MONTORO12 GALLERY

Montoro12 Gallery is pleased to present Break:a two-artistexhibition by Serena Fineschi (1973, Siena, Italy) and Loredana Longo(1967, Catania, Italy). The exhibition consists of about thirty works in a variety of media-manymade specifically for this project -and is spread over both floors of the gallery.

The exhibition tookshape thanks to a close collaboration ofthe two artists with the aim of opening a dialogue between their artistic practices. The path is therefore full of references and assonances among the various works, despite the difference of their stylistic codes.Apparently linked to harsh gestures and dissident images, the works of Serena Fineschi and Loredana Longo are actually points of suspension: a pause, a time of settling and personal re-elaboration to transform conflict and pain into a possible regeneration.

They are small individual battles that accompany us every day in social and intimate relationships linked to our identity: from childhood to adulthood, from the relationship with ourbody to that withourfeelings that condition our living in the world. They are paths of analysis, destruction of stereotypes from which visions emerge that bring new life into relationships. One starts from the self to reach others. One starts from the body as a language to arrive at the word and vice versa because one triggers the other.In Fineschi's works tensions are transformed into propulsive thrusts towards the future, sometimes with a sentimental flavor, sometimes lucidly ironic; in Loredana Longo's works the explosion / implosion of relationships and materials becomes a liberating gesture that gives life to new beginnings. Both practicestake us into the "dark side" that is elaborated, purified and put back into play in the construction of the work. Tension, pain, shame and fear are sensation amplifiers; the pain helps to stop, to become aware. Stopping to listen, to listen to oneself, to redefine the rules of the game.Courageous births.The works on display have an agency within them, a special hold on the viewer. The works are observed and, in turn, they observe,they offer and question themselves. They act, sliding towards the viewer, witnessing individual paths that thus become a shared heritage of feelings and reflections, including social ones.

Outside of every comfort zone, true personal change therefore passes through complex stages that involve the management of aggression and suffering to lead to a conscious evolution of the human dimension. The works of Fineschi and Longo tend to focus on the power of change through a profound analysis of the self in which the force of dissent and conflict are transformed into conscious liberating tools that reconsider memories and experiences from different perspectives. Often aggression -with the emotional specters it carries on its shoulders -allows for a confrontation with the other without being overwhelmed. Etymologically, the term aggression means to progress, to go towards and not against, as happens with violence. Force and conflict are not violence. Conflict is a part of life and of the relationship with others.In conflict there is symmetry between the parties, a potential return to oneself that implies an ability to analyze fragilitiesand fears. Violence, on the other hand, is a process that tends to resolve and annulthe conflict by eliminating the other, "the enemy".

Marina Dacci.