Stemming from a project dedicated to the city of Genoa and in particular to its relationship with the sea, this photographic artist's book extends the site-specific glass sculpture designed by Perrone inside Villa del Principe's Hall of the Shipwreck.
Conceived on the occasion of the first edition of the project “Davanti al Mare” directed by Vittorio Dapelo for the Amixi di Villa Croce – Museo d'Arte Contemporanea of Genoa, War Games is an artist's book by Diego Perrone, edited by Francesco Garutti. Imagined as a book-cum-artwork and as such an integral part of the installation of Perrone's work in Villa del Principe, the Palazzo of Andrea Doria in Genoa, War Games is a photographic collection of painstaking details and fragments. The tapestries of the battle of Lepanto housed in the Villa del Principe, the hands, the features of the miniature craftsmanship of a selected group of Ligurian artisans and details of the sculpture in glass paste by Diego Perrone are mixed together without a specific order so as to make up an almost cinematographic sequence. In the short essay by Francesco Garutti, a simple and indirect game of reflections take shape: the naval games of the historian and science-fiction author Fletcher Pratt, the ambiguous inclined planes of the visionary architect Bel Geddes, the warp and weft of the tapestries of Villa del Principe, the hands and the construction techniques of those Ligurian masters all dialogue here with Perrone's work by virtue of their inhabiting “another” time.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Villa del Principe, Genoa, from May 26 to June 23, 2017.
Diego Perrone (born 1970 in Asti, lives and works in Milan)
is a visual artist working mostly with sculpture and drawing, creating mental landscapes that are neither real nor imaginary. His work in photography, film, and sculpture draws from and expands upon the rich history of twentieth-century Italian art movements ranging from Arte Povera and Transavanguardia to Futurism.
