a monument of contemporaneity
12.11.2015, Atelier Montez, Rome – Gio Montez announce the end of the decadence started in 2010 with a fire that had reduced an industrial relic to ruins. The action takes shape through the radical gesture of “making solid again” what had been destroyed, transforming an abandoned fragment of the city into a monument of contemporaneity and restoring to it an active social function as a center for artistic and cultural production.
restoration (archaic or rare: ristoration), noun [from Late Latin restauratio, -onis]
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The act of restoring; rare in its literal sense “making solid again” (more commonly restoration=restauro): the restoration of the Castle of Florence (Vasari); also infrequently used in a figurative sense: the restoration of a country’s freedom, of bodily health.
- a. The re-establishment, after a period of absence, of the political authorities that traditionally governed a given country.
Philosophy of the Restoration: the philosophical current that developed, especially in France, during the Restoration period, which opposed authority and tradition to the individual freedom theorized by the Enlightenment.
b. Catholic Restoration: a rarely used expression referring to the Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation.
Theory of Restoration
Montez’s intervention consciously situates itself within the theoretical framework outlined by Cesare Brandi. In his Theory of Restoration, Brandi defines restoration as “the methodological moment of recognising the work of art in its physical consistency and in its dual aesthetic and historical polarity, with a view to its transmission to the future,” specifying that “only the material of the work of art is restored” Montez adopts this position not as a mere theoretical reference, but as an operational foundation, extending the concept of the artwork to architecture itself and to the space it generates and contains.
an artistic and methodological action
From this perspective, Restoration is not configured as a simple building renovation, but as an artistic and methodological action. The walls of Atelier Montez are recognised as a work of art in themselves: a space that is at once container and content, a material device through which art acquires body, presence, dignity, and historical continuity. Architectural matter thus becomes the medium through which the work projects itself into the future, ensuring both its intrinsic value and its historical value.
Contemporary art practices
Atelier Montez therefore defines itself as a narrative and productive device capable of hosting, sustaining, and recounting the artistic practices of contemporary Rome. The action also assumes an implicit political dimension, situated within a period marked by the succession of technical governments in the Italian Republic—governments formed to respond to situations of institutional deadlock, yet often debated for their non-elective nature and their problematic relationship with democratic representation.
toward a technocratic feudalism
Within this historical context, the artist interprets the advance of a “top-down” Europeanism as a challenge to democratic principles of freedom of thought and expression, opening the space to forms of authoritarian and unquestionable governance, akin to a new technocratic feudalism. A condition analogous to that which rendered technical governments necessary: a complex and controversial transitional phase in which the solidity of political, social, and cultural structures becomes a priority. Restoration thus positions itself as an artistic gesture of material and symbolic regeneration, in which the reconstruction of space coincides with a stance on the present and with an act of responsibility toward its transmission to the future.
Action nr. 9 – Restaurazione
12.11.2015 Roma
Director: Francesco Perri
Actors: Gio Montez, Giacomo Capogrossi, Carlo Giordano, Alessandro Di Fraia, francesco Perri
Camera: Alessandro Di Fraia
