Chapter I. Concealment
Alex Macedo
Alex Macedo
The Ortolan bunting is a small songbird that spends their summers in Europe and migrates south during the winter. In France, despite it being outlawed in 1999, these birds are still captured. After their capture, they are blinded. Confused by the perpetual darkness and having lost their diurnal rhythm, the bird gorges itself. It is then placed in a vat filled with Armagnac, drowning and marinating in the liquor. The bird is then roasted, plucked and eaten whole, feet in first, the head is optional.
Diners place shrouds over their heads as they eat the Ortolan.
The napkin is arguably to keep in the aromas of the dish and to disguise having to spit out some of the bigger bones. But, it is commonly believed that diners shroud their faces to hide their shame of their debauchery from the eyes of God.
Diners place shrouds over their heads as they eat the Ortolan.
The napkin is arguably to keep in the aromas of the dish and to disguise having to spit out some of the bigger bones. But, it is commonly believed that diners shroud their faces to hide their shame of their debauchery from the eyes of God.
6.03.24—13.04.24
GIANNI MANHATTAN, Wassergasse 14, 1030 Vienna
> Installation views
The Ortolan bunting is a small songbird that spends their summers in Europe and migrates south during the winter. In France, despite it being outlawed in 1999, these birds are still captured. After their capture, they are blinded. Confused by the perpetual darkness and having lost their diurnal rhythm, the bird gorges itself. It is then placed in a vat filled with Armagnac, drowning and marinating in the liquor. The bird is then roasted, plucked and eaten whole, feet in first, the head is optional.
Diners place shrouds over their heads as they eat the Ortolan.
The napkin is arguably to keep in the aromas of the dish and to disguise having to spit out some of the bigger bones. But, it is commonly believed that diners shroud their faces to hide their shame of their debauchery from the eyes of God.
Diners place shrouds over their heads as they eat the Ortolan.
The napkin is arguably to keep in the aromas of the dish and to disguise having to spit out some of the bigger bones. But, it is commonly believed that diners shroud their faces to hide their shame of their debauchery from the eyes of God.
Chapter 1. Concealment is the first part of a series of three exhibitions that will unfold over the course of the year. Uniting all three exhibitions Chapter 1. Concealment , Chapter 2. Refusal and Chapter 3. Doubling is a sense of evasive visibility, different strategies of subverting, hiding, avoiding, reflecting and refusing to be seen.
In the middle of the gallery is an intruder - a large wooden structure that obscures the entry, obliging viewers to navigate around the architectural intervention, creating a moment of suspension and transforming their arrival into an orchestrated and procedural act or a ritualistic function. The choreography that the wooden structure imposes, forces how the works come into view. Utilising the industrial architecture of the gallery, the works appear and disappear depending on the angle that the viewer enters the space.
In the middle of the gallery is an intruder - a large wooden structure that obscures the entry, obliging viewers to navigate around the architectural intervention, creating a moment of suspension and transforming their arrival into an orchestrated and procedural act or a ritualistic function. The choreography that the wooden structure imposes, forces how the works come into view. Utilising the industrial architecture of the gallery, the works appear and disappear depending on the angle that the viewer enters the space.
For his first solo exhibition at the gallery, Alex Macedo presents a series of small scale oil paintings whose imagery revolve around the iconography of ceremony and reveals the prevalence of ritualistic procedure in contemporary culture.
Mussels that exuberantly open once they are boiled to death, gummy frogs, conjoined apples and the butterfly of Adriaen Coorte’s Still life with three medlars and a butterfly (circa 1705) are characters utilised by Macedo and set within a void, a dark shadowy background allowing Macedo to isolate the metaphysical components of his paintings and illuminate his forms with accents of light but also place them in a timeless, delicate moment, suspended away from our physical reality.
Whilst the majority of Macedo’s paintings include inanimate objects; metal fencing rendered in oil on copper plates, embroidered and intricately folded table cloths, the organic forms that are present seem to evade and distort our understanding of temporality. Macedo’s practice builds upon the historical traditions of still life painting which was conventionally ripe with symbolic objects and emphasise the transience of life and futility of earthly pleasure.
Mussels that exuberantly open once they are boiled to death, gummy frogs, conjoined apples and the butterfly of Adriaen Coorte’s Still life with three medlars and a butterfly (circa 1705) are characters utilised by Macedo and set within a void, a dark shadowy background allowing Macedo to isolate the metaphysical components of his paintings and illuminate his forms with accents of light but also place them in a timeless, delicate moment, suspended away from our physical reality.
Whilst the majority of Macedo’s paintings include inanimate objects; metal fencing rendered in oil on copper plates, embroidered and intricately folded table cloths, the organic forms that are present seem to evade and distort our understanding of temporality. Macedo’s practice builds upon the historical traditions of still life painting which was conventionally ripe with symbolic objects and emphasise the transience of life and futility of earthly pleasure.
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