J&PEG, LA NOTTE CADE SU DI NOI

Room 13

A bedroom, the most secret room in the house, where not even the guest is invited to enter, becomes, in the path of these paintings and this installation, the emblem of a universal world, in which freedom and its relationship with power are investigated. In this environment, man remains alone with himself, finally free of all external impositions, abandoned to his intimacy, but destined to succumb to his physical needs and the need for rest. The human being, conceived with the limit of sleep, is here already ready to escape and redeem himself with the imagination and hope of the dream. A room, lit in such a way as to remind the visitor of the lights and shadows of contemporary society.
J&PEG

The J&PEG duo works with serene kleptomania and illustrate attitudes, postures, behaviours and metamorphoses of figures that seem to want to represent an unprecedented theatre of life. Painting, sculpture, photography and installation are put at the service of a staging capable of moving the contemplation of the public out of an exclusive condition of daytime intelligence. Here the scene amplifies the intermediate spaces of aesthetic enjoyment and determines the possibility of affirming with Baudelaire that Beauty is always a promise of happiness. Of course, here beauty is deliberately constructed. It always refers to an elsewhere made possible by technological reproduction, but also corrected by craftsmanship. The coexistence of different media allows an iconography that lives on the borderline between enigma and explicit meaning. Here art seems to confirm an unprecedented vocation, that of being a sort of Mouth of Truth that does not speak to us with ambiguous and obscure sentences, but rather illustrates man’s need to mark psychological and social limits. In order to do this, J&PEG uses the stealthy familiarity that comes to the general public from cinema, photography, theatre and the virtuality of interactive games.
Achille Bonito Oliva

J&PEG are Antonio Managò and Simone Zecubi; they have always worked as a duo. Antonio was born in 1978 in Busto Arsizio and Simone in 1979 in Gallarate. Both graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts: Antonio in Sculpture and Simone in Scenography. They live and work in Milan. In 2006 and 2007 they exhibited at the Obraz Gallery in Milan on the occasion of the group shows Take Five and Lo stato dell’arte. In 2007 and 2008 they participated in Artfirst in Bologna and Miart in Milan, in 2008 in Art Paris and in Rome – The road of contemporary Art. In the same year they held their first solo exhibition Working Mates + Project Room. Ten Second to Midnight at Galleria Poggiali e Forconi in Florence, presented by Achille Bonito Oliva. In 2010 they participated in the (Con)Temporary Art event at Superstudiopiù in Via Tortona, Milan, with a room entitled Natura Naturans.