Codename: Osvaldo

This constellation of works is comprised of 16 elements:

– Case Study #01: The Pistol of Monika Ertl, 2014

– Case Study #02: The Orgosolo Laboratory Project, 2015

– Case Study #03: Una Cuba mediterranea, 2017

– Case Study #04: Not how things are real, but how things really are, 2016

– Case Study #05: Scouting Locations for Una Cuba mediterranea: Poligono Interforze di Salto di Quirra (PISQ), 2016

– Case Study #06: Shot Up Street Signs (Objets troués), 2016

– Cactus Studies #01 to #16, 2016

“Codename: Osvaldo” fans out from a biographical thread, that of the charismatic and complex figure of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Italian millionaire and Guevarist revolutionary, Feltrinelli founded the eponymous publishing house in Milan in 1954 and was active in the European anti-imperialist movements of the 60s and 70s under the battle name of compañero Osvaldo. Feltrinelli’s insurrectionist work isn’t approached through a biographical lens, but as a shadow line of a rhizomatic narrative about repressed chapters of the construction of Italian national identity.

The work presents itself as a constellation articulated in six “Case Studies,” themselves large-scale works. The spatial syntax of the work is further articulated by ten “Cactus Studies.” Rather than being constituted as an indexical chain, this constellation forms a porous narrative which generates meaning through the gaps between its elements. In exhibition, the work becomes a laboratory project which goes beyond addressing historical events, becoming a reflection on the loose connectivity of the revolutionary galaxy of that period and on our fragmentary knowledge of it, as well as on the structure of personal and prosthetic memory.

The spatial set-up for this constellation of works designed to break with the paradigm of the white cube. For “Codename: Osvaldo” the walls and the lighting of the exhibition space were remodeled to signify the workshop of a factory.

“Codename: Osvaldo” is accompanied by Special Editions and Publications.

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