Galleria Raffaella Cortese is pleased to announce the first Italian solo show of the American artist T.J. Wilcox. The opening will take place during the event Start, three open days of contemporary art, conceived and organized by 24 Milan galleries for the 7-8-9^th of October in the following hours: Friday 7 from 12 to 9 pm, Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 from 12 to 8 pm.

“I believe in the magic of movie-making and I use it to pay homage to people or ideas I wish to preserve”. Attracted by historical tales, heroic figures and literature personas, T.J. Wilcox creates films, laboriously piecing together, frame-by-frame, stories taken from existing films, video-clips and sequences shot by himself.

The exhibition features Hadrian and Antinous (2000), drawn from Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel “Memories of Hadrian”, in which both original sequences shot by Wilcox and extracts from Cecil B. DeMille’s “Cleopatra” are used. Wilcox’s film shot in Rome and in Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli, describes the story of Antinous, a Greek boy of legendary beauty loved by the Roman emperor. In order to save the life of the beloved emperor, Antinous willingly sacrificed himself plunging to death in the Nile. Later, Hadrian, to honor the courageous boy and to worship his life in eternity, will name a new star after him. “The star – Wilcox says at the end of the film – shines to this day undimmed by modern skepticism”.

The second film exhibited is part of Garland (2003/05). Exhibited in 2004 Whitney Biennial, Garland is a work in progress, a collection (that is in fact the etymology of “garland”) of 16 heterogenic eccentric episodes dealing with myth and inner reality. Combining different genres and esthetics, from film to documentary to photography to animation, Wilcox creates images that are mysteriously poetic and familiar. The very short films are projected in the gallery accompanied only by the whirring sound of the 16mm film projectors. The result is a faint sense of nostalgia and the discovery of a thick net of memories and quotes.