Stefano Cagol

Stockholm Syndrome (always with you)

Mixed Media

February 17 – March 19, 2011

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 17, 6 – 9 PM

Priska C. Juschka Fine Art is pleased to present Stockholm Syndrome (always with you), Stefano Cagol’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Through different media, Cagol launches a provocative investigation of, at first sight, impossible relationships and boldly combined correlations of events. What does Patty Hirst have to do with Helen of Troy? Or the Italian politician Aldo Moro with the German former RAF member and hostage taker Peter Juergen Brock? Or the Italian Concilio in the 16th century with 21st century conspiracy theories and the Cuban flag? Or should we call the Stockholm Syndrome the Lima Syndrome? These are riddles not necessarily to be solved, but to be reflected upon and digested in this multimedia exhibition, serving as a preview for Stefano Cagol’s official participation in the 54th Venice Biennial in June 2011.

Cagol’s works, often cryptic and mostly sublime, tend to go beyond the obvious—intoxicating the viewers with imagery, bending their consciousness, subverting their initial viewpoints and propelling them into the unknown and yet to be discovered. With this exhibition, comprised of video, photography, digital renderings and polymer sculptures, he exceeds his usual repertoire, provoking images of social unrest, personal discontent, political adversity and psychological transference.

Cagol’s newest video Evoke/Provoke, conceived and produced during his most recent residency in Norway at the very northern tip of Scandinavia, evokes images of a riot uprooted and placed in a simultaneously desolate and serene landscape while challenging our aesthetic and ideas of beauty and civil unrest. The Council of Trent (1545-1563)—originally invoked by German reformer Martin Luther, at his request and provoked by his actual deeds, split the Christian church and spliced it even further causing a rift throughout the following centuries—was an acknowledgment to the new status quo within the Christian belief and its church by ways of imagination comparable with the current events in Egypt. Obvious cultural paradoxes give way to new hope—as Cagol’s flag series turns from the American flag to the Cuban flag—converging systems in a disparaging world.

Cagol challenges the current status quo in both our observation and thought process—leaving room for speculation beyond the apparently known and predictable. Politically, he claims his role as a world citizen, raising questions about our participatory involvement and personal needs in a forever revolving world with different players at hand.

Stefano Cagol was born in 1969 in Trento, Italy and currently lives and works in Trento, Italy and Brussels, Belgium. He holds a BA in Fine Art from the Brera Academy in Milan, Italy and was the recipient of a post-doctoral video art fellowship from Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada in 1998. In 2009 and 2010, Cagol was the subject of solo exhibitions and projects at the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M_HKA), Antwerp, Belgium; MART – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rovereto, Italy; Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria; ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany; and Fondazione Galleria Civica/ Centro di Ricerca sulla Contemporaneità (Center for Contemporary Research), Trento, Italy and recently completed artist residencies at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, New York and at BAR International in Kirkenes, Norway. In 2011, Cagol will present his solo project Concilio as an official Collateral Event during the 54th Venice Biennale, sponsored by MART – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Italy and Fondazione Galleria Civica/Centro di Ricerca sulla Contemporaneità (Center for Contemporary Research), Trento, Italy, from May 31 – November 27, 2011.

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