Waste Collection

Waste, consumption, excess, collection, trace. Chiara Capellini presents a long process of research, travel, and obsessive investigation into residues somehow left behind by human beings. Residues as fragments of a passage, accidental or intentional, of an action developed for a precise purpose, one that has now become ordinary and uncontrolled: mass production for final consumption.

Capellini's path within the Triennale space is divided into three working levels, each naturally connected to the next through the artist's instinctive inclination as a curious and impetuous observer of the smallest details surrounding every daily gesture.

The drippings. These micro-sculptures with accidental, diverse, almost anthropomorphic forms are the residue of the artist's continuous pictorial practice. By chance, collecting from the floor of her former studio the hardened acrylic drips produced while painting large canvases, these fragments acquired different dimensions and forms through the artist's conceptual intervention. Here, the Duchampian reversal of meaning, function, and even place becomes active once again: from the waste of the artwork to the artwork itself.

The baking papers. From her personal work on recovering residues and creating new forms and functions, Chiara Capellini began a precise journey driven by a compulsive observation and need to catalogue and collect as many details as possible. From an apparently ordinary gesture — the daily work of a baker — the second project emerged: collecting the greatest possible number of baking papers used by bakers throughout Italy, stealing the traces of this labor and transforming them into unique works. Chiara traveled across different Italian cities: Milan, Rome, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Padua, Naples, Ischia, and Bari.

The color testers. In art supply stores and stationery shops around the world, people are invited to make tests: sheets of paper, notebooks, or sketchbooks are left available so that customers can scribble and verify the products they wish to buy. Through an apparently banal and everyday gesture, Chiara Capellini became fascinated by the beauty of the accumulation of color tests — sheets upon sheets, scribbles upon scribbles collected in cities most frequented by artists: New York, Berlin, London, Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Rome, and Milan.

Rossella Farinotti