Fabio Lattanzi Antinori: Chased by Unicorns

A solo exhibition by Fabio Lattanzi Antinori. 10th – 30th November 2022.

Pi artworks is thrilled to announce artist Fabio Lattanzi Antinori’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. Consisting of entirely new works that range from sculpture to silkscreen prints and video, Antinori explores the notion of value systems in present society. He looks to the tensions between personal gains and corporate profit, desire and surveillance, privacy and the involuntary contribution of our personal information to an unremunerated, unregulated market of behavioural data.

Alluding to unicorns – or start-ups that have become synonymous with disruptive software, hyper-fast growth, and an income stream very often derived from tracking and monetising data - this exhibition grows from Antinori’s interest in language, the dynamics of power, and the way market values and ideologies permeate and shape social relations.

Central to the show is a series of sculptural and printed works comparing Raymond Williams’ notion of key words, a tool to understand how ‘important social and historical processes occur within language’ with current digital marketing’s calculated use of keywords. Put simply, terms we look for online and which are secretively used to predict our behaviour and then influence it through advertising techniques.

In the second part of the show the artist reflects on the unsustainable nature of the current economic model and on the way happiness, co- opted by advertising and brands, can be used to perpetuate a culture of consumption and production. Combining the results of a survey designed to understand the psychological consequences of life as a consumer, with a selection of self-help books, podcasts and transcripts from instructional videos, Antinori trains and later asks an AI model to reflect on the nature of happiness.