Nicola Lorini
Still from The Campari Fountain (2017), HD digital video with sound, duration: 3’ 43’’.
In the late 20’s Campari commissioned to the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Gronchi a fountain that was supposed to exist as a piece of advertising, a work of art and a basic public utility rolled into one (it is meant to be one of the first examples of monumental advertisement in Europe). The first example of the fountain was made of Travertine marble and inaugurated in 1929 in Chiusi Della Verna (some elder people say that for few hours, during the inauguration, actual Campari was flowing from the tap). In 1935-37 twelve copies were produced using artificial marble and installed in several locations in Tuscany and Lombardy. Stylistically the fountain shows echoes of the Viennese Secession style, set between two monumental classical columns, as a reference to ancient Rome.
Only three fountains have survived, the original one and two of the copies, one is located in Brunate, a small village in North of Italy.
As part of the Anihilation event Nicola Lorini will present, in relation to the mobility, survival or extinction of information and monuments through time and space, his ongoing investigation based on the attempt to to find physical traces and documentation related to the removal/destruction of the 9 fountains that don’t exist anymore.
On Saturday the 25th of March Nicola Lorini, Loyane Bianchini and Andrew Mallinson will be running a papermould technique workshop (casting/ghosting) inspired by Anna McSweeney’s research on the 19th century M. Lottin De Laval’s technique.
Nicola Lorini is a London based artist and a recent graduate from MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. He works in the liminal space between sculpture, photography and installation, exploring the notion of empathy as a mode to question the tensions between objects’ aesthetic and cultural value.
In his work he uses found and made artefacts and images imbued with symbolic potential or emotional value, which he presents in different type of displays to reveal the subtle shifts of meaning provoked by processes of fragmentation and translation.
www.nicolalorini.eu