
Comanche (The enemy of everyone)
On View
Opening
Saturday 22 February 2025 – 17:00 / 20:00
Open to the public
Sunday 23 February 2025 – 15:00 / 19:00
Open only on request
Every weekday afternoon until 18 April 2025
Contact at +39 375 8860953
Free Entry
Informazioni
In February 2025, the Cuban artist Luis Gómez Armenteros will present a dual solo exhibition titled Comanche (The Enemy of Everyone), curated by Giacomo Zaza. The event, promoted by Fabbrica del Vapore and the Municipality of Milan in collaboration with U-ART-P in Bergamo, will take place across two venues: on February 18 at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan and on February 22 at The Place, Bergamo.
Luis Gómez Armenteros was a participant in 2023 in the prestigious artist residency project curated by Giacomo Zaza, titled Futura. Art as an Exploratory Resource. Interact. Deviate. Attest., hosted at Fabbrica del Vapore. During this experience, the artist engaged in a creative workshop that fostered dialogue between generations and perspectives, creating moments of collective exploration and reflection. This synergy with the spaces and contexts of Fabbrica del Vapore laid the foundation for the exhibition project Comanche. As Maria Fratelli, the director of Fabbrica del Vapore, stated: “With a carefully curated production, Fabbrica del Vapore seeks to highlight the experiences of artist residencies, which are at the core of its activities in the contemporary art scene. Welcoming in person Luis Gómez, an international artist and mentor for Futura, the over-35 residency that brought Fabbrica to life in 2024, we present an evolving exhibition. The show has been built by the artist himself, inspired by his reading of the newly inaugurated exhibition space at Fabbrica del Vapore, the Sala Bianca. The Cuban artist will challenge the Milanese audience with critical questions about the role of the artist and the art system, of which the residency project is an innovative and democratic access point.”
The dual-venue exhibition, Comanche (The Enemy of Everyone), featuring site-specific and installation-based works, aims to create a progressive workshop employing various media to engage with art, the role of the artist, society, and the inevitable questions surrounding art and consumption. The exhibition project, which also includes a brief residency by the artist in February 2025, focuses on the conceptual and exploratory elements of contemporary art. Iconographic elements derived from various contexts, as seen in Luis Gómez Armenteros’ work, are part of a mental process and interaction with the environment (in this case, Fabbrica del Vapore) that can transform into perceptive “corners” of a different imaginative space, accessible to a broad audience. This space primarily addresses the role of the artist in today’s world and the very act of perceiving art.
For Luis Gómez, artistic practice is a realm of visual and reflective speculation where a constant tension exists between reason and unreason, opposites that coexist persistently through the use of pastiche, fake, and tropicalization—distinctive elements of the artist’s creative trajectory.
This project emphasizes the importance of research and collaboration (or the sharing of cultural scenarios) as an essential phase in conceiving the two solo exhibitions by Luis Gómez Armenteros. Indeed, a preliminary phase of theoretical evaluations and field research is followed by an operative phase involving exhibitions and talks at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan and U-ART-P in Bergamo (at The Place).
The project Comanche (The Enemy of Everyone), articulated across two exhibitions, questions the meaning of art and the conditions of artistic practice in a society marked by both anxieties and closures, as well as accelerations and transgressions. Above all, it highlights an intermedial practice inspired by various disciplines—sociology, literature, political economy, technological research, and communication—placing itself on the fine line between relativity and fiction, collective imagination, and false truths.
The versatility of mediums and semantic connections in Luis Gómez’s work challenges the definition of art beyond its hegemonic perception. The most significant aspect of his practice lies in the contamination of different creative branches: a continuous variation and integration of media. A mestizo spirit permeates his entire body of work. For Gómez, the medium is an active, performative, and formative tool. His “remediation” spans across photography, video, drawing, painting, sculpture, spatial interventions, postcard and business card prints, and more. His techniques interpenetrate: high-tech meets low-definition and found footage.
Speaking about the title Comanche (The Enemy of Everyone), the artist states: “My work is based on language, the political culture of the artistic environment, and a very self-referential narrative. I started within the anthropological current of Cuban art linked to the work of Juan Francisco Elso, who was my teacher. When I read the etymological meaning of the word Comanche, I was completely fascinated. This word met many of the criteria I apply in my work. The Comanche speak a central Numic language that differs only slightly from Eastern Shoshone groups. Comanche derives from the Ute word meaning ‘anyone who wants to fight me all the time’ (Powell 2014), i.e., someone quarrelsome. But the word also means people. There was a prejudice against them by neighboring peoples who considered them warlike, but they defined themselves as a people. One reason I chose the word Comanche for the Fabbrica del Vapore project is the nomadic condition of these people—a condition generated by their encounter with Western culture. It’s imperative in my practice, as a mestizo. Furthermore, nomadism converges in my work not only due to its experimental nature but also because of the turn my life has taken today as an emigrant. In the Comanche phenomenon, we find numerous other references, such as the idea of the enemy of everyone, of seeing and being seen (egocentrism and narcissism), and the conflicts in the politics of art where everyone wants to be untouchable or under the gaze of a mild critic.”
Giacomo Zaza: “Luis’s work is continually troubled by an awareness of rules shaped not by ethical relations but by economic and social speculations. This unease leads him to develop a sharp, ironic gaze that offers a parallel view of the world. Sometimes it expresses a tragicomic, bitter, and ironic denunciation (as in the video work Sparring Partner), especially when the focus falls on artistic practices that serve only their vanity at the expense of commitment and research. Moreover, Luis Gómez perceives the danger of a group’s uncritical closure within a specific linguistic, social or political framework. Such a closure is, in some way, reflected in the Comanche phenomenon described by the artist. For Gómez, freedom is a transversal, undisciplined movement that opens intellectual, sensory, and emotional horizons, constantly embracing processes of integration and deconstruction, contamination and juxtaposition, inversion and nonsense.”
The dual solo exhibitions (in Milan and Bergamo) will feature a selection of works, including both new pieces and others from the past decade distinguished by an incredible “freedom of conscience” and an analysis of the contradictory mechanisms of the artistic sphere. Among the works on display will be Exclusión por silencio, Geist, Even if we are not here, Trata o tratado, and A Fuzzy Guy—pathways dedicated to the propulsion of visual thoughts.
The project will also include talks at Fabbrica del Vapore and U-ART-P in Bergamo during the exhibition period, along with a monographic book on Luis Gómez Armenteros, featuring unpublished texts by Giacomo Zaza, Maria Fratelli, Michela Casavola, Jorge Fernández Torres, Suset Sánchez, and Omar-Pascual Castillo.
Courtesy
Comune di Milano
La Fabbrica del Vapore
Luis Gómez Armenteros
Collezione Falconi Leidi
Collezione Cavallo Ilberti
Organizer
Curated by Giacomo Zaza
Organizers Fabbrica del Vapore e U-ART-P
Coordinators Giacomo Zaza e Oliviero Falconi
Venue

Via Don Luigi Palazzolo 42
Bergamo, BG
Italy