Living in Milan since she enrolled at Politecnico for her BA – Alek O. (1981, Buenos Aires) has been working with found material, transforming a discarded object into an aesthetic strategy. Alek O. blends the common notion of the readymade with craft, embroidery and other traditional art-making forms. On the verge between transformation and conservation, she strips the objects’ common visual aspects and replaces them with geometric abstraction. Reversing the perspective of design, Alek O. favors re-creation over creation and deconstruction over construction.

Alek O.’s work is a way of rethinking the past without nostalgia while keeping an eye on the future and the possibilities that arise from a betrayal – the act of not corresponding exactly to a given form. Her medium is the things that we throw away, things that we overlook, things that we do not judge beautiful or ugly, good or bad so much as we don’t see them. But she does.

Her work has been exhibited widely at institutional level, notably with Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome; IUNO, Rome: The Courtauld Institute of Art, Sommerset House; Nomas Foundation, Rome; Fondazione Zegna, Trivero; 16th Quadriennale d’Arte, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni; Triennale di Milano, Milan.

Alek O.’s Tetris works operate through processes of arrangement and recombination, making visible the atmosphere they absorb and the everyday contexts they once belonged to.

These wall sculptures share a capacity to engage in dialogue with the history of twentieth-century art. In particular, they share the rigor of Conceptual art and the essentiality of geometrical abstraction and Minimalism, reworking and updating their forms and content.

Santo Tolone (1979, Como) studied and worked between Italy and England. His background was shaped by a long-term involvement with Isola Art Center in Milan, an artist-run, community-based organisation, as well as through collaborations such as Santomatteo and Mr Rossi.
 
Form and its aesthetic changeability are at the center of Santo Tolone’s practice. By deconstructing and decontextualizing otherwise trivial details into a source of infinite awareness and sensory pleasure, Tolone reveals unexpected aesthetic, conceptual, and emotional possibilities. A puzzling sense of familiarity runs through his work, as he takes objects from everyday life and morphs them into new forms and compositions. His obsession with production methods, both historical and contemporary, is conveyed in his meticulously crafted works. Drawing on traditional techniques and materials, Tolone creates humorous incarnations of familiar objects, pointing to the infinite variability and complexity of the world as a source of mindful thought and surprising perceptions.
 
His work has been exhibited in various public institutions in Italy and internationally, including MAXXI, Rome; Fondazione Zimei, Pescara; Fondazione Nomas, Rome; La Panacée, Montpellier; Fondazione Barucchello, Rome; Triennale, Milan; Palazzo della Permanente, Milan; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaurdengo, Turin; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Palazzo Reale, Milan; Tate Modern, London; Le Magasin Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble; Villa Necchi Campiglio, Milan; PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan.

The series of new wood inlays by Santo Tolone is inspired by puzzles from magazines, where shapes marked with a black dot must be filled to reveal a hidden Chinese shadow. They are reproduced on a larger scale using marquetry that combines different wood species. Figurative elements merge on the surface, suggesting the image concealed within the shapes.

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Santo Tolone
Sculptor in the mirror, 2024
Marquetry
25,3 × 21,3 × 4,5 cm

Lucie is the picture of a seasonal fruit dish. What at first sight might seem a classical still life becomes slightly more uncanny after noticing some fruits’ shiny surface. Oranges, mandarins, lemons, grapefruit… are stripped of their skin, their pulp is revealed. Inanimate as they might be, they nonetheless reveal a somewhat classical, somewhat bruised erotic appeal.
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Santo Tolone
Lucie, 2023
C-print
50,5 × 40,5 × 3 cm

Santo Tolone
Giulia, 2023
C-print
50,5 × 40,5 × 3 cm