Presente

A donkey with a white coat walks alone through the spaces of a museum yard showing itself as an unusual sculptural presence. Its lead guides the viewer to the discovery of the moment that anticipates an exhibition, when the exhibition halls are transformed and all you can see are scaffoldings and plasterboard walls under construction. In Present the main creature embodies different roles within the narrative: it seems to represent the artist, a fragile, rare and precious being and at the same time refers to the viewer who will inhabit the same spaces explored by the animal in the moving images. Present reflects on artistic production as act that inevitably creates a link between the intimate and the public in a relationship that always takes shape in a current condition of time.

Text by Caterina Molteni for MAMbo collection exhibition (2022)