mix of acrylic painting, maps, historical photographs and constructivist symbols which occupied a huge wall in the exhibiting space.

Now he intervenes on the project room, showing a large writing of the word “Context” on the wall. Together with 30 drawings and b/w video, in which he performs repeatedly the gesture of tearing out white pages from an old book. Its title, “Project pour un texte”, refers to Marcel Broodthaers 1969 video in which the Belgian artist tried to write with a pen under the rain. Tweedy’s torn white pages, the empty spaces in a book, its terrains vagues, become then the support for his latter drawings: other images torn from events, other traces of a history out of context.