Human Silk Kwai Fung Salone Hong Kong

Human Silk
Kwai Fung Salone

15. Sep – 15. Nov
Curated by Aurora Fonda and Sandro Pignotti

Barrack Block, Tai Kwun, Central, Hong Kong

Supportet by the Consulate General of Italy and Italian Cultural Institute in Hong Kong and opening event of ITALIA on STAGE autumn festival.

The figures within Paola Angelini paintings exist somewhere between the lively human flexibility and the static world of statues and stone. She calls the unique texture of her paintings—an inimitable surface, rough and smooth at the same time—“pictorial flesh”. This “flesh” is made of personal memories, visions and questions on contemporary society that intertwine, connect and twist with art history in a vision that could be defined as “scenic openness”.

Thomas Braida’s works could be characterized as still life or landscapes where an ironic, mystic or disruptive element interferes, in such a way that the meaning of the canvas and its traditional and symbolic charge can also change and be rethought. At first glance ironic and sometimes grotesque, his works conceal a delicacy that stems from the purity of childhood. Braida reveals a dimension of secret fantasies and mystical sublime in our ancient past as well as in our daily lives.

Nebojša Despotović has developed a very individual style where his figures, portraits, and subjects are outlined by a liquid, transparent brushstroke. While tracing the line of contour of his subjects, at the same time, it seems, he destroys them, dissolving them into the backgrounds of his compositions. When you are slipping into its composition, you cannot find a foothold to hold on to. And this technique matches with the artist innermost subject: The question of collective and individual memory and the issue of identity.

The Magic Gate W.H.Y. Gallery Hong Kong

W.H.Y. Gallery in collaboration with A plus A Gallery is delighted to present “The Magic Gate”, the first two-person show of Italian artist Giulio Malinverni and Bulgarian artist Anastasiya Parvanova. Giulio Malinverni and Anastasiya Parvanova have both studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, and for both painting is the medium to explore the micro and the macro Cosmos. The Magic Gate, symbolizes a portal, to time (present, past and future) and the Gate to the spiritual realms. In their paintings, the vastness of land, sea and the universe becomes the major background. The canvas becomes a wonderland which reveals the artists’ exploration of the personal and collective memory, human relationship and imagination. The exhibition initiates a dialogue of the two artists on their visual manifestations of their minds, dreams, and poetic realms.

Portal to the Past and Future, Real and Surreal

Born in 1994 in Vercelli, Italy, Giulio Malinverni lives and works in Venice. In 2016, he received the certification of the Restoration Technician of Frescoes and Stone Material at the Veneto Institute for Cultural Heritage. In 2020, He received the 1st level Diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice where he attended the painting course directed by Carlo Di Raco. Since 2017 to the present, 3 solo exhibitions are held in Venice and Padova. Giulio Malinverni’s work develops around issues relating to the representation of places and contexts that recall situations and forms rooted in collective memory and embrace duo elements, past and the future, land and sky, brightness and darkness. His works are inspired by the mythical Roman God – Janus Bifrons, the God of gates and transition. It symbolizes the origin of everything who’s in charge of the beginning and the end, the entrance and the exist, alluding the contradictory in human and nature. The mythological god Janus Bifrons is described as having two faces, front and back, facing the past and future with his double gaze that stretches over two horizons and contains two temporal extensions. Like Janus, Malinverni embraces the firm soil of the past and the hazy state of the present. The imagery from which his works draws his energy retraces the symbols and stylistic accents of pre-Renaissance painting, re-elaborating their contents through an approach of weighted lightness, open to the rhythms and languages of contemporary society. All these elements, reworked in a personal key and with a vein of irony, suggest a polysemy of meanings to the viewer. His deep understanding of Medieval Renaissance paintings and his experiences in frescoes further enhanced the surreal elements drawn from medieval illuminated codices and events that sedimented in the archetypical. Malinverni stages an ongoing dialogue between the constitutive parts of the work, that are bound by a stylistic, conceptual nexus or occasionally a hidden meaning.

Portral to the cosmo, dreams and spiritual realms

Born in Burgas, Bulgaria, in 1990, Anastasiya Parvanova lives and works between Venice and Sofia. After graduating in Visual Arts and Pedagogy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, she continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice where she attended the painting course directed by Carlo Di Raco, graduating with her MFA in 2022. Parvanova has been living in Venice for more than 10 years. Parvanova is fascinated by quantum physics, constellations and dreams. The artistic universe of Parvanova can be described as a constellation of fragments and places, emotions, and revelatory encounters. The canvas becomes an investigative journey in search of unlimited facets of possible and impossible worlds. Her explorations interpret the realms as a continuous alternation and transformation of thoughts and experiences, of energy and matter. Her inner cosmos comes to life on the canvas and develops into a narrative of epiphanies and visions. Stars explode in the artist’s paintings suggesting inner earthquakes that disrupt the flow of space and time. The cosmic dust leaves its traces and transforms the canvas into a cloud of infinite possibilities and layers of interpretation. Through painting, the artist tells us about the potential of an imaginary and emotional space. In this space the world is constantly changing, breaking down and recollects again, due to an evolutionary process that shows us the phases of nature and the most intimate dynamics of human relationships. The encounter with the other has a fundamental importance for the exploration of oneself and emerges through analogies with the laws of physics that regulate the nature of light. Like a scientist of quantum physics, Parvanova is attracted by superposition, by the fact that light can be at the same time a wave and a particle, that can be at the same time in two different places.

