Opening: Saturday November, 29th Within the 5th edition of BIENALSUR, Antonio Della Guardia presents on the façade of the NMMU a series of performative exercises through phrases and drawings that cover the scaffolding of the building, currently under restoration. With For Practices of a New Reality, the artist proposes to passers-by a set of bodily and vocal exercises to be freely and autonomously performed in different locations across the city of Zagreb, reactivating its symbolic and poetic potential. The exercises, formulated on the basis of the specific characteristics of local parks, houses, bridges, and urban elements, transform the city into a total gymnasium for the imagination, a place of care where one can train and recover inner attention, interrupting the automatic flow of functional movements tied to the mere act of passing through the city. Urban space is thus re-signified by the actions of those who inhabit it daily, encouraged to interact with the elements that animate the city, reawakening its dormant energies. The façade of the NMMU becomes a speaking device that engages in a dialogue with the city and invites its inhabitants to take part in a series of collective, playful, and liberating actions. In his works Antonio Della Guardia investigates and deconstructs the internalized forms of relating to urban space and to the time of production. In recent years, the Italian artist has designed and proposed actions that involve the body and question it in unconventional, imaginative ways, with the aim of freeing it from the constraints imposed by a society marked by self-demand and constant productivity.
In parallel to this intervention, in the Oktogon NMMU Antonio Della Guardia presents a site-specific sculptural project, titled Permanent Illusion.