Premio Furla 2014

Si avvia un nuova edizione del Premio Furla, che quest’anno ha come manifesto un’opera di Vanessa Beecroft, che farà anche da presidente della giuria.

Come sempre sono stati selezionati  cinque giovani curatori italiani, che in coppia con altrettanti curatori stranieri, hanno selezionato cinque artisti tra cui verrà selezionato il vincitore.

Ecco i nominativi dei curatori

Viviana Checchia (Curatrice YAYA2014, Ramallah e co-fondatrice e curatrice di Vessel, Bari) e Tara McDowell (USA/Australia, Associate Professor e Director of Curatorial Practice, Monash University, Melbourne);

Alessandro Facente (critico e curatore indipendente) e Chelsea Haines (USA, curatore indipendente);

Simone Frangi (direttore artistico Viafarini DOCVA, Milano, e Professore di Teoria dell’Arte Contemporanea all’Ecole Supérieure d’Art e de Design de Grenoble) e Virginie Bobin (Francia, critico e curatore indipendente);

Antonello Tolve (critico e curatore indipendente) e Branka Bencic (Croazia, curatore indipendente);

Chiara Vecchiarelli (critico e curatore indipendente) e Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy (Messico/USA, Curator, Contemporary Art, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York).

E quello degli artisti selezionati:

Luigi Coppola (1972), selezionato da Viviana Checchia e Tara MecDowell;

Maria Adele Del Vecchio (Caserta, 1976), selezionata da Antonello Tolve e Branka Bencic;

Francesco Fonassi (Brescia, 1986) selezionato da Chiara Vecchiarelli e Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy;

Maria Iorio (Napoli, 1975) e Raphael Cuomo (Svizzera, 1977), selezionati da Simone Frangi e Virginie Bobin;

Gian Maria Tosatti (Roma, 1980), selezionato da Alessandro Facente e Chelsea Haines.

1961 - Tempo di continuità

NOVELLI, Interpretazione dell'erotomania, 1960 Fotografia Studio Boschetti

La Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro prosegue il filone d’indagine storico-critica sugli anni ’50-’60 in Italia, avviato nel 2013 con le due iniziative dedicate agli esordi di Arnaldo Pomodoro e di Enrico Baj.

Nel 1961 una serie di mostre presenta alla scena nazionale e internazionale il gruppo “Continuità”, che si avvale di un importante inquadramento critico di Giulio Carlo Argan e della complicità attiva di Guido Ballo.

Riuniti intorno al genio innovativo di Lucio Fontana, dal cui manifesto dello spazialismo il gruppo riprende l’enunciato suggestivo “L’arte non è eterna; finito l’uomo continua l’infinito”, alcuni dei migliori esponenti della ricerca che si oppone alle enfasi dell’informale in nome di una più nitida ragione non oggettiva percorrono un intenso tratto di strada comune.

Il gruppo non si raccoglie intorno a un manifesto teorico o programmatico secondo l’uso del tempo, ma si configura come un’aggregazione di personalità qualitativamente eminenti e autorevoli nel momento della prima, piena maturità.

DORAZIO, Intero rosa, 1960 _Fotografia courtesy Galleria Tega

La mostra, curata da Flaminio Gualdoni con la collaborazione di Federico Giani, documenta con opere altamente significative la presenza di tutti gli artisti che presero parte alle manifestazioni del gruppo: Franco Bemporad, Piero Dorazio, Lucio Fontana, Gastone Novelli, Achille Perilli, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Gio’ Pomodoro e Giulio Turcato, e ancora Arturo Carmassi, Pietro Consagra, Sergio Dangelo, Mattia Moreni, Ettore Sottsass e Tancredi.

Nella stagione delle neoavanguardie radicali, da Azimut a Zero, dal GRAV al Gruppo T, gli autori di “Continuità” rivendicano la centralità del ruolo della pittura e della scultura, in nome d’un’arte che sia, primariamente, di valori.

FONTANA, Concetto spaziale. Attese, 1959  fotografia Studio Boschetti

Accompagna la mostra il quarto numero dei “Quaderni”, con un saggio critico di Flaminio Gualdoni, le immagini delle opere esposte, oltre a una ricca documentazione relativa all’esperienza del gruppo “Continuità”.

