Three Times Once

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Limoncello Gallery is proud to present Three Times Once, Italian artist Santo Tolone’s first solo show in the UK, opening March 10th. Santo Tolone’s practice summons into existence signs or contents or concepts stripped of the form required by their fruition - meanings deprived of their original signifiers. What remains of a content without mode of presentation - be it its perceptive form, its context, the web of meanings it naturally relates to? A discourse whose structure emerges spontaneously, the trial-and-error construction of a mental image. The sculptures, drawings, videos and performances included in Three Times Once all offer variations of such structures.
The apparently intuitive idea that “understanding” involves drawing general conclusions from raw facts lies on the hidden presupposition that a single conclusion can be related to any single fact. According to this idea, for instance, knowledge of the earth’s roundness can be related to the fact that someone travelling along one of its parallels will eventually come back to her starting point. However, as philosopher Rudolf Carnap pointed out in his seminal Der Raum, this could just as well lead to the conclusion that the earth is a two-dimensional pattern periodically repeating itself on a flat surface. The distinction between experiencing a single time various identical things, and experiencing the same thing many different times, is at the core of Italian artist Santo Tolone’s first solo show in the UK, from March 10th at Limoncello Gallery.
Limoncello Gallery is honoured to announce Three Times Once, the first UK personal exhibition of Italian artist Santo Tolone, opening March 10th. The exhibition includes sculptures, drawings, video and performances, all speculating on the possibility stripping a given meaning of its original signifier: signs or contents or concepts stripped of the form required by their fruition. What remains of a content without mode of presentation - be it its perceptive form, its context, the web of meanings it naturally relates to? A discourse whose structure emerges spontaneously, the trial-and-error construction of a mental image. The sculptures, drawings, videos and performances included in Three Times Once all offer variations of such structures.

Santo Tolone (b. 1979, Como, IT, based in London and Como) is studying for his MA Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK (2012). Recent and forthcoming shows include: Campoli Presti (UK/IT); 'Young British Art II', dienstegebaeude, Zurich, CH (both 2012); ‘Two Times Once’, curated by Mr. Rossi, Limoncello, London, UK; ‘Arian De Rothschild Prize’, curated by Laura Barreca and Marcello Smarrelli, Palazzo Reale, Milan, IT (2011); ‘Men With Balls: The Art of the 2010 World Cup’, curated by Simon Critchley, Apexart, New York, USA; ‘21x21x21 Artist x Il 21 Secolo’, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudeng, IT; ‘Si-Sindrome Italiana’, Le Magazin Centre National d'Art Contemporain, FR (All 2010). He has been practicing as a solo artist for only 2 years. Previous to this he worked collaboratively under the names Mr. Rossi (6 Italian artists and Ryan Gander), and as a couple as Santomatteo.

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Installation View, ‘Three Times Once’