Wave of Light and the intertwining encounters

The nature of the wave of light, like the nature of relationships, consists of intertwining encounters, or opposing paths that never intertwine. The instant that interests the artists the most, is a singularity, a bridge, the precise interval in space-time, that allows the passage from wakefulness to sleep and vice versa, from life to the afterlife and back. This moment is depicted by Parvanova by using the image of the portal. Images of doors and portals throughout space and time are marking in her works the moment of emotional change and the exchange of ideas. Parvanova’s work tells us about a turning point, a defining moment, a pivotal experience, and she marks it by using the chromatic shades in her paintings. In the piece “Plasma” (2020), a blue star in the distance continues to burn while in the foreground three hands move in a dance that feeds a fire — a gesture that recalls a ritual. These two pictorial elements leave room for a sinuous blue and violet panorama that creates in the eye of the beholder a moment of most intense tranquillity where the viewer can contemplate the exquisite delicacy of the visual harmony.

Both artists compose the paintings in the backdrop of vastness – whether it is in universe, in land or sea. Space and fluidity is elicited. The portal, to them, is the gate to explore their mindscapes. Connecting the past and present, Parvanova and Malinverni are intrigued by the surreal and subconscious elements that relate to them. Both artists manifest an innate ability to create multiple worlds within a single composition, where essentially and ultimately, that forms a harmonious and unified whole.

Boston University Figure, Character, Sign

In Figure, Character, Sign, ritualized artistic return to a subject is
an important form of cultural inquiry and a source for creative work.
By circling back to the past—and to language, identity, archetypal
images, earthly elements, and card games—the artists in this exhibition develop new forms of expression, share research, and raise questions about the individual relative to the collective. Patterns of stones, water, stars, and leaves evoke nature, spiritual ritual, the context of Venice, and connections between the human and non-human—a theme of the 2022 Venice Biennale. Radical Return, a group project of work by Chinese and Chinese American artists and designers curated by Mary Y. Yang and Zhongkai Li, is centered around visual meditations on the Chinese character 回 hui, which means to return, to turn around, to circle, or to reply. The Radical Return exhibition catalog and the work of the 36 participants raise the question “Why does one return to something, someone, or somewhere?”Radical Return collectively explores meeting points of personal vision with cultural and national points of origin. The role of coming back to something, someone, or somewhere to forge new ways of making and being is explored by Maria Molteni and Adrienne Elise Tarver in their layered work and research. Via the ritual of the Italian card game Scopa, Maria Molteni’s installation Counting to Infinity /Sweeping Stars (Contando All’infinito / Stelle Scopa) visually interweaves daily play, prayer, and upkeep of the ground underfoot with the sweep of comets above. Adrienne Elise Tarver’s ongoing Mirage Series returns to histories of figuration to raise questions about leisure, visibility, and privilege. Tarver explores the complexity of Black female identity, both archetypal and individual, questioning tropes of the past toward reframing the future.

Dana Clancy, Director, Associate Professor of Art
Mary Y. Yang, Assistant Professor of Art
Boston University College of Fine Arts
School of Visual Arts

Silvia Mariotti, Not at first glance, Centre of Graphic Arts Lublijana

Silvia Mariotti

Not at First Glance

International Centre of Graphic Arts Ljubljana

curated by Aurora Fonda

and text by Matilde Galletti

21.10 – 20.11.2020

A plus A Gallery is pleased to announce Not At First Glance, the forthcoming solo show by Silvia Mariotti, curated by Aurora Fonda, at the International Center of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana.

The project is realised in collaboration with A plus A Gallery, Venice and financially supported by the Municipality of Ljubljana.

The exhibition is made up of impressive settings inspired by nature and the worlds linked to it. Reality and fiction are intertwined so as to give space to the reinterpretation of the places in our imagination. Thus the real landscapes and the landscapes beyond either seek linkages between past and present or simply mislead us into an illusion that they exist.

The journey created through the Aria buia therefore stems from a connection with the real world, describing abstract and green layers while at the same time concealing tragic events of the people of the past in the darkest corners of the world.

Archaic attraction to nature directs my interest to a metaphorical journey that transcends from a tangible reality to an imaginative level thus creating a non-existent landscape on the verge of reality: Boutade.

