Luca Carboni celebrates 40 years of career with the exhibition “Rio Ari O”

To celebrate forty years of career and his 1984 debut album “…meanwhile Dustin Hoffman doesn’t miss a film”, Luca Carboni presents an exhibition with the works that have accompanied four decades of activity. “Rio Ari O” is the title of the exhibition which, curated by Luca Beatrice, critic and curator of contemporary art, conceived and produced by Elastica in collaboration with the Bologna Civic Museums Sector | International museum and library of music, celebrates the synergy between music and visual art of the Bolognese musician.

The appointment is from 22 November 2024 at the International Museum and Library of Music in Bologna, to end on 9 February 2025.

As reported in a press release, the exhibition is divided into four rooms plus an entrance wunderkammer and there are around fifty pictorial works on display, all created since the mid-1980s.

On display, there will also be objects, record covers, unpublished texts, notes, memories that start from 1984 which marked the start of Carboni’s career. Obviously, music cannot be missing: the final room of the exhibition presents a sound design that includes songs, unreleased songs, audio stolen from the studio, all accompanied by images and video clips, in a setup with a pop atmosphere. The very central Portico del Pavaglione, in via dell’Archiginnasio, will also host a sort of ghost track of the exhibition from 8 January 2025: they are Carboni’s self-portraits printed on a large scale and hanging from the iron keys of the arches of the portico. The exhibition will be completed by a program of public meetings which will feature, in addition to Carboni himself, other artists who were his traveling companions. “Rio Ari O” meetings is the cycle of conversations that will be held during the exhibition period in the Museum’s Events Room: three public appointments with the artist and each time a different guest. It starts on November 28th together with the curator Luca Beatrice, then appointments on December 19th and January 30th 2025, again at 6.30 pm.

In Luca Beatrice’s notes, we read: “In his forty-year career Luca Carboni has published twelve studio albums, one live album and several collections. But in the meantime he cultivated something else, perhaps in solitude or seclusion: he drew, painted, created installation works, collected images, because in his journey art and music went together, one inspired the other, one helped the other. other. A hidden part, an intimate and personal parallel path, experimental, almost never told except in some rare moments in which Luca used drawings for album covers, images for projections on some tours and a collection of sketches in the book ‘Autoritratto’ by 2004. A part that, like the songs, has within it, in a profound way, its city, Bologna, the squares, the streets, the churches, female figures inspired by the shapes and lines of the porticoes”.

Carboni himself stated: “In painting I am inspired by women, the flat colors of flags, road signs, porticoes and churches. In production I usually like to mix tempera, acrylic colours, spray cans for street painting, all always applied on different types of support, sometimes classic canvas but also recycled wood, various plywood and other materials such as iron, cardboard, wrapping and gift paper”.

The musician adds: “Painting has accompanied all these years of music of mine like a diary of images and visions: personal, intimate, private, never put on display, with the exception of a few drawings that ended up on record covers.”