Lara Favaretto
Tutti giù per terra

Tutti giù per terra - everybody down on the floor - is the title of the installation consisting of 1 ton of confetti
and 4 ventilators. The title is misleading, since the mountains of confetti are actually in constant move.
Through the ventilators the colourful paper cut-outs are suspended in air, dancing in ever changing for-
mations before they gently let go towards gravity.

The gallery space in Linienstrasse 160 is closed for the duration of the show, the "party" inside reduced to its own decoration, permanently and senselessly in motion, while the guests / spectators are viewing the spectacle through the window from outside. The material of the confetti as the epitome of wild partying on street carnivals where it is exuberantly thrown onto the people, is here transferred in the closed room of the exhibition cube, left to its own devices. The white walls in the background function as screens in front of which the confetti is permanently changing and building beautiful paper landscapes. The installation thus turns into an ephemeral sculpture never repeating itself, slowly growing over the course of the show into the particular space that it is conditioned by.

Already in her earlier performances, installations and objects Favaretto has worked on the ambivalence
between the carnevalesque and the feeling of resignation or failure. For instance in the piece Twistle
(2004) which consists of an air compressor connected to a timer, activating a whistle at regular intervals.
Favaretto often chooses the standard version of an object, and by isolating it, renders its specific charac-
teristics visible to a tragic-comical extent. Sometimes it is the spectator‘s interaction with her works that
actually fulfills their meaning, like in Figlio unico (2004), a tree covered with felt which drops its branches
whenever someone tries to sit underneath. Favaretto creates situations of the playful and the paradoxical,
familiar to us from Federico Fellini films, situations which in their uneconomical impracticality and enjoy-
able absurdity always also entail a critique of the existing order.

For images or further information please contact the gallery.

opening 27th of January, 6 – 9 pm
duration of the exhibition 28th of January – mid March
opening hours Tuesdays – Wednesdays, 11am – 6pm and by appointment