With this group show Monitor Studio adds another layer to its identity as a space for artistic research with four artists of the same generation that bridge two very different cultures – Italy and the United States – that, despite their differences, have been bound together by a shared history for over a century: Tomaso De Luca and Walter Smith, Danilo Correale and Walter Sutin.

Entitled Say it Loud, the show will feature recent and entirely new works by these four artists. All are driven by the same urgency to convey a message through their distinct and recognizable signs, be it by combining the power of image and word, creating a narrative through drawing or charging typescript with pictorial allusions.

The composition of the image through the four different mediums used by the artists – drawing, painting, graphic and video – opens up new horizons with their reflections and research into history, politics and social issues.

Danilo Correale (IT 1982), whose research focuses on criticism of institutions and seemingly banal aspect of everyday life such as work-leisure and sleep, will present a new work entitled National Anatema #2 (putting right what's gone wrong), the second outcome of a collaborative process born out of a project that he developed in London 2012 /2013. In this work Correale continues the investigative line in his reworking of a page from a 2010 issue of News of the World in which Rupert Murdoch apologized to his readers for a scandal at the paper’s news desk. By working on the same story Correale highlights the disconcerting lack of clarity and the common practice of non apology-apology underlining the un-identifiable language of a specific rhetoric structure despite its precise use of grammar and lofty institutional tone.

In his recent video entitled The Decorative Practice of Modernity in my Days of Boredom (While I Was Lying and Loving Myself on the Bed. Man, I taste like Nothing!) Tomaso De Luca (IT 1988) behaves much like a bored schoolboy in class, playing around with photographs of works by one of the leading figures in the Art Deco style, Paul Manship (1885-1966). As he scribbles over statues, composing and recomposing the various images, De Luca brings about a transformation process that alters and forges. De Luca’s settings always derive from art history, and in this piece the artist reflects on the concept of kitsch.

The escalating fame of Paul Manship also suffered an early artistic decline. Although in line with the taste of the period, Manship’s extreme formal precision coupled with the serial approach to his sculpting prompted critics to consign him to the fringes of art – a bystander of history rather than an artist proper.

Walter Sutin (US 19) presents two drawings from the series entitled Ruins, which combines fantasy and reality. The series is largely a cut-up collage of notes taken while Sutin visited Israel on birthright in 2010, just as diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel dissolved following the Gaza Freedom Flotilla raid in which nine activists lost their lives. Sutin creates a self-referential lexicon of imagery that gives the dissociative series a sense of continuity. Badges, trophies, waves, appropriated religious symbols, parasitic powdered wigs, and nude figures are staples of Ruin. In particular, “the body is represented as the sensorial machine of our ruin”.

Walter Smith (US 1980) The new paintings are an extension of a previous set of works—Rag Cinema. These works pair hand-rendered script with visual signs to explore the plasticity of the respective signifiers. The white of the cotton rag, that dominates the negative space of these compositions, relates to the discursive field of an internet meme template. The sign function of dominant cinema is pushed passed its limit point to trigger the arch sublimatory function of the image that it shares the surface with.

Danilo Correale (b. Napoli, IT, 1982, lives and works in Napoli)
Solo Shows: 2015 The Missing Hour: Rhythms and Algorithms, Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Napoli, IT; 2014 Boosted, Galerie La Malterie, Lille, FR; 2013 The Game, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, IT; 2012 The Warp and the Weft, Milano, IT; We have a business proposal, Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Napoli, IT; 2011 Pareto Optimally, Supportico Lopez, Berlin, D; We are making History, Entre Gallery, Bergen, NO; 2010 Mosh pit control, Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Napoli, IT; 2009 How much art can you take?, Spazio Chan, Genova, IT; The Istanbul Symphony”, Pist Art Project Space, Istanbul, TK; 2008 Goodbye My Darling, Galleria Franco Riccardo Artivisive, Napoli, IT

Group Shows: 2014 Untitled, La Malterie, Lille, FR; Glitch Interferenze tra arte e cinema, PAC, Milano, IT; Probando, Marso Gallery, Mexico City, MX; You can't chose your neighborhoods, Soma, Mexico City, MX; Galeria Metropolitana, Santiago del Chile, CH; Generator Project, Dundee, UK; 2013 V Moscow Biennal, Moscow, RU; Performa 7, New York, USA; Gold can Smash, Delirè Gallery, Bruxelles, BE; 2012 The House of Cards, Dubai, UAE; 3rd Moscow International Biennal for Young Art, MMOMA, Moscow, RU; Sotto la strada la spiaggia, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, IT; Microsculpture Biennal, Freibourg, DE; Enacting Populism, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, FR; 2011 Bedtime Stories Badtime stories, Supportico Lopez, Berlin, DE; 2010 Manifesta 8: The European Biennal of Contemporary Art, Murcia, ES; Sindrome Italiana, Magasin Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, FR; Practicing Memory in a time of an all-encompassing present, Pistoletto Foundation, Biella, IT; Avalanche, Maribel Lopez Gallery, Berlin, D; 2009 Neighborohood We Do It, Klagenfurth, AU; Transit, 11th Istanbul Biennal, TK

