The Ghost & the Host
Pavillon Social Kunstverein, Lucca
22 November 2014 – 22 January 2015

On the first days of September, Alvaro Urbano presents, on the second floor of Villa Romana in Florence, a host bedroom similar to an oneiric white-limed crypt. The bed rises from the ground as if it levitating. Old stone and terracotta sculptures, reliquaries and archaeological finds excavated in the garden seem to emerge at the bedside looking like communicating vessels of a hermetic dream. The Capua Psyche resurfaced from the garden watches over the sleepers and assists to his awakening. From the tilted ceiling a window opens, giving us a glimpse of blades of grass of a hanging garden on the roof up there.

In the low garden of the villa, a nocturnal, tilted bed digs like the entrance of a tomb closed by transparent glass (Observatory). With Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Böcklin, Edgar Allan Poe, Ebdòmero, Bréton, Dalì, Buñuel, Tatì, Jodorowski, the horror cinema etc. remain just associations still buried in the garden.

The things we see, tangible as mirrors (or as in Poltergeist where closet’s doors can open to a shadows’ graveyard or to an intermediate limbo), are nothing but heterotopies, real passages, true connections – on final analysis, a non utopian materialisation of artistic creativity, true social capital.

Pavillon Social is pleased to announce “The Ghost & the Host”, that’s the title of the new project by Alvaro Urbano in Lucca, in which, for the first time, it will be shown together to a ghostly, perturbed environment created ex novo in a secluded fold of Via Mordini.

The Ghost & the Host goes on and develops in an entirely new and visionary way the previous work, such as the dreamlike product of a dreamer who from that first room materialises himself in another distant place, a new dimension accessible and testable in the shadow of the tree-full tower. Through the works of art exhibited here, the show proposes a nocturnal itinerary where persistent and continuous sparks of illusionism present themselves again to the bystander.

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‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Installation: Various materials (Found sculptures, carpet, earth, stones, vegetation). Dimensions variable.
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‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Installation: Various materials (Found sculptures, carpet, earth, stones, vegetation). Dimensions variable.
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‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Installation: Various materials (Found sculptures, carpet, earth, stones, vegetation). Dimensions variable.
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‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Installation: Various materials (Found sculptures, carpet, earth, stones, vegetation). Dimensions variable.
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‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Installation: Various materials (Found sculptures, carpet, earth, stones, vegetation). Dimensions variable.
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‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Installation: Various materials (Found sculptures, carpet, earth, stones, vegetation). Dimensions variable.
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‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Installation: Various materials (Found sculptures, carpet, earth, stones, vegetation). Dimensions variable.
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‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Installation: Various materials (Found sculptures, carpet, earth, stones, vegetation). Dimensions variable.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.
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Stills from the film ‘The Ghost & the Host’, 2014. Film: HD, Color, Sound,duration : 8′ 29″ Loop.