Wednesday, October 27, 6-8 PM - Tiziano Zorzan Boutique - 380 Bleecker St. Friday, October 29, 5-7 PM - La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez Community Garden - East 9th St & Avenue C (South-West Corner). This fall, sculptures and paintings by Italian artist Arianna Carossa will be roaming the city.

On Wednesday, October 27 th, the traveling exhibition will be hosted in the boutique of cutting-edge Italian designer, Tiziano Zorzan, in the heart of the charming West Village. On Friday the 29th, it will move to La Plaza Cultural community garden, an icon in the East Village’s history.

Wandering Desire was born in response to the artist's loss of her studio when the building that harbored it was recently sold. From 2017 to 2020, New York-based Genoese artist Arianna Carossa worked in the large basement of the Metropolitan Building, in Long Island City. Following the death of the owner in April 2020, the building was sold and the artist's relationship with that place had to come to an end. With Wandering Desire,  Carossa wanted to encapsulate the relationship with the building and the extraordinary woman who owned it, Eleanor Ambos, in a project that exists in a space of absence.

Background

In 1909, the opening of Queensboro Bridge allowed the industrial development of the part of Queens closer to the East River. The Metropolitan Building, a five-storey electrical hardware factory overlooking the Manhattan skyline, was completed in the same year. When, in 1982, Eleanor Ambos, who had a successful antique furniture rental business in Manhattan, bought it for storage and to accommodate a variety of artisans to set up their studios and workrooms, the building had been long vacant and in a sad state of disrepair. 

Born in Germany in 1924 and growing up during the Nazist regime, Ambos moved to the US in her early 20s, where she soon started a career as an interior designer and decorated the New York homes of diplomats, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals. During an era when New York was in a deep financial crisis, punctuated by decaying real estate, Ambos acquired the Metropolitan Building, five floors of broken windows, collapsed ceilings, and rotten pipes. It took her twenty years to renovate it, turning it into a place of marvels where for years, she hosted dozens of events and numerous music videos, commercials and movies were shot. Ambos was able to create an intimate space, her magic was to turn an industrial building into something that felt like home. A home that she opened to artists and creatives who used the space as a set for their creations as well as a laboratory.  

The Project

This fall, the Metropolitan Building will be turned over to the new owners and the story of this incredible woman will be erased. Concerned about Eleanor's legacy, Arianna Carossa, began to reflect on the four years she spent in that exceptional place, thanks to her host's generosity. That's how the idea of a wandering exhibit was born. After creating a pop-up show at the Metropolitan Building in the summer, Carossa packed her works and started looking for locations that could harbor her sculptures and paintings and create an intimate space of fruition for people to experience her art. The exhibition started to roam, seeking shelter from place to place. 

Like someone who has lost their home, Carossa's works seek hospitality from place to place. They will wander in the city until they find their space. Throughout the month of October, the exhibit will continue to move, seeking an intimate dimension in the hosting spaces, whether these are friend's places, commercial spaces, or cultural institutions.     

The Exhibit

Wandering Desire has already been staged in a private home in Greenpoint, in the studio of the artist Beatrice Pediconi, in Long Island City as well as at the American Irish Historical Society, near Central Park. On Wednesday, October 27th it will be hosted in the unique and glamorous spaces of one of the boutiques of Italian fashion designer, Tiziano Zorzan. On Friday, October 29th it will be at La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez, an iconic community garden in the East Village that has been a center of local activism and culture since the Seventies. 

In each location, Carossa's sculptures and paintings are activated in relation to the space and its functions, as well as in relation to the people who live and use those spaces, each time changing in response to the different interactions that are prompted by different environments. After a year that forced us to reconsider what we call home, Carossa's exhibit is a reflection on what it means to feel at home and how the community can become the home we seek. 

 Wandering Desire is produced with the support of the City Artist Corps Grants program from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME), and Queens Theatre. 

Curated by: Arianna Carossa and Maurita Cardone

Produced by: Maurita Cardone

 Arianna Carossa

Born in Genoa (Italy), Arianna Carossa lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating in painting, she began to work with Enzo Cannaviello's gallery in Milan. In 2004, the Dufour family invited her to learn the techniques of ceramics at the Piral pot factory in Albisola Superiore. Three years later, she found a space in an old furniture warehouse in Ceranesi.  Since then, furniture, wood and found objects have become her preferred sculptural materials. 

In Italy, she collaborated with Bianconi Gallery and Giuseppe Pero Gallery, both in Milan, and with the Changing Role - Move Over gallery in Naples. In 2010 she was an artist in residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. At the end of the residency, she decided to stay in New York. Here she received a grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Artist Alliance and began working with Rooster Gallery. In 2014 she published The aesthetic of my disappearance which was presented at MoMA PS1 and distributed by Printed Matter, Inc.

In 2017 she was selected for the Korpúlfsstaðir residency of the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists (SÍM). In 2018 she exhibited her works in a gold mine in Tlalpujahua, Mexico, as well as at the Italian Cultural Institute in Mexico City.  She was invited to the Biennial of International Contemporary Ceramics of the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza. In the same year, she also exhibited at the Carlo Zauli Museum, also in Faenza.

Through the years she has collaborated with several brands and companies, exploring the potential of art outside of gallery spaces. In 2018 she was invited by Eataly to hold a performance in their Manhattan store, while in 2019 she created a project for the Italian design company Kartell which was exhibited in their New York City showroom as well as at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami, during Art Basel Miami 2019.

Ariannacarossa.biz

Tiziano Zorzan

Born into a family of stage costume makers, Tiziano Zorzan grew up surrounded by the handmade couture and immersed in the history of fashion and Italian showbusiness. As he grew into adulthood, he began moving beyond stage costumes into the realm of television production, working for ten years as executive producer, and author and collaborating with various talents, including Liz Taylor, Sharon Stone, Luciano Pavarotti, Whoopy Goldberg, and Sofia Loren. 

At the same time, Tiziano started working in public and media relations, which opened him to the world of big events production and large-scale collaborations with the luxury industry. Eventually, he founded his own agency, specializing in marketing, advertisement, and product placement for high-end companies. Tiziano also became involved in interior design projects, which stemmed as an effortless evolution from his background in big events productions. 

All these tightly knit ventures enriched Zorzan's desire to go back to his origins – the world of textiles and fashion. He started his own fashion brand as a means to express his creativity, passion, and know-how to the fullest. Today, his multifaceted background informs the five pillars of Tiziano's eponymous brand and contributes to creating a heartfelt manifesto of style.

Tizianozorzan.com

La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez Community Garden 

The garden was founded in 1976 by residents and greening activists who took over what was then a series of vacant city lots piled high with rubble and trash. In an effort to improve the neighborhood during a downward trend of arson, drugs, and abandonment common in that era, members of the Latino group CHARAS cleared out truckloads of refuse. They built a geodesic dome in the open "plaza" and began staging cultural events. Green Guerillas pioneers seeded the turf with "seed bombs" and planted trees. Artist Gordon Matta-Clark helped construct La Plaza's amphitheater using railroad ties and materials reclaimed from abandoned buildings. 

In the 1980s, the garden came under attack by developers seeking to build on the space. After numerous court battles, La Plaza was finally preserved in 2002. In 2003, La Plaza was renamed in memory of Armando Perez, a CHARAS founder and former District Leader of the Lower East Side who was killed in 1999.

Laplazacultural.com