On 11 June 2011 at 5.30 p.m., two one-man shows will be opening at the CACT Centre of Contemporary Art in Canton Ticino: BODY IDENTITY by Mirko Aretini (Switzerland, 1984) and FUTURE IS NOW by Pier Giorgio De Pinto (Switzerland, 1968). Brought together under a single title that neatly expresses the curator’s thematic approach – HIDDEN GEOGRAPHIES – the two exhibitions have points of topical contact, as they both use the body and the society to which it belongs to define the concept of identity.

With FUTURE IS NOW, Pier Giorgio De Pinto continues his study of the body’s thousands of different facets, zooming in to focus on a topic as old as man himself, one that first came about with man as the expression and the limit of his historical identity. De Pinto’s thinking induces him to express the concept of definition, adapting it to suit society in the last 20-30 years, i.e. the society that has experienced technological virtualisation as a close corollary of the mass expression of intimacy. Using computer-processed mappings of the real body to devise parallel, non-material generalities, thus further feeding the computerised fantasy that seems to be so vital to bourgeois society in this latest phase, De Pinto has generated an important addition to his opus, which is conceived of globally as CORPUS. A Spirit of Place as a territorial comparison and a new geographic/geometric definition, using the body in terms of its “divine” proportions. This aspect of definition is not restricted to the body alone, but includes a journey, whose route can be plotted on the body, developing in terms of contemporary esoteric features and how they relate to the archetypal forms of the past.

Already shown at the CACT on several occasions in the past, for this first one-man show Mirko Aretini has decided to present a piece created in 2010 but never shown to the public before now: BODY IDENTITY is a video body comprising seven fragments that he made in Las Vegas. As Aretini’s favourite idiom is that of the cinema or of film in general, this piece is made up of seven small but intense icons, which the artist created while shooting for his film N.D.E. (Near Death Experience). This is certainly part of a more extensive film research project, in which the artist investigates how we observe and see representation, tackling it by defining (the body) through pornography, a recorded form of reality and commercialisation of man and his social context, a sign of the contemporary society that trades in images.

Mario Casanova, 2011 (translation Pete Kercher)

Ph. Pier Giorgio De Pinto © PRO LITTERIS Zürich.