Aldo Tambellini's Multi-Media Work at 56h Venice Biennale

Aldo Tambellini's exhibition is curated by Pia Bolognesi and Giulio Bursi who have curated Tambellini's most important exhibitions and retrospectives in the past 5 years.

Aldo Tambellini

Tambellini's new multi-media installation is called "Study of Internal Shapes & Outward  Manifestations" is produced by James Cohan Gallery (New York/Shangai) ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, Germany and AS Art Consultant, USA. The curators write, “With “Retracing Black" performed at the TATE in 2012 (now in the permanent collection of the TATE Modern) and with this new installation, Aldo Tambellini has gone back to the roots of New York’s darkest underground scene, creating multi-media installations that originate from his experiences with the pictorial manipulation of the image and result in a reflection on the transition from video to experimental performance.”

This new installation consists of the projection of Tambellini's "lumagrams" (hand-painted slides) and of a 1960's film, made without the use of the camera, Round Black, which will be projected for the first time in Venice. It will also include a soundtrack with poetry and experimental and concrete sounds re-composed by two italian musicians from the experimental scene, Andrea Belfi and Claudio Rocchetti. 

This integration of various aspects of the arts creates a multi sensory immersive environment providing the viewers with a total new experience. This is an environment which has become Tambellini's signature. His work with "electromedia" began in the 60's when he integrated all of the arts to create organic performances and installation in immersive environments where spectators experienced a disorientation of the senses. Much has been written about these highly experimental and avant-guarde events which have provided the basis for many performances done today.

Aldo Tambellini was born in Syracuse, New York in 1930 from an Italian mother and a Brazilian father.  He was raised in Italy.  He survived the WWII bombing of his neighborhood when many of his neighbors were killed.  In 1946, he returned to the USA. He received a full scholarship to Syracuse University (B.F.A. in Painting) and MFA in Sculpture from Notre Dame University.  In 1959 he moved to New York City and founded "Group Center" an active counter-culture movement organizing group exhibitions, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, multi-media events and collaborative performances. Aldo Tambellini and Otto Piene opened The Black Gate Theatre, the first “Electromedia” Theater in New York for installations, performances and experimentation by artists.  Among the seminal work presented at the Black Gate was Kusama’s “Obliteration,” Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman’s performance and many others. . He collaborated with artist Otto Piene in the first ever international television broadcast by artists, in “Black Gate Cologne” (Germany, 1968). Tambellini was part of “TV as a Creative Medium”, a seminal exhibition at Howard Wise Gallery in 1969 and the same year was invited by WGBH Boston to be part of “The Medium is the Medium”, the first television broadcast by artists in the USA.

From 1976 to 1988, Tambellini was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT in Cambridge, MA.  Tambellini’s films are in the collection at the Harvard Film Archives.  In 2012, Harvard received an Avant-Garde Masters Grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve these films and they were shown at the MoMA in 2013.  The films are currently distributed by Light Cone in Paris, France.

A double DVD released in 2012 by the European label VON Archives, “The Cathodic Works of Aldo Tambellini,” is now available.  The DVDs include hours of video experiments by Tambellini from the years 1966 to 1976. Parts of it were included in Tambellini's Film and Video Retrospective called “Back to Black” in January 2012 at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.

 Aldo Tambellini web site >>>