The Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee – museo Madre, Naples presents the first institutional retrospective of work by the American artist Uri Aran (Jerusalem, 1977). Conceived especially for the spaces on the third floor of Palazzo Donnaregina, the exhibition is presented as a sort of mid-career retrospective: a path put together by the artist in direct dialogue with the architecture of the museum, bringing together many of his most important works alongside new pieces created especially for this occasion. This exhibition is very much part of the development of the artist, whose research has been featured in some of the most prestigious institutions on the international scene, including the Walker Art Center’s Platforms: Commissions and Collection program in Minneapolis (2019); the Whitney Biennial (2014), curated by Stuart Comer, Anthony Elms, and Michelle Grabner; the Italian solo exhibition Puddles at Peep-Hole in Milan (2014), curated by Vincenzo De Bellis and Bruna Roccasalva; the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2013), curated by Massimiliano Gioni; and the solo exhibition Here, Here and Here at the Kunsthalle Zürich (2013), curated by Beatrix Ruf.
The project presented by Aran at Madre, which constitutes a major work in its own right, sits within an artistic trajectory that has explored the ways in which we communicate, behave, perceive, and build relationships with the world and with others for over twenty years. At the center of his work is often language—not only as a tool of communication, but as a space where cultural differences, personal memories, and forms of identity are manifested. Aran uses words, objects, images, and gestures to compose works that seem suspended between the familiar and the unexpected. Through installation, sculpture, video, and painting, he gives shape to rich visual scenarios, where elements of everyday life are deconstructed and reorganized into compositions that evoke fragmentary and open narratives. In a discourse on subjectivity that embraces vulnerability and the complexity of relationships, Aran works at the margins of codified discourse.
