Tales of Exhaustion by Danilo Correale

Tales of Exhaustion is the first solo show by the Italian artist Danilo Correale in Belgium and is curated by the Brussels-based curator Matteo Lucchetti. The show presents bodies of work centered on the artist’s on-going research on how neo-liberal capitalism is altering and offsetting the labour, leisure, rest trichotomy inherited from the industrial revolution and maintained throughout modernity. The once partitioned realms of production have now expanded to every hour of the day, transforming social interactions, downtime and even sleep into potentially productive endeavors. While bio-political devices that track our moves and purchases are providing data that fuel the algorithms of everyday life, the exhaustion of life as we know it generates new profits. The exhibition holds together many narratives that compose the new mythologies of our times, from global finance to the fictional reality of surveys and indexes, and the banking system that oversees world democracies.

In the show are exhibited new works by the artist, as well as projects produced between 2012 and 2015, re-edited into new displays or performative and discursive formats. Exploring Correale’s body of work in unprecedented and unexpected ways, the exhibition features guests who will offer new readings of the presented works. The opening is also reimagined as a durational event, extending across three days and aiming at exhausting the discussed topics, as well as the energies of the audiences that will join this symbolic marathon. Each of the three days will feature an immaterial rendition of a work by the artist, in the form of songs, a lecture and a performance.

Curated by Matteo Lucchetti

Exhibition text