Tomaso De Luca (born in Verona in 1988, lives and works in Rome)
Selected solo shows: 2014 SALOPP GESAGT SCHLAPP, Kunstlerhaus Bremen, GE; 2013 An incomplete portrait of Anchises, curated by Flavia Ghidossi, Van Horbourg, Zürich, CH; 2012 Tropical Malady, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, IIC, Paris, FR ; The Monument, Monitor Rome, IT ; 2011 Rise and Fall, curated by Davide Tomaiuolo and Paola Gallio, 26CC, Rome, IT ; 2010 The Sleepers/100 teste per un cacciatore, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, MACRO, Rome, IT

Selected group shows: 2015 Milk Revolution, curated by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin, American Academy, Rome, IT, 2014 Non Siamo Mai Stati Moderni, curated by Maria Rosa Sossai, SongEun, Seoul, KR; Visioni per un Inventario, curated by Andrea Bruciati, Fondazione Bevilacqua LaMasa, Venice, IT 2013 Le Chasseur Noir, curated by Benoit Antille, Caves de Courten, Sierre, CH, I Naturalisti, curated by Peter Miller, Castelluccio di Pienza, Chianciano, IT ; Sandy Island, curated by Ilaria Marotta, Nomas Foundation, Rome, IT Chinese Whispers, curated by Andrea Baccin, Luca Francesconi, Ilaria Gianni, Ilaria Marotta, Costanza Paissan, Cura.Basement, Rome, IT , Figura 2 - Natura Morta, curated by Ilaria Gianni and Cecilia Canziani, Galleria Nazionale Arte Moderna, Rome, IT Add Fire - Premio Furla, curated by Ilaria Gianni and Alice Motard, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Bologna, IT; 2012 Versus XVIII, curated by Francesca Referza, Velan, Turin, IT Torre Altus, with Francesco Fonassi, GUM Studio, Turin, IT , Re-generation, curated by Ilaria Gianni and Maria Alicata, MACRO, Rome, IT; Sotto la Strada la Spiaggia, curated by Benoit Antille, Michele Fiedler, Andrey Parshikov, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, IT ; Les Monuments Invisibles, curated by Costanza Paissan, La Galerie, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec, Paris, FR, Io,Tu,Lui,Lei, curated by Francesco Urbano and Francesco Ragazzi, Fondazione Bevilacqa La Masa, Venice, IT ; 2011 Gentlemen of Verona, curated by Andrea Bruciati, Palazzo Forti, Verona, IT ; Tutte le stelle cadute – l’elegia di San Lorenzo, curated by Marcello Smarrelli and Maria Rosa Sossai, Pastificio Cerere Foundation, Rome, IT ; Difetto come indizio del desiderio, curated by Andrea Bruciati, Neon, Bologna, IT

Walter Smith (Manchester, NH, lives and works in New York)
Solo shows: 2015 Rag Cinema, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York, NY; 2014 Meat and Potatoes, Svetlana Gallery, New York, NY, Alien Denization, Monitor Studio , New York, NY

Group shows: 2015 Ah! Sun-flower..., David Lewis Gallery, New York, NY, This a Way, curated by Sebastian Black, White Flags Projects, St. Louis, MO; 2014 Un’Idea di Pittura I, Monitor, Rome, Italy; 2011 Swiss Gallery, Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn, NY EAF11, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY LA, Switzerland, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Columbia Thesis Exhibition, Fisher Landau, Long Island City, NY Eminent Domain Name, Muelensteen Gallery, New York, NY Scaffolding of Contrition, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, New York, NY, 2010 Give and Take, Viafarini, Milan, Italy

Walter Sutin (b. Trenton, NJ, 1985, lives and works in the San Diego/Tijuana/Los Angeles region)
Solo shows: 2013 Ruin, Disclosed unlocation, San Diego, CA

Group shows: 2014 INFLUX, MINT, Columbus, OH; Present Tense, Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Last Evenings on Earth, Ship In The Woods Gallery, Del Mar, CA; Elective Affinities, UCSD, San Diego, CA; 2013 Wildlife Refuge, Current Space, Baltimore, MD; 2011 Group Show, Ship in the Woods Gallery, Del Mar, CA; Drawing expanse, Space For Art, San Diego, CA