Created by Italian artist Andrea Nacciarriti, curated by Alessandro Facente and commissioned by Artists Alliance Inc., 00 00 00 00 00 [Essex Street Retail Market] is an immersive architectural installation inside of the historic Essex Street Market on New York’s Lower East Side.
The history of Essex Street Market is deeply ingrained in the history of New York City. Along every wall, inch of floor, and vendor display, one can find traces of the generations of residents who moved through the space.
Responding to the building’s currently abandoned state, Nacciarriti will work inside of the historic location to realize a site-responsive intervention that reacts to existing environmental conditions—natural and artificial light, empty corridors, widespread silences—and introduces external objects produced by the artist. Marking Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space’s very last show in its old home, this final work unfolds along a solitary and mysterious path throughout the Market. A series of quiet and subtle gestures, these disappearing interventions become a paradox; the architecture’s fictional resistance to its impending destruction.
Similar to much of Nacciarriti’s practice, 00 00 00 00 00 [Essex Street Retail Market] scrutinizes the qualities that define the core of the spatial dimension by investigating relationships between space and the perception of it, social realities, historical context and current events. Carried out through mechanisms that are despoiled of their function and unpredictably redesigned, at the root of Nacciarriti’s research lies in the analysis of and failure within processes of transition. In this sense, 00 00 00 00 00 [Essex Street Retail Market] explores the sublime dimension of transition. It is precisely in this moment of stillness that Nacciarriti’s project will come to life, inhabiting a history at the point of stasis. In Greek tragedies, this term is defined as the separation between episodes in a story; it is the interval during which all activity is pending.
While stasis does not move the narrative forward, in practical terms, it offers the rare opportunity for reflection. In the moment that the former Market building was shut down, a physiological window, a void, opened. It is precisely at this time that the void can be rearranged to reflect on both what has been and the many chapters yet to be written. By occupying this space, both psychologically and physically, and inviting the public into the building for one final moment together, Nacciarriti’s work will augment the ambient life of the space; the installation will celebrate the invisible and save its remains from disappearance.
Andrea Nacciarriti (1976, Italy) is a visual artist based in Senigallia, Italy. His practice explores the close relationship, and the resulting paradoxes, between architectural and environmental contexts with social realities, historical contexts and current events. As an interdisciplinary practice, Nacciarriti’s work results in site-specific installations, improvised and responsive actions, performances, sculptures, drawings, sound, and photography. His work is part of private and public collections including the Foundation Antoine de Galbert in Paris, Ermanno Casoli Foundation, MAMBO, and La Gaia Collection, Italy. Recent solo exhibitions include Ducal Palace, Urbino; Pescheria Foundation Visual Arts Center, Pesaro, Italy; Centre d’Art Bastille, Grenoble, France; Kunsthalle Eurocenter, Lana (BZ); Pro Artibus Foundation, Ekenäs, Finland and Franco Soffiantino Gallery, Torino. Nacciarriti has been included in group exhibitions at MACRO, Rome; La Maison Rouge, Paris; PAC Milan; Villa Croce Museum Genoa; Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains Tourcoing Cedex in France; MAMM Moscow, La Maison Rouge Paris. Among the special projects: “you might get breath less”, ISCP in New York; “less than air” Showroom Elica, Milan, on the occasion of the 49th edition Salone Internazionale del Mobile, “sculpture park” Reagent’s Park, London, in occasion of Frieze Art Fair.
Support for 00 00 00 00 00 [Essex Street Retail Market] has been provided by Artists Alliance Inc, New York City Economic Development Corporation, Essex Street Market, Lower East Side Partnership, Italian Cultural Institute of New York, Q-INTERNATIONAL Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Artists Alliance Inc. is 501c3 not for profit organization located on the Lower East Side of New York City within the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center. Cuchifritos Gallery is supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Exhibition programming is made possible by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts. We thank the New York City Economic Development Corporation and individual supporters of Artists Alliance Inc for their continued support. Special thanks go to our team of dedicated volunteers and interns, without whom this program would not be possible.