Yuri Ancarani

IL CAPO

January 2017 – March 2017

Location

High Line Channel 14, 14th Street Passage, on the High Line at West 14th Street

January 5 – March 8, 2017

5:00 PM daily until the park closes

High Line Art presents Yuri Ancarani’s video IL CAPO (2010), a documentary following the foreman of the most famous marble quarry in the world in Carrara, Italy.

Yuri Ancarani is a filmmaker whose work combines documentary film aesthetics with graceful, hypnotic cinematography. In his film IL CAPO, Ancarani captures il capo (the chief) as he elegantly conducts giant machinery to extract massive slabs of veined marble with a series of hand gestures. Filmed in the backdrop of the Apuane Alps in Italy, the video offers a mesmerizing juxtaposition between the sheer inaccessibility, booming noise, and danger of the quarry itself and the delicate, balletic movements of il capo.

Organized by Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator, with Melanie Kress, High Line Art Associate Curator.

Yuri Ancarani, IL CAPO, 2010 (still). Video, color, sound; 15 minutes. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Zero…, Milan

Artist bio

Yuri Ancarani (b. 1972, Ravenna, Italy) lives and works in Milan. Recent solo exhibitions have been featured at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Centre d’Art Contemporaine, Geneva (2012); MAXXI, Rome (2012); Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2012); and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Tirana, Albania (2008). Notable group exhibitions featuring his work have been presented at MUMA, Caulfield East, Australia (2015); ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany (2015); GAM, Turin, Italy (2015); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014); and Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2013). Ancarani’s work has been featured in major biennials including La Triennale di Milano (2014); 55th International Venice Biennale (2013); 14 Media Art Biennale Wro, Wroclav, Poland (2011); and Prague Biennial 5 (2011).

Support

Major support for High Line Art comes from Donald R. Mullen, Jr. and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston. High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.