Gathering reflections and testimonies of exhibitions realized by Yann Annicchiarico in various countries, this looks back at a unique state of perception, related to the experience of emptiness and to the suspension of attention, an essential element in the artist's research.
Of Moths and Muybridge's Scale by Yann Annicchiarico is the second publication in the collection from the Contemporary Art and Historical Temporalities research unit. It is part of a project publishing thinking by contemporary artists. The thinking, developed through visual and sound forms, gestures, and as through dialogue and dialectical exposition, is presented in a distinctive format, with a layout designed by graphic designer Rémi Forte, developed by Juliette Flécheux and set out in a clear and flexible framework. Written language is one element of the collection project. But it remains partial, to be grasped along with the essential elements that complete it: the artworks, accompanied by documentation of exhibitions, archives, and other approaches of thought that the authors develop progressively with the research unit publications. Of Moths and Muybridge's Scale gathers thinking and testimonies from exhibitions held in Germany, Luxembourg and Italy: thinking that has accompanied and nourished the development of Yann Annicchiarico's approach for nearly ten years, from his earliest beginnings, immediately after graduating from art school in 2010, to the completion of a research cycle with ACTH in 2021. These writings look back at a unique state of perception. Not an active and conscious perception, but rather a particular state of the senses when they are exposed to the experience of emptiness—a suspension of attention that is an essential element in Yann Annicchiarico's research.
Yann Annicchiarico (born 1983 in Luxemburg) is irrecoverably foreign to his world. Neither entirely Luxemburgish, Greek or Italian, this state of being at a permanent exterior has given him the means to question human perception and the organs it responds to, so as to study its possible suspension. His work confronts our human nature with worlds that are inaccessible to it and explores their potential spaces. Inseparable from the still or moving body, the act of perceiving in Annicchiarico's work prompts an awareness of the limits of our own understanding and the possibility of transcending those limits. A shift from intelligibility to sensibility occurs when we grasp the impenetrability of dimensions that are foreign to us despite the fact that we rub shoulders with them. This impenetrability is ushered in by the reoccuring irruption of moths in his artworks, which leave marks of their passage and activate the gap between two worlds.
Yann Annicchiarico has held solo exhibitions at Réfectoire des nonnes in Lyon (2021); KIT – Kunst im Tunnel in Düsseldorf (2020); Nosbaum Reding Projects, Luxembourg (2019); Centre des Arts Pluriels, Ettelbruck (2018) and has participated in group exhibitions in MUDAM - musée d'art moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2021); Museo Archeologico del Chianti Senese, Castellina in Chianti, Italy (2019) and at Villa Médicis, Académie de France, Rome (2015). He is a fellow artist-researcher with ACTH (Contemporary Art and Historical Time) since 2011.