Dal 24 settembre al 19 dicembre 2014

Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro
Vicolo Lavandai 2/a
20144 Milano
(ingresso da Via Vigevano 9)
tel (+39) 02 89 075 394
fax (+39) 02 89 075 261

Mario Merz a Londra

La nota galleria Pace, nella sua sede di Londra, presenterà dal 26 Settembre all'8 Novembre, una mostra dedicata a Mario Merz con, una importante retrospettiva, particolarmente ampia e dai pregiati pezzi. 

Pace London, in collaboration with Fondazione Merz, is honoured to present a momentous exhibition of the late Italian artist Mario Merz from 26 September to 8 November 2014 at 6 Burlington Gardens. Featuring works from the 1960s to 2003, this retrospective marks the first major UK gallery staging of the artist’s work in more than twenty years and Pace’s first exhibition of Merz’s work.

To accompany the exhibition, Pace will publish a catalogue highlighting both the works in the exhibition and archival materials from the artist. The catalogue will feature a new essay by Dr. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University, and Merz’s final interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Pace London will celebrate the catalogue’s publication at the gallery on Thursday 16 October. 

Merz reacted against the dominant trends in art from the 1950s and 1960s, rejecting the mythic aspirations of movements like Abstract Expressionism in favour of a more grounded art rooted in simple materials and nature, prompting his inclusion in Italy’s loosely organised Arte Povera movement. Merz’s presiding interest throughout his career was the transformation of materials by placing them in contact with alternate forces of energy, drawing his art into a more organic state. “I work from the emotions I get from the archetypal structure that cancels the material. Then, once I have procured the object I try to take possession of its structure with my hands, arranging it in various positions till I feel it is in unison with me physically…,” Merz said. “In fact the point of my work is to regain possession of ‘things’, by avoiding filling them out with projections, and to keep their limited but individual primary presence alive in myself.” This preoccupation—what curator Harald Szeeman called Merz’s “interior necessity”—inspired the range of Merz’s formal motif, including the igloo, nature, tables, neon lighting, and the Fibonacci sequence, all of which feature in the exhibition.

The exhibition’s centerpiece is Spostamenti della Terra e della Luna su un Asse (Movements of the Earth and the Moon on an Axis) (2003), a three-domed installation and the final igloo he made. Merz began constructing igloos in 1968 using a variety of materials, and this particular one combines many of these earthen and industrial objects—metal rods, neon, clamps, clay, glass and stone—in its tripartite structure. Merz’s igloos are among his most iconic works, providing a free-standing and independent form to affect material energies, however impermanent or precarious they may be. “For him it is the act of building, not the finished structure that is meaningful. Building is a journey through the territory he works in, so his process is determined by the conditions he finds, his materials—whether man-made or natural—depend upon what is locally available,” wrote curator Germano Celant.

The artist’s interest in light and energy found its most enduring expression in his use of neon tubes. Merz employed neon lights on materials such as bottles, synthesizing the industrial qualities of the tube with the chemical and its immaterial radiance. In Igloo con vortices (Igloo with Vortex) (1981), on public view for the first time since his 1989 retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Merz placed a blue neon light amidst a swath of bundled brushwood leaning against a mixed media rendering of a cone and dome. “The neon is experienced as an energetic flux or spear of light that passes through the object, thus destroying the idea of the solidity of the object,” wrote Celant. “Punctured by the neon, the object becomes annulled as an icon but it is redefined as material; the neon abandons its own physicality and becomes light.”

Merz also used neon in Linea (Line) (1991), a work that straddles the line between painting and sculpture, depicting the first nineteen terms of the Fibonacci sequence in blue neon on a raw canvas suspended from a metal frame. The mathematical sequence, in which each term is determined by the sum of the two previous values, became a hallmark of the artist’s practice for its resonance with both the spiral and nature, as many interlocutors have cited Fibonacci’s sequence as mirroring organic patterns. Spirals recur in several works in the exhibition, including the sprawling, installation Une Ouvrée, une mesure de terre qui donne un portrait bien terrestre (1986), a rectilinear spiral of mesa-like concrete blocks and firewood on view on the gallery’s second floor. The spiral functioned as an allegory for growth and development, spawning outward to grow and incorporate more space, but also change its form and energy. “If you make an assemblage, you create a sort of concentrated power that transmits a naturally more optic emotion, but also a feeling of presence.” The spiral echoes the tables Merz made and painted throughout his career, which served as a stage for his assemblages but also connected to broader formal and conceptual ideas of line and space. “I reject linear, one by one, or assembly-line fabrication of spaces. I reject the idea that there can be a fixed number of people in a space,” Merz wrote in 1973.