The new image comes to life in the work series Night Volumes through the synthesis of shapes and dark tones of colors merging into an essential abstraction of Gauzy green, where reflections and translucency interlink with light and almost simulate an image imprinted upon the retina of the eye.

Silvia Mariotti was born in 1980, lives and works in Milan. In March 2005 she graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino (IT) and in 2008 in Visual Arts. The main focus of her research is the analysis of an environment from a sociological as well as a historical point of view.

Through photography and its several possible representations, she tries to find the existing links in reality, providing the image, suggestions and the experience of emotions. In 2013, she won the first prize in the X edition of the Celeste Award for photography.

In 2016 she was selected for FAAP’s artistic residency in São Paulo and was a finalist in the IX edition of the Talent Prize in Rome. In 2017 she was selected for another residency program in São Paulo, Uberbau House. She exhibited in various galleries and public spaces, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone, the Fabbri Foundation of Pieve di Soligo (IT), Villa Manin in Passariano (IT), the Macro Museum in Rome and Palazzo Ducale of Urbino. In 2019, she was chosen as winner of the Level 0 prize by GNAM (National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art of Rome) at the art fair Art Verona.

In conversation with collector Karsten Schmitz

Collector Karsten Schmitz conversation with Curatorial Studies Venice the 7th of July 2018 at the Hotel Danieli

video part 1

video part 2

Young curators in dialog with pioneering international curators. Moderation: Aurora Fonda and Sandro Pignotti (Directors and Founders of A plus A Gallery and Curatorial Studies Venice)

in partnerschip with Hotel Danieli a Luxury Collection Hotel and The Gritti Palace a Luxury Collection Hotel.

Mediapartner: Independent Collectors

In Coversation with collector Alain Servais

Alain Servais in coversation with A plus A and Curatorial Studies Venice at the Hotel Danieli 23th of June 2018

video

Young curators in dialog with pioneering international curators. Moderation: Aurora Fonda and Sandro Pignotti (Directors and Founders of A plus A Gallery and Curatorial Studies Venice)

in partnerschip with Hotel Danieli a Luxury Collection Hotel and The Gritti Palace a Luxury Collection Hotel.

Mediapartner: Independent Collectors

In Conversation with collector Pedro Barbosa

Collector Pedro Barbosa in conversation with Curatorial Studies Venice at the Gritti Palace, Venice 6th June 2018

video

Young curators in dialog with pioneering international curators. Moderation: Aurora Fonda and Sandro Pignotti (Directors and Founders of A plus A Gallery and Curatorial Studies Venice)

in partnerschip with Hotel Danieli a Luxury Collection Hotel and The Gritti Palace a Luxury Collection Hotel.

Mediapartner: Independent Collectors

COMMAND-ALTERNATIVE-ESCAPE, Thetis Garden, Venice, Arsenale

———- per L’italiano scorrere verso il basso ————
curated by the 24th edition of The School for Curatorial Studies Venice

From 6 to 13 May 2017
Spazio Thetis Gardens, Venezia
Opening Saturday 6th May 2017 6pm
Press preview 5pm

PDF Press Release english

A site specific group exhibition coinciding the 57th Venice Art Biennale, set in the Gardens of Spazio Thetis in the Arsenale.

Confronting permanent land art works by Joseph Beuys, Jan Fabre and Michelangelo Pistoletto, in dialogue with new works by

Inspired by Venice’s public and private community dynamics amongst the large influx of foreign individuals filtering through the city daily: “COMMAND-ALTERNATIVE-ESCAPE” calls to a critical shift in perspective towards the archetypal dichotomy between liberty and security. “Security [specifically] in the sense of knowing where you are, who you are, on what kind of future you can count [on], what will happen, whether you will preserve your position in society or whether you will be degraded and humiliated … this sort of security … [which for] a rising number of people — looks at the moment more attractive than more freedom” (Zygmunt Bauman).

In a context burdened by manipulative collective ideology of the present: Skepticism of mass media, controversies instigated by fake news, and filter bubbles and echo chambers calling into question the democratizing potential offered by connectivity—even so in a time parallel to virtually limitless geographical and cultural confines—“COMMAND-ALTERNATIVE-ESCAPE” will confront how individuals default to their own bubble of security.

By recalling invented nostalgia, which trace collective narratives of a time that may never have existed; or reconstructing a sense of identity and belonging, which has dissolved in an age of swift global interchange of people, information, and culture; “COMMAND-ALTERNATIVE-ESCAPE” will expose works by artists that assert, and realize their individual modes of expression amongst the polarization between liberty and security. Exhibiting “glimpses” of real cultural, religious, economic and social practices currently at stake in society, visitors are invited to discover inherent conflicts, ironies, faults, and opportunities lying in the exhibited personal truths.

