Claire Fontaine

Hypermaremma is pleased to present the first appointment in the program of the sixth edition on Saturday, December 30th, at 4.30pm, with an installation by Claire Fontaine entitled Left & Right, to say goodbye to the old year, welcome the new one coming and extend the program to the winter period.

Left & Right (2023) is a work by Claire Fontaine created after conducting research on the most widely used ’emoticons’ with the intention of placing the viewer in front of a sign that is representative of a new language of humanity, capable of encapsulating, within simple stylized messages, a mood, an emotion or an expression that no longer needs the medium of words. Transposing the history of ’emoticons’ within an artistic pursuit turns out to be an act of extreme interest to transform immediate symbols into international words, thus overcoming the linguistic barriers generated by different idioms and giving birth to a new global form of expression.

Through the mimicry of icons that occupy the visual and private sphere of those who daily encounter the language of the web, on the occasion of the opening of the sixth edition of Hypermaremma, the artists provide the Maremma territory with a message of strong interpretative impact, placing the work on the top of a hill in the terrains of the Fattoria Stendardi, where an incomplete architectural structure intended for rural use lies. The light work thus becomes an otherworldly message suspended in emptiness, during the night hours, and a subliminal message that emphasizes the remnants of human intervention on the planet, during daylight hours, activating, once again, a dialogue with nature inherent in the mission of the Hypermaremma project.

Claire Fontaine is an art collective founded by James Thornhill and Fulvia Carnevale in 2004 in Paris. Since 2017, they live and work in Palermo. The name, derived from a well-known French stationery brand, draws inspiration from Marcel Duchamp’s famous ‘Fountain’ to emphasize the neo-conceptual practice on which the collective acts provocatively, questioning the question of authorship and reworking iconographies familiar to the popular imagination. Defining themselves as “ready-made artists,” the collective emphasizes the fundamental importance of cooperation by rejecting individual genius. The collective carries out an ongoing investigation of reality as an object of interest in the elaboration of works, through the use of various media, particularly through light works that recover the language of street signs, or through the medium of photography that acquires a strong resonance in public space and in the unfolding of every individual’s daily life.

Thank to Fattoria Stendardi, Giorgio Stefanelli, Terenzi Wines