Careof continues its collaboration with the investment banking division of the Crédit Agricole group in Italy, established in October 2012 with the aim of deepening the dialogue between art and business. Every four months, the spaces of the Milan branch have hosted — and will continue to host throughout 2014 — the work of artists selected from among those present in the DOCVA Documentation Center for Visual Arts contemporary art archive.

2013: Silvia Idili, Marco Strappato, Giulia Ticozzi

To open the exhibition cycle of the second year, Careof and Crédit Agricole chose the artist Marco Belfiore (Rovereto, 1971). Attracted by reality in its contradictory aspects, the artist brings to light the banalities and hidden truths of everyday life with an ironic and critical approach and a keen attention to detail. In the series Encyclopedia (2007–2012), Belfiore adds peculiar elements to classic nineteenth-century prints, leading the viewer toward alternative realities, more grotesque and vivid than the originals.

In Clown White (2012), the video for which Belfiore won the Megawatt Terna 04 prize, he uses faces of famous deceased personalities, coloring them white and highlighting the areas around the eyes, nose, and mouth with vivid colors. The celebrities become monsters who, initially seeming to converse, then emit disturbing, incomprehensible sounds. The white clown, traditionally striving to restore order, becomes a symbol of perdition, dissonance, and disturbance.

At Crédit Agricole, both elements—attention to detail and monstrosity—are present. The watercolors from the series Scherzi della natura (2012) depict birds born from the imaginative fusion of parts of real birds. These new creatures embody the monstrosity of uncertainty, of something unfamiliar, yet they also carry the normality expressed by exotic imagery. This gives rise to ambiguity, disorientation, and tension.

“The monstrosity they suggest,” Belfiore emphasizes, “does not destabilize—perhaps because we expect exotic birds to look just like this, or because we live under a constant bombardment of images of every kind. My Scherzi della natura do not cross the threshold of ‘normality,’ but operate at a more ambiguous level where the boundary between monstrous and reassuring is ironically blurred. These hybrids are becoming social animals with their shadowy zones just beneath the surface.”

Scherzi della natura (2012) dialogano negli spazi della reception con la video animazione Syd Tucano (2008), che aggiunge alla serie una dimensione ancora più ironica e leggera. Accanto a queste, la scultura Pappacano (2013) riporta l’ambiguità percepita nelle opere a parete a una presenza materica più concreta e incisiva.

Il progetto si completa nell’area bar, dove l’artista presenta il video Monocromi (2011), un loop incalzante che mostra anche il “dietro le quinte” della sua produzione artistica, offrendo così uno sguardo intimo sul processo creativo di Belfiore.