The exhibition is produced with the support of Flyeralarm

COMMAND-ALTERNATIVE-ESCAPE

a cura del 24° Corso in Pratiche Curatoriali

Giardino di Spazio Thetis, Venezia

Inaugurazione sabato 6 maggio 2017 ore 18.00

Preview stampa ore 17.00

PDF Communicato Stampa

Le opere permanenti di

Joseph Beuys | Jan Fabre | Michelangelo Pistoletto

in dialogo con nuovi lavori di

Il 24° Corso in Pratiche Curatoriali di Venezia è lieto di annunciare che il Giardino di Spazio Thetis è la prestigiosa location, che ospiterà la mostra COMMAND-ALTERNATIVE-ESCAPE dal 6 al 13 maggio 2017, in concomitanza con l’inaugurazione della 57esima edizione della Biennale Arte di Venezia.

Ispirata alle dinamiche sociali di pubblico e privato, COMMAND-ALTERNATIVE-ESCAPE manifesta attraverso le peculiarità che caratterizzano le zone verdi di un città come Venezia, l’archetipica dicotomia tra libertà e sicurezza.“Sicurezza nel senso di sapere dove sei, chi sei, su che tipo di futuro puoi contare, cosa accadrà, se preserverai la tua posizione nella società o se verrai degradato e umiliato – questo tipo di sicurezza. Questa sicurezza per molte, molte persone – un numero crescente di persone – sembra in questo momento più attraente della libertà stessa.” (Zigmunt Bauman)

Il giardino e i suoi limiti intesi come rifugio, come luogo in cui un senso di sicurezza pervade l’individuo, è esattamente come certi fenomeni che a livello globale investono la collettività, in cui manipolazioni inducono ad accettare fatti come le fake news e la creazione delle cosiddette echo chambers, letteralmente delle camere, delle bolle in cui l’individuo contemporaneo si sente al sicuro. Un fatto in contraddizione con l’apparente ideologia della nostra epoca che perora lo slogan dell’annullamento dei limiti geografici e culturali, quando invece la tendenza individuale, quasi istintiva è quella di rifugiarsi nelle proprie “bolle di sicurezza”.

La Scuola in Pratiche Curatoriali di Venezia è una scuola di nuova concezione attiva dal 2004 e nata come progetto formativo della Galleria A plus A, che ha come scopo la diffusione dei saperi nell’ambito delle arti visive e l’introduzione alle professioni relative all’arte contemporanea. L’offerta formativa prevede ogni anno due corsi principali, uno in italiano dalla durata di un anno scolastico e l’altro internazionale che si svolge nel corso dei mesi estivi. I corsi sono tenuti da docenti e professionisti del settore provenienti da varie parti del mondo e alla fine delle lezioni gli studenti si confrontano con il difficile compito di ideare, strutturare e realizzare un evento espositivo. Sul sito della scuola, è possibile vedere tutte le mostre organizzate fino ad oggi.

La mostra è stata realizzata con materiali e stampe di Flyeralarm

Works live and on exhibit at Venice International Performance Art Week

PDF Comunicato Stampa Italiano

The Performance Art Week is back in Venice after two previous – and highly successful – editions in 2012 and 2014. Dedicated to the art of the performance, this event has brought renowned artists including Yoko Ono, Regina José Galindo and Tania Bruguera. It again returns on time to present a full week of performance art from all over the world and belonging to various generations.

Conceived by Andrea Pagnes and Verena Stenke, the event benefits from the collaboration with prestigious institutions such as Fondazione Bonotto and Galleria A plus A, which has since its inception shown a sensible interest to the artistic production in Eastern Europe.

In the course of one week, attendees to the event will have the possibility to participate in an intensive and vivacious program of live performances, installation, photographic and video documentation, conferences, daily discussion roundtables, a research space, a cinema room, and meetings with participating artists, academics, and curators.

The section curated by Aurora Fonda of Galleria A plus A of Venice brings together artists from diverse former-Yugoslavian generations beginning in the 1960s. The program includes films by the Slovenian group OHO, which became worldwide famous and found a way show its work at the New York MoMA with the exhibition Information in 1970. Conceptual in nature, OHO performances were documented by Nasko Kriznar. In addition to presenting their most notable performance works like Triglav, – a rather ironic interpretation of Slovenia’s national symbol (a three-peak mountain) – the program will also include the screening of the film Hrbet Gre V Kino (The Back Goes To The Movies). After its first screening in 1968 following an OHO performance in Zagrabia, this film had not been shown again. It possesses a notable characteristic: the film must be projected on the nude back of a woman.

After the OHO group, the voice of Slovenia continued to be heard with the Neue Slowenische Kunst. In the 1980s, this movement brought together representatives of various experimental artistic disciplines ranging from theater to music with the Laibach, thinkers such as Slavoj Zizek and artists including the IRWIN, which to date continue to be quite active. The latter will present the East Art Map diagram, conceived with the objective of displaying the connections between art movements and artists and thus offering an overview to explore and better understand the artistic developments in Eastern Europe.

