Entering and exiting the roles that are assigned to us, or that we seek,
or simply that we are, never fully defined or acquired, we are connected
to that identification that cinema often fosters in us as spectators,
through its narratives and images. This happens to adults, children, and
adolescents alike, with a frequency that leads us to identify with the
hero of the film that captivates us, creating a powerful and deeply
rooted connection in our psyche, one that provokes pleasure and interest.
In Goliarda Sapienza’s (1924-1996) book, *Io, Jean Gabin*, through the
writer’s identification with the famous actor, Goliarda constructs
various layers of roles: there is the mythical one of a young girl
watching films and identifying with the symbolic actor who, in that case,
also represented a way of loving women. One layer pulls the other: the
beloved actor in the beloved film—*Le Quai des brumes* (1938) by Marcel
Carné—Goliarda’s writing, her childhood in Sicily, in Catania, the
stories of her lived experiences; everything intertwines and connects,
the writing itself becoming more than just narration, becoming the story
itself, culminating in the creation of those masterpieces that are her
novels.

Identification is a constant in art and in artists. It is through this
that we ‘steal’ the craft, entering and exiting multiple lives,
constructing existence. One of the foundational characteristics of art in
all its forms has been to weave similarities, blending and recreating
them to take possession of them and endow them with new and different
strength. Whether it’s ancient art or architecture in the Renaissance, or
the various “-isms” that have combined the different representations of
the chosen historical moment, we are dealing with this fundamental
practice of making art. But identification also pertains to life itself,
whether it’s Marcel Duchamp playing chess, an actor or actress performing
different roles imposed by a film script, or an irreproachable employee
transforming into a thief. Art, as a component of life, makes us reflect
and offers us this multiplicity of feeling and seeing, which only serves
to heighten, in every generation and every human being, this complexity
of feeling oneself in the other(s), perhaps reminding us that we are
shaped by time and memory, by the future and the past, in the continuous
exchange of the here and now.
Why Jean Gabin? A prominent film scholar like Noël Simsolo reflects on
the importance of Jean Gabin as a true noir icon, distant from the
expansive sentimentality of French poetic realism. “What strikes me,” he
writes, “is his almost pathological interiority. A mute suffering in the
face of decay, corruption, and vice. His acting shifts from total
restraint to explosions of furious energy of shocking authenticity. This
way of inhabiting a role would influence John Garfield, Burt Lancaster,
and Laurence Tierney. These noir cycle actors knew his films and admired
the modernity of his acting.” Bearing in mind this modernity of role and
the actor’s ability to identify with it, we pay homage to his name
through that same identification that Goliarda Sapienza captured in her
novel, which for us serves as the foundation for a possible discourse on
art today. The invited artists, each with their own personality,
interpret their roles, whose presence, intertwined with that of others,
creates a new subject, a new organism that we call a show, but which in
reality is like the composition of a film, where a narrative—linear or
not—unfolds, questioning and astonishing us, setting a rhythm that is that of art and artists. And of the world. (Pietro Finelli)

Artists
Mauro Barbieri
Dennis Dawson Sarah De Vos
Pietro Finelli
Toma Fichter
Axel Geis
Daniel Hartlaub
Gregor Hildebrandt
Sofiia Yesakova

MOI, JEAN GABIN at Area35 Art Gallery Milano
Group Exhibition
March 25 – April 25, 2025
Black Drawings

Opening reception:
March 25, 6-8 pm

Area35 Art Gallery | Via Vigevano 35, 20144 Milano
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 2pm – 7pm.
Saturday/Sunday/Monday closed.
Appointment appreciated

Press contact:
Valentina Malanot valentinamalanot@gmail.com
Contact: Area35 Art Gallery Tel. 339 391 6899
info@area35artgallery.com| www.area35artgallery.com

Courtesy:
Gallery FROSCH&CO – New York
Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin – Paris
Gallery Sofie Van de Velde – Antwerpen
Gallery Wentrup – Berlin
Gallery 201@105 – New York