Action #1 / Step #2 - Production Sardegna - New York - Sardegna a- curator Fabio Acca

CRISTIAN CHIRONI

IMAGINE & IMAGINATION in the frame of AmIna

This artistic research of Cristian Chironi starts from the idea of home and inhabit, and from the artist’s specific interest in all of those forms of constructions that still to this day are particular of the Sardinia’s landscape. Starting from the most ancestral ones – the Domus de Janas – to the Nuraghi, which are present in conspicuous numbers and in different variations all over the island. Chironi then explores the constructions of the subsequent eras that were born in the territory, characterized by many transformations, new interpretations and new structures like the farmhouse of Badde Salighes -Villa Piercy; places that have been the theater, through the years, of the region’s pastoral and farmers’ life. These constructions were created in a symbiotic relationship with the territory, and were often built out of natural materials, typical of that land, like the “pinnettos”: the baracche; ovili, and stazzi. To this day, the huts of the nomadic pastors, scattered all over the Sardinia territory, are used as shelters or laboratories for the production of dairy products, furnished with very simply designed pieces but all very functional. They are considered temporary pit stops, stations along the roads of the transhumance. Some other types of interesting constructions are the ones of the so-called maestri del muro (masters of the wall), like Orani, Dorgali, and Mamoiada, who will walk from village to village offering their technical skills, converting the countryside’s stones into pieces of furniture. These suggestions are all already present in the different projects of Chironi’s multidisciplinary journey, starting from Untitled, 1998, to the most recent ones: Broken English; My house is a Le Corbusier; The Cave; and his residencies in the houses of Tadao Ando, Pierre Jeanneret, Victoria Ocampo. One of the most recent of his residencies is the one inside a car, the FIAT 127 Special, that he renamed Camaleonte, customize like an inhabitable home. Chironi’s residency in New York is intended by the artist as an evolution of these interests and projects, translating the memories of Sardinian inhabitant traditions on different levels of interpretations, rereading them through the study of contemporary materials and techniques. An inhabitant experience made of visitations, collaborations, and focuses. The artist will focus his attention particularly on the study of Manhattan’s vertical architecture, on the lighting signs and the subway’s map and billboards, on the urban context and its changes, and social and environmental transformations. All of this with the goal, to create an archive of data, instrumental to the growth of new artistic impulses, will be elaborate on the next stage of the research – the give back to Sardinia. 

Cristian Chironi was born in Sardinia. Lives and works in different places in the world.He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. He Uses different languages, including, performance, photography, video, drawing, often creating a sort of interaction among them. He worked on site specific performances and installations, always looking for the interaction with the context, be it human (public) and environmental (space). His research aims to relate image and imagination, fact and fiction, memory and modernity, conflict and integration, material and immaterial. He has exhibited in different spaces for the arts both in Italy and abroad.