The youngest generation will be represented by the Bosnian Mladen Miljanović – featured artist at the Bosnian Pavilion in the 2013 Biennale – and by the Slovenian duo formed by Lenka Đorojević and Matej Stupica. For this occasion, Miljanović has designed a live performance under the title Guard of Honor and which pays homage to his father. On the other hand, Lenka Đorojević and Matej Stupica will screen the research material of a performance through which they seek to go beyond the limits of their own bodies.

Programm of the Venice Performance Art Week 2016

THIS IS TODAY at Obalne Gallerije Pirano & Portorož, Slovenia

THIS IS TODAY

Curated by Aurora Fonda

October 19th to November 13th, 2016

Opening on Wednesday, October 19, 6.00 pm

—- italiano in basso —–

on national TV RTVSLO

The Piran Coastal Galleries and A plus A Gallery of Venice are pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition This is Today on 19 October at 18:00 in Piran Town Gallery and Monfort exhibition building in Portoroz (Slovenia). The exhibition is organized under the patronage and support of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Piran.

Invited artists:

THIS IS TODAY presents for the first time abroad, the extraordinary artistic ferment in Venice. Institutions such as the Academy of Fine Arts, IUAV Visual Arts and the ateliers of the Bevilacqua La Masa Fondation play the role of catalysts for creative energy. Venice has been for centuries a melting pot of cultures, and also today it keeps its characteristic attracting generations of young authors rich of their own cultural baggage. The scenery has its roots in historical and cultural contexts in which diverse artistic traditions like the Italian nineteenth century art is combined with German and Austrian heritage and the neighbouring cosmopolitan Eastern Europe.

To better explain this phenomenon the famous diagram that Alfred Barr used for his exhibition of 1936 at the MOMA in New York was taken as an example. This way a pattern was constructed that allows a better insight in relationships and points of connection between the artistic and historical legacy and today.

The exhibition will remain open until 13 November 2016.

Expository locations:

Piran Town Gallery

Tartini Square n. 3

Piran 6330 Slovenia

Open from Tuesday to Sunday

from 10:00 to 17:00

Monfort (second exibition venue)

Obala n. 8

Portoroz 6320 Slovenia

Open Tuesday to Sunday

from 10:00 to 17:00

For information and visual material:

Gallery A plus A

San Marco 3073

Venice 30124

Telephone 041/2770466

Email [email protected]

www.aplusa.it

————————————————————————————-

THIS IS TODAY

A cura di Aurora Fonda

Dal 19 Ottbre al 13 Novembre 2016

Inaugurazione 19 Ottobre alle ore 18:00

Le gallerie Costiere di Pirano e la galleria A plus A di Venezia hanno il piacere di invitarvi all’inaugurazione della mostra collettiva THIS IS TODAY, il 19 ottobre alle ore 18.00, presso gli spazi della galleria Civica di Pirano e al Monfort di Portorose (Slovenia). La mostra è realizzata con il Patrocinio e il supporto del Ministero della Cultura Sloveno e del Comune di Pirano.

Artisti invitati:

This is Today racconta per la prima volta all’estero lo straordinario fermento artistico presente a Venezia. Istituzioni come l’Accademia di Belle Arti, Arti Visive dello IUAV e gli atelier della Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa giocano il ruolo di catalizzatori di energie creative: la città lagunare, per secoli crogiuolo di culture, ha mantenuto questa sua caratteristica richiamando generazioni di giovani autori, ricchi di un proprio bagaglio culturale. Uno scenario che affonda le sue radici in contesti storico-culturali eterogenei in cui la tradizione artistica del Novecento italiano si coniuga a quella tedesca e austriaca e all’eredità cosmopolita del vicino Est Europeo.

Per poter meglio spiegare questo fenomeno, si è preso ad esempio il famoso diagramma che Alfred Barr utilizzò per la sua mostra del 1936 al MOMA di New York, così da crostruire uno schema che permetta di visualizzare le relazioni e i punti di raccordo tra l’eredità storico artistica e la contemporaneità.

La mostra rimarrà aperta fino al 13 Novembre 2016.

Sedi Espositive:

Galleria Civica di Pirano

Piazza Tartini n. 3

Pirano 6330 Slovenia

Aperta dal martedì alla domenica

dalle 10.00 alle 17.00

Spazio Monfort

Obala n. 8

Portorose 6320 Slovenia

Aperto dal martedì alla domenica

dalle 10.00 alle 17.00

Per informazioni e materiale fotografico:

Galleria A plus A

San Marco 3073

Venezia 30124

Telefono 041/2770466

Email [email protected]

www.aplusa.it

SHORT CIRCUIT at STRYX, Birmingham and New Shelter Plan, Copenhagen

www.shortcircuitproject.com

Artists: Emily Mulenga, Juneau Projects and Antonio Roberts, The Cool Couple, Kensuke Koike, Ryts Monet, Honey Beckerlee, Mads Damsbo and Johan Knattrup Jensen and David Stjernholm.

