THEPÒSITO Art Space presents Melancholia, a solo exhibition by Chiara Fantaccione (1991, Terni) curated by Valentina Muzi, an evocative exhibition which combines landscape visions and digital aesthetics by addressing a reflection on the feeling of spleen as a human condition of the present time. With Melancholia, Fantaccione undertakes a line of research that is marked by an existentialist tension and in the artist’s words, the exhibition intends to investigate a form of contemporary solitude. While finding reference in the romantic literature of the artistic genius, the feeling of melancholy becomes here, a response to the prevailing technological nihilism of the contemporary hyper-connected society as theorized by Geert Lovinik. More widely, in addition to  a reflection on the feeling of a pessimism that is both cosmic and creative,  the artist further elaborates here an investigation on the dualisms of life and death, control and failure: this is a line of research that the artist has already undertaken with the works Ophelia is just resting, 2023, Golden hour, 2024 and Requiem, 2024, by formulating an aesthetics of decay and the end.

Chiara Fantaccione, “Melancholia”, installation view, courtesy THEPÒSITO Art Space

To influence the artist’s research for Melancholia are a series of stylistic citations which draw on the image of Melancholia, 1514, by Dürer’ and the sci-fi narrative of the homonymous film by Lars Von Trier, 2011, which together contribute to determining the imagery present in the exhibition. It is, in fact, starting from the suggestions of this stratified imagery that the artist focuses her practice, questioning the value of images, their construction and representation. More precisely, Fantaccione defines her practice in photographic terms, but whilst this is indicative of the importance that the image assumes in her practice, at the same time the artist intends to supersede the limits of this medium and its specificity to be interested in the conceptual and plastic aspect of an image, translating them in a tangible way through three-dimensional, sculptural and installation compositions. In this sense, it is worth noting the meticulous material and experimental research conducted by the artist, which finds context in materials and objects of common use – among all materials from the hiking field – in order to investigate possible relationships between the natural environment and its human and cultural connotations, overall infusing a new sense of objectivity and plasticity to her work.

Chiara Fantaccione, “Theritual of seeking shadows”, 2025, courtesy THEPÒSITO Art Space

Landscape has always been at the foundations of Fantaccione’s reflections, but unlike being nostalgic or purist towards it, her research intends to investigate the role of nature and culture in a continuum. In other terms, in the artist’s works, landscape requires to be understood by virtue of a stratified imaginary in which anthropic qualities are necessarily reflected, and this factor significantly influences its own vision and perception. With Melancholia, the artist intends to return a meditative and solitary vision of the landscape itself, configuring it as a nocturne that is intimately whispering the condition of a cosmic pessimism but, through a mise-en-abyme suddenly the artist shows the beauty of this natural habitat by configuring a digitally characterized eco-system in which nature and artifice coexist.

Chiara Fantaccione, “A bug is a bug is a bug”, 2025, courtesy THEPÒSITO Art Space

Such a frame is staged by the works The ritual of seeking shadows, 2025, which presents two photographic landscape images characterized by a low luminosity, evoking a desire to escape from the light to capture a nocturnal vision. The same photographic images are set on shade cloths that, by taking root in the scene, infuse a highly plastic, at times decadent, effect to the entire vision. At the center of the scene, Everything is so clear now, 2025, constitutes a living micro-climate, a swamp figured by a resin casting where plants, insects composed of electronic elements and floral lights are set, overall depicting an organic and synthetic habitat between nature and artifice. This swampy habitat is covered by the suspended veil of a mosquito net that in a sacred way isolates the installation from the surrounding space. The nature-artifice dichotomy is once again articulated in the series of vertical sculptures A bug is a bug is a bug, 2025, which  takes upon the motifs of the floor installation – bug, understood as an insect in nature; bug as an error in computer language – present insects and natural forms conceived technologically and set in resin surfaces as relics to reflect once again on the nature-artifice binomial. By reflecting on the visual and cultural stratifications of our present time through the style of a digital aesthetic, the habitat staged by the exhibition returns once again to the subjective vision of The ritual of seeking shadows, where the viewer is touched again by the feeling of Melancholia, as a condition of the present time.

Chiara Fantaccione, “Everything is so clear now”, 2025, courtesy THEPÒSITO Art Space

Chiara Fantaccione’s vision is post-photographic and post-human, and with the exhibtion Melancholia, the artist questions the present times through the stratified imagery that characterizes the ways of thinking about nature and culture in a continuum. To reflect on the relationship between nature, subjectivity and technology is a fundamental question, the artist suggests, but more importantly than answers, her practices lies in a state of ambiguity. With Melancholia, by Chiara Fantaccione, THEPÒSITO Art Space confirms its interest in supporting and enhancing the dialogue with the territory through research into the languages of the contemporary.

Info:

Chiara Fantaccione. Melancholia
curated by Valentina Muzi
2/04/2025 – 15/06/2025
THEPÒSITO Art Space
Via del Parco, 1, Narni Scalo (TR)
www.theposito.com

Sara Buoso

She is interested in the visual, verbal and textual aspects of the Modern Contemporary Arts. From historical-artistic studies at the Cà Foscari University, Venice, she has specialized in teaching and curatorial practice at the IED, Rome, and Christie’s London. The field of her research activity focuses on the theme of Light from the 1950s to current times, ontologically considering artistic, phenomenological and visual innovation aspects.