Alessandro Lo Monaco
2006 Fondazione La Fabbrica, "no proper time of day", solo show, curated by Riccardo Lisi, Losone, Switzerland, 28 July.
Galleria Arturarte, "no proper time of day" solo show, text by Stefano Elena, Nepi (VT) May 18.
La Sala Naranja, Valencia, collective show, "o eres tu John Waine o lo soy yo" curated by Toni Calderon, 31 March.
"FUORIGIOCO (OFFSIDE)" curated by Massimo Lupoli, 11 solo shows for 11 artists, catalogue essay by Stefano Elena, Pomezia (Rome) 25 March.
2005 Colonna Castle, exposition of the 170 works for "plot@rt.europe", curated by Massimo Lupoli and Gianluca Marziani, Genazzano (Rome), 19 November.
Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, international group show of 10 artists for "plot@rt.europe" curated by Gianluca Marziani, Rome, 17 November.
Exposition of 7 pieces at the Principe Felipe Museum for "mitos-idolos-ibridos" group show within OBSERVATORI 2005 curated by Toni Calderon, Valencia, 4 November.
"Homeland Security Advisory Signal", solo show at Spazio Symphonia in collaboration with PACK Gallery, Milan, 21 September.
"TERRART", group show curated by Gavina Ciusa, presented at Vespolate and Novara, 16 September.
Group show "regionevolmente" curated by Gianluca Marziani, Viterbo, 11 March.
2004 "Stendhal 36" Volume I, group show curated by Gianluca Marziani, Milan, 15 December.
"air", group show curated by M. Campitelli, September – October.
Solo show "apparenze" at Palmaria Island, for Genoa 04, July – August.
Group show "Da Ageli a Robazs" at Barbara Mahler Gallery, Lugano, March.
2003 Holds a speach in the Aula Magna of Academy of Fine Arts of Brescia on the subject: Exploration of the Human Space, 16 December.
Solo show "plus ultra" at DESART Contemporary Art, Brescia, November.
2002 Group show ‘doping’ at Spazio Montenero Gallery, Milan, June.
Review
“Homeland Security Advisory Signal” is a towering sculpture, a sort of monolith of the information-age, tridimensionally reproducing the “Homeland Security Advisory System”, a colour-coded alert signal representing the current risk of terrorist attacks on the American soil. The topic is sadly contemporary. However, Lo Monaco’s latest work wants to be something more than a provocation that rides the latest wave of events. Reconstructing in the shape of a sculpture the "Homeland Security Advisory System”, the artist places a series of questions on some ideological and ethical issues of this beginning of the millennium. As during the times of the aerial bombings there were loud sirens that informed the population of the imminent danger, today new instruments and new references for our times of invisible war are necessary. Instruments exactly like the “Homeland Security Advisory Signal”, offer to the population an explicit and direct representation of the current dangers and the threats existing in our environment. The point is that the light-signal of terrorism is only apparently explicit. In realty it is an obscure and conflicting object. The population is not informed on the criteria and the standards used in order to decide if the signal has to remain blue, orange or to become red and suggest the maximum alert level. Beyond that of information, the signal is an instrument of persuasion, a means of rhetoric that must make us reflect on the grammar of communication, all aspects on which Lo Monaco artistically investigates. The language used by the “Homeland Security Advisory Signal” is Manichaean, it invites to emotional reactions rather than to reasoning and conclusively it uses the same codes of fear and anger used by terrorism. The “Homeland Security Advisory Signal” is therefore a perfect example of a post-modern monolith. Mysterious, indecipherable, invested from above of a powerful religious content, able to assemble the masses and to control their behaviours.
Pierluigi Casolari