Short Circuit is an ambitious international touring group show devised by Independent Curator, Aly Grimes, and consisting of nine New Media artists and collectives in an attempt to re-assess the archetypal framework of a travelling exhibition. It proposes a new experimental model of display realised in three different locations across Europe to include Birmingham, Copenhagen and Venice. The project’s structure aims to investigate new ways that exhibition spaces can present touring shows in the Digital Age and will manifest as a highly experimental research project susceptible to failure. It might glitch, trip, malfunction or ‘short circuit’.

Referencing the notions of both electrical and touring ‘circuits’, the exhibition will travel in a geographical clock-wise loop beginning at Stryx (Birmingham), to A plus A Gallery (Venice) and completing at New Shelter Plan (Copenhagen). These venues or ‘terminals’ have been selected due to their physical commonalities providing neutral exhibition environments in which to best test this new exhibition model. In addition, they all comprise experimental project spaces that foster international collaborations and regularly exhibit emerging and mid-career New Media artists.

For this project, New Media artists living in, working in or from one of the three cities have been selected, as their interdisciplinary mode of practice produces work in a pre-digitised format and offers a wide variety of technological media to test out such as; digital art, computer graphics and animation, virtual and augmented reality, internet art, interactive art, video games and 3D printing.

Short Circuit allows for many thematic connections and visual parallels to be drawn between the artists who operate in the context of an ‘increasingly digital, immaterial and reproducible world. Traversing physical and virtual thresholds, selected works explore themes continually expounded by the Digital Age such as connectivity, online culture, communication, digital language, ownership, copyright and reproducibility. The project additionally raises the question of the survival of New Media art and how it will function in twenty years’ time making the need to investigate New Media works in multiple formats especially urgent.

Stories from the Edge 2, Kunsthaus Graz

Stories from the Edge 2

Ein Ausflug zu den Identitäten der Adriaküste

Plan Vigipirate is France’s national security alert system. Created in 1978 by President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

Until 2014 the system defined four levels of threats represented by five colors: white, yellow, orange, red, scarlet. The levels called for specific security measures, including increased police or police/military mixed patrols in subways, train stations and other vulnerable locations. In February 2014 the levels were simplified to ‘vigilance’ and ‘attack alert’.

Aleksander Velišček produced this work during his residence at Cité internationale des Arts.

During his stay in in the City the November 2015 Paris attacks took place.

Museo Revoltella, Trieste

Corrispondenze d’Arte 3

From the City, Venice, Arsenale and Giardini

The 23rd course in Curatorial Practice and Contemporary Arts, School for Curatorial Studies Venice presents From the City, an itinerary exhibition around Venice focusing on the powers and the dynamics of contemporary cities.

The exhibition will take place from 25th to the 31st of May in the districts of San Marco and Castello, next to the locations of Biennale – Arsenale and Giardini. International artists will interact through public art in open spaces with the city enhancing cultures, traditions and hidden areas/treasures.

The headquarter of the exhibition will be near Arsenale – In the office of the Italian communist party – Corte Nova, Castello 2061/A – and it will be a place of talks, debates around all the selected projects, along with opportunities of dialogue with the artists invited to participate actively in the platform with proposed topics of discussion.

Perceived in two different ways, Venice is a global city on the one hand, for the collective consciousness, always appears the same, as lost in the past in its defined structures, on the other hand over the last few decades, the city has been changed drastically by economic and social dynamics.

The artists taking part to the project are: Elena Bellantoni, Paolo Brambilla, Bros, Federica di Carlo, Quiet Ensemble, Roberto Fassone, Serena Fineschi, Jukai, Sophie Ko, Kensuke Koike, Robert Montgomery, Matteo Nasini, Guido Nosari, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, Emmanuele Panzarini, Marco Samorè, Sbagliato, Miriam Secco, Vincenzo Simone, Julian Soardi, Sebastiano Sofia, Jan Vormann.

The artworks will cohabit with the urban pattern, creating a link between the people and the context. The pubblic will be guided through the Sestrieri inspired by their memories and intimate symbols. The visitors will be guided through lanes and corners looking at the environment with a different and careful point of view; German artis Jan Vormann, brings back to Venice his Dispatchwork project repairing holes and cracks on the walls, using colorful and second hand plastic-toy bricks; Robert Montgomery creates a site-specific work focusing on the refugees matter linked with Venice as an in-between space where different cultures cohabit; poster artists group Sbagliato will catch the passerby attention creating illusionary spaces; Japanese artist Kensuke Koike will hide a kaleidoscopic world behind the peephole of a private’s house door; Daniele Nicolosi, aka Bros, will present a symbolic work on the value of the art world and the city of Venice, using a series of one euro coins.

