While some people don’t like the Mondays, Camille Henrot has made it her theme of her first solo show in Italy. The French artist has been a coveted name since winning a Venice Silver Lion.Henrot, born in Paris in 1978 and now based in New York, was awarded the prize as most promising young artist at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.“Monday” at Fondazione Memmo in Rome displays bronze sculptures and site-specific fresco paintings, a technique Henrot approached during her residency in the Italian capital’s foundation, during which time she visited Roman palazzos and immersed herself in their history.This new cycle of works is the first chapter of a larger series devoted to the days of the week. The unusual subject is connected to Henrot’s interest in human conventions, in the way mankind has divided the year in weeks, and conferred to each of the days a unique “personality”: Monday is both the “gloomy” day, prone to melancholy, and the time of the week that leads to expectations (and disappointment). This ambivalence exists in Henrot’s zoomorphic anatomies and allegorical characters: bronzes that hover between the figurative and the abstract, often including or resembling dogs.The frescoes produced for Fondazione Memmo, conceived for the walls of Palazzo Ruspoli (the 16th-century building that hosts the foundation), depict inactive, sad or hesitant human figures, and combine painting and small objects: found documents, papers that inspired the artists and belong to her chaotic universe, a complex visual system born out of Henrot’s omnivorous appetite.The artist is interested in mythology, zoology, natural and artificial rhythms, human behaviors and addictions. Her winning film in 2013 explored our anxiety and need for classification and comprehension of the world, and her exhibition in Rome moves along that same path, although through very different media.The exhibition held at Fondazione Memmo, curated by Cloe Perrone, is the first chapter of a wider project (extending to the seven days of the week) that will be presented with the artist’s “Carte Blanche” at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in October 2017, taking over the whole institution. But later this year, the Madre Museum in Naples will inaugurate an exhibition featuring drawings and sketches realized in preparation for “Monday.”“Camille Henrot, Monday” is at Fondazione Memmo, Rome, until November 6. Information: www.fondazionememmo.it
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