The exhibition includes sculptures and works on paper that express some of his most enduring motifs. Merz’s interest in art emerged during his imprisonment in 1945, while detained for anti-Fascist activities he began regularly drawing spiraling forms without lifting his pen from the page. These activities combined with his reaction against the Italian state informed his desire to defy the status quo of art through a turn toward simpler materials and imagery. The works on paper, although drawn from various points in his life, speak to Merz’s sustained investment in the ideas that inspired his art, depicting spirals as well as organic form with a range of materials and objects such as raincoats, which became a hallmark of many of his mixed media and two-dimensional works. These works, and the exhibition as a whole, attest to his pursuit of a distinctive and avant garde project steeped in new way of making art. Merz said, “I think that everything has already been destroyed and, as far as I’m concerned, I want to put things right again, really clean things out.”

Mario Merz (b. 1925, Milan; d. 2003, Milan) is one of the most prominent artists to emerge from Italy in the postwar period and one of the best known figures in the Arte Povera movement. After growing up and studying medicine in Turin, Merz joined an anti-Fascist group that led to his imprisonment in 1945 where he became a voracious drawer. Merz exhibited his paintings of organic matter in his first solo exhibition in 1954 and, by 1966, was including ephemera and neon lights in his sculptures. In 1967, he became part of the loosely defined Arte Povera movement, a term coined by Germano Celant. Merz created art and broadened his materials throughout the rest of his life. He was married to artist Marisa Merz, who he met in the 1950s. He has participated in landmark group exhibitions including When Attitudes Become Form. Bern 1969 / Venice 2013 at Fondazione Prada in the 2013 Venice Biennale; Arte Povera. The Great Awakening, Kunstmuseum, Basel (2012-13); Zero to Infiinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, Tate Modern, London (2001); the Venice Biennale (1997, 1976, 1972); Documenta (1982, 1977, 1972); and Live in Your Head. When Attitudes Become Form, Kunsthalle, Bern (1969). In 2003, Merz received Japan’s Praemium Imperiale.

Mario Merz has had solo exhibitions at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2011); Kunstmuseum, Winterthur (2007); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2005), Buenos Aires (2002); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1989); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1989); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (1988); CAPC/Musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux (1987); Musée d’art contemporain, Montréal (1987); Kunsthuas, Zürich (1985); Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY (1984); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1983); The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1983); Kunsthalle, Basel (1975, 1981); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1980); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1975); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1972). Fondazione Merz, Turin, has maintained a permanent exhibition of the artist’s work since opening in 2005.

Merz’s work is included in numerous prominent public collections worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. This is Pace’s first exhibition with the artist. 

PACE

Pace is a leading contemporary art gallery representing many of the most significant international artists and estates of the 20th and 21st centuries. Founded by Arne Glimcher in Boston in 1960 and led by Marc Glimcher, Pace has been a constant, vital force in the art world and has introduced many renowned artists’ work to the public for the first time. Pace has mounted more than 800 exhibitions, including scholarly exhibitions that have subsequently travelled to museums, and published nearly 450 exhibition catalogues. Today Pace has ten locations worldwide: four in New York; two in London; one in Beijing, one in Hong Kong and temporary spaces in Menlo Park, California and Zuoz, Switzerland. Pace London inaugurated its flagship gallery at 6 Burlington Gardens with the exhibition Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes, in 2012.

Pace London at 6 Burlington Gardens is open to the public Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. www.pacegallery.com/

Anselm Kiefer alla Royal Academy di Londra

Negli ultimi dieci anni, le grandi mostre sui singoli artisti hanno catturato l'immaginazione del pubblico della Royal Academy. Eventi di grande respiro, ambiziose proposte e sorprendenti eventi, come Anish Kapoor e David Hockney. Ora, questo autunno, è la volta di un uomo descritto come "un colosso dell' arte contemporanea" : Anselm Kiefer. 

Questa sarà la più importante mostra sul lavoro dell'artista tedesco mai tenuto nel Regno Unito,  coprirà tutta la sua carriera di oltre 40 anni, svelando un nuovo lavoro creato direttamente per questi spazi. 

Straordinario serie di lavori comprendenti pittura, scultura e installazioni semplicemente monumentali. Senza compromessi con la materia che viene plasmata nel lavoro di Kiefer e trasformata sull'esperienza umana e nei disegna della storia, della mitologia, fino alla letteratura, la filosofia e le scienze. 