In this scenario the School for Curatorial Studies Venice intends to build an experimental laboratory and carry out a research on the theme of identity, on the lifestyle of the locals and on the new ways of living in the urban space through art.

the sitespecific exhibitions are printed and produced by pixartprinting

Fronte Invisibile, Villa Manin

The project by artist Silvia Mariotti investigates an extraordinary natural phenomenon characterized by a strong historical connotation – the artist has in fact chosen to photograph vertical caves, chasms, large sinkholes in Istria and Karst known as foibe. These sinkholes are a controversial subject, both in the public debate and in the personal exhibition of Silvia Mariotti in which sublime notions of nature intertwine with historical thought.

Photographs, videos, sculptures and sound installations convey the visitor a double sublime horror: the magnificence of the depicted nature that touches our perception, but also intends to convey historical implications. The title is a reference to memory, to the process of remembering, to casting light on a nocturnal subject through artistic research – Dawn is in fact the dawning that gradually leads to light.

In recent decades, the foibe have become a symbol of history of Italy and Istria. For the collective imagination, these caves, like Pandora’s box, seem to contain all the evils of the twentieth century. They have become the catalyst of ethnic hatred, of war crimes against the Italians and the local population, of experience of exile and of a great trauma of the nation that originated in the period between the two world wars.

Illustrious predecessors have attempted similar endeavours – in 1861, Felix Nadar was the first that took a camera into the underground of Paris, beating his colleagues in the initiative to take photographs in the sewerage and catacombs of a major metropolis. It was then that for the first time the lens was attributed with the ability to make discoveries and the art of photography was born – the photographic and sculptural project of Silvia Mariotti is just like the enterprise of Nadar – a sublime discovery.

Also visit: Villa Manin di Passariano

The exhibition was made in collaboration with IoDeposito

Prefabrick, Viafarini, Milan

We are happy to announce that the winner of the prestigious prize: Walking with Art Stonefly Art Prize 2015 is the Slovene artist Enej Gala.

The Price is promoted by Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice and Viafarini, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan.

Walking with Art Stonefly Art Prize 2015 dedicated to the artist the personal exhibition Prefabrick in Milan at Viafarini, Fabbrica del Vapore.

The 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana

The young artist Enej Gala is presenting until the 20th September 2015 at the A plus A gallery: The Stable, a solo show – a site specific work conceived for the spaces of the gallery. The successful display has persuaded Nicola Lees, curator of the 31th Ljubljana graphic Biennale, to include Enej Gala in the selection of artists. The Slovene artist, who has just ended the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and has emerged with an original research will be exposed in Ljubljana.

Geometrie del Potere, workshop with Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia

Geometries of Power, workshop with Venice Academy of Fine Arts (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia)

In April 28th, 2015, the gallery space A plus A presented an exhibition of works done by a group of artists during the workshops Geometries of Power. The initiative was curated by Carlo Di Raco, Miriam Pertegato, Nebojša Despotović e Aleksander Velišček in collaboration with the Venice Academy of Fine Arts (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia), organised at the end of March as part of the exhibition Gulivers, by Aleksander Velišček. The question of power is an always current subject and it was the starting point where the following group of artists worked from: Francesca Dall’Antonia, Anna Boscolo, Clelia Cadamuro, Giorgia Cereda, Eric Gerini, Ilaria Fasoli, Alice Montagner, Federica Partinico, Barbara Prenka, Lin Shan, Danilo Stojanovic, Maddalena Tesser, Federica Zanlucchi e Andrea Zallot.

For over a week, during the painting and drawing workshop, the artists have got to deal with a subject related to the imaginary of the historical/sociopolitical power of their home country. It was a stimulating debate enriched by the presence of participants from different countries such as Slovenian, Italian, Chinese, Kosovars, Croats, Serbs. This aspect allowed us to understand how nuances of power change, transform and manifest differently from country to country – results that were on display from April 28th at A plus A gallery.

Esperienza e Povertà della Guerra, Villa Manin

A cura di: Aurora Fonda
Project management: Arianna Grosso. La mostra è stata realizzata in collaborazione con IoDeposito

Artisti: Primož Bizjak, Aleksander Velišček, Ryts Monet, Fabio Roncato, Alvise Bittente

La Prima Guerra Mondiale, dopo ad un secolo dal suo inizio, continua a occupare un ruolo fondamentale nella memoria collettiva: un lasso di tempo estremamente breve, ma che ha radicalmente cambiato il corso della storia, uno snodo determinante nella vita di milioni di uomini, che si presentò alla loro attenzione con tutta la sua terribile forza distruttiva. Per questa ragione, nel corso del processo di ideazione del percorso espositivo, sono state ricercate immagini di archivio che rappresentassero testimonianza di alcune delle esperienze vissute nel corso di questo devastante accadimento della storia dell’umanità: gli scatti dell’epoca raccontano di ciò che la psiche degli individui ebbe modo di esperire. La violenza esplosa durante i terribili anni del 1914-1918 quando le battaglie si ingigantirono, i rumori, la forza della violenza umana e di quella dell’artiglieria (ormai utilizzata massicciamente), unite al particolare stress emotivo, fecero si che, per la prima volta, oltre alle ferite fisiche si potesse parlare di ferite psichiche.

