Galleria Fonti are pleased to present -Per un motivo o per un altro-, Christian Flamm's second solo show in Italy. At the beginning of the year, the gallerist was asked to go down the sea to fetch a pint of mediterranean sea water, which was then shipped to the artist's London home. This became the starting point for "Per un motivo": a series of aquarelles was being created.

Flamm's rhetorical point of reference for the show is Giambattista Basile's -Il Pentamerone-, also known as -Lo Cunto de li Cunti-. A seventeenth century Neapolitan book of fairy tales; the first collection of its kind to appear in Western Europe. The exhibition takes its cue from Basile's literary structure, where diverse streams of narrative co-exist within a grand, master narrative. Actions, stories, places, images and Memories not only tell their own histories but intertwine into a whole, tied to both the book and to the spectacle of everyday life and its refinement, where the null tintinnabulation of secentismo becomes expedient face value. For this new series of works, Flamm has reassessed a series of stylistic principles rooted in the Baroque:

straining towards the burlesque and the grotesque, moving through the tragic to the comic, earnest to jovial, gravitational highness to vulgar depression, weaving extreme antitheses into a singular mass of signs and gestures. Though narrative in nature, the work is deeply rooted in literal materialism. The other key feature of the show is a sculptural work developed and executed in collaboration with Berlin based conceptual musician Joerg Hiller (Konrad Sprenger/Choose Records). The piece, being a wind machine, was played by Flamm once for exactly one hour, without any audience. The recording of this performance will be aired constantly for the duration of the exhibition, suggesting an alternative reality. At one point, a goose was plucked as well. Tying narrative to place Flamm presents us with echoes of actions, places and stories reflected through culture, nature and the self. Thank you for paying attention.