Lavori coraggiosi e provocatori, questa mostra sarà una testimonianza nella carriera di un uomo spinto a confrontarsi con se stesso e col pubblico, attraverso le grandi e complesse questioni del passato del nostro mondo, presente e futuro.

Press release

Over the last decade, our single artist shows have captured the imagination of the public. Always large in scale, ambitious in scope and astonishing in execution, we’ve seen artists including Anish Kapoor and David Hockney take on our Main Galleries. Now, this autumn, it’s the turn of a man described as "a colossus of contemporary art" to make his mark: Anselm Kiefer.

This will be the most significant exhibition of the German artist’s work ever held in the UK, spanning his entire 40 year career and unveiling new work created in direct response to our spaces.

Kiefer’s extraordinary body of work includes painting, sculpture and quite simply monumental installations. Uncompromising in the subject matter he tackles, Kiefer’s work powerfully captures the human experience and draws on history, mythology, literature, philosophy and science.

Full of brave and provocative work, this exhibition will be a testament to the career of a man driven to confront himself and the audience with the big and complex issues of our world’s past, present and future.

Trois pas de côté a Villa Arson

Molto stimolante la mostra Trois pas de côté a Villa Arson con gli allievi diplomati nel 2014.

Site internet dédié aux artistes de cette promotion des diplômés 2014 et à l’exposition : diplomes2014.villa-arson.org

Pauline Allié, Tanguy Beurdeley, Jedrzej Cichosz, Lucile Diacono, Raphaël Emine, Quentin Euverte, Victorien Ezard, Céline Fantino, Margaux Fontaine, Vincent Guiomar, Valère Jasson, Sharon Lesley Jones, Paul Le Bras, Sarah Maisonobe, Baptiste Masson, Simon Nicolas, Georgia René-Worms, Chloé Ribadeau Dumas, Florence-Delphine Roux, Anna Tomaszewski, Nelly Toussaint, Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo, Julien Ziegler.

Commissariat : Frédéric Bonnet

Cette exposition collective propose à une vingtaine de jeunes artistes fraîchement diplômés de confronter leurs œuvres au regard des professionnels de l’art et du grand public. Rendez-vous annuel avec la jeune création, cette manifestation est aussi pour le visiteur une invitation à découvrir les univers et les recherches de chacun de ces artistes qui croisent des expérimentations diverses et mettent en œuvre une multitude de techniques et de matériaux.

Avec des préoccupations hétéroclites et des pratiques très variées et parfois diamétralement opposées, conceptuellement comme esthétiquement, le cru 2014 de l’École nationale supérieure d’art de la Villa Arson contient toutefois des interrogations communes.

De nombreuses pratiques intègrent en effet une certaine forme de contre-pied qui se manifeste notamment par une inclinaison à tracer un chemin alternatif, à avancer sur une voie de côté et à s’affranchir des modes de compréhension normés.

Le commissaire invité, Frédéric Bonnet, a choisi à travers une sélection d’œuvres d’explorer la notion de « décalage » au sens large : pratique du braconnage culturel, invention de territoires, interférences grâce à l’imagination de dispositifs perturbant le réel, questionnement de la manière de produire des images en reconsidérant notamment les fondements de la vitesse et du spectaculaire qui gouvernent l’image contemporaine.

Faire Trois pas de côté c’est, à partir d’objets ou de situations réinventés grâce au geste créatif (déplacement des sens et dévoiement des usages, maniement des symboles, réinvention de territoires, insertion de perturbations et d’interférences…), considérer un autre usage des choses et proposer,in fine, une autre manière de lire le monde.

Le Journal de l’exposition, édité par la Ville de Nice, est à la disposition des visiteurs.

Prix de la jeune création 2014

La Ville de Nice a reconduit pour la sixième année, avec le soutien de la Fondation Bernar Venet, le Prix de la jeune création contemporaine qui permet de distinguer deux artistes. Ce prix a été remis le 4 juillet, respectivement à Anna Tomaszewski (dotation Ville de Nice) et à Simon Nicolas (dotation Fondation Bernar Venet).

Partenaires

Cette exposition est co-organisée par la Ville de Nice – Galerie de la Marine et la Villa Arson -

Établissement public du ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.

Avec le soutien de la Fondation Bernar Venet