Il cuore espositivo della mostra è individuato nella contrapposizione, in base a comuni soggetti, tra le foto dell’epoca e le opere di arte contemporanea, testimoni dei cambiamenti intercorsi nella società nel corso del secolo. La coincidenza dei soggetti offre a chi guarda l’opportunità di comprendere come e che cosa la prima guerra mondiale abbia provocato nel genere umano, e si tratta di un processo storico che manifesta conseguenze nel corso del tempo, riaffiorando alla memoria sotto forme diverse.

Gli scatti riprodotti in una lunga galleria hanno la funzione di riportarci indietro nel tempo, di risvegliare la memoria e di creare il presupposto per la comprensione di un esperienza impossibile da narrare. Ed è proprio il fatto che la narrazione venga improvvisamente a mancare ad essere uno dei cambiamenti irreversibili causati dalla guerra. Il sapere, le tradizioni che fino ad allora si trasmettevano oralmente, da persona a persona, dove l’esperienza era al centro della narrazione, con la Grande Guerra per la prima volta diventano qualche cosa di impossibile da raccontare, come nota Walter Benjamin, nel suo breve scritto intitolato per l’appunto Esperienza e povertà: “Non si poteva già allora constatare che la gente se ne tornava muta dai campi di battaglia? Non più ricca, ma più povera di esperienza comunicabile.” Ed è proprio questa ‘impossibilità di rappresentare’ che ha definitivamente e irrimediabilmente cambiato, attraverso la guerra, il nostro secolo, introducendo un approccio in cui l’esperienza tradizionale e la dimensione narrativa della realtà contano sempre meno, provocando un cambiamento di vaste proporzioni che ha avuto ripercussioni significative sui decenni a venire.

Le opere d’arte contemporanea diventano occasione di contatto e di assimilazione di quell’incomunicabile sentire, comune all’epoca, e mutuato da un secolo di trasformazioni ed elaborazioni di cui la prima guerra mondiale fu il punto di partenza.
Facendo propria l’analisi di W. Benjamin, “in un paesaggio in cui niente era rimasto immutato tranne le nuvole e nel centro – in un campo di forza di esplosioni e di correnti distruttrici – il minuto e fragile corpo umano”, protagonista diventa il singolo uomo e la sua impotenza di fronte a forze che, suo malgrado, lo trascinano attraverso un percorso costellato di immagini talmente feroci da impoverirlo e renderlo silente. Questo “silenzio” diventa quindi il nodo cruciale, l’apice di una climax, ancora più implacabile dell’artiglieria. Cosa è più violento del senso di solitudine generato da qualcosa che non si è nemmeno in grado di comunicare?

website of the event at Villa Manin

Shit and Die, Torino

Palazzo Cavour
Torino, Italy

An exhibition produced by Artissima
Curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Myriam Ben Salah and Marta Papini

Artissima Director Sarah Cosulich Canarutto invited “retired” artist Maurizio Cattelan to curate the show. He accepted the challenge—trying his hand at the exercise for the second time since the 4th Berlin Biennial in 2006 that he organized with Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick—and formed a team involving two young curators: Palais de Tokyo’s Myriam Ben Salah and longtime collaborator Marta Papini.

SHIT AND DIE has a strong title. Yes, it is a provocation, as every statement dealing with “taboo” subjects might be. But it is not only a provocation. It is also a loan from an artwork: One Hundred Live and Die (1984), by Bruce Nauman. The work is not in the show but could have been. The title is one of the many subjective references that fed the contingent ideas around the exhibition—collateral damage in a way. It sums up life reduced to its simplest and most universal elements, which is exactly what the show is about. Torino, its history and its stories are treated like signs that, when translated through the syntax of contemporary art, shape into a wider statement on the complexity of human beings and the torments of life.

The exhibition is divided into seven sections. Each section is related to a specific object that functions as a thematic anchor and that was sourced from both established institutions and uncanny collections in the city. Among them are Olivetti’s residential units in Ivrea; the Museum of Criminal Anthropology “Cesare Lombroso”; the Museum of Human Anatomy “Luigi Orlando”; Casa Mollino; the Museum of Risorgimento; the Gaia Collection; GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea; the MUSEION Foundation/Enea Righi Collection; the Ettore Fico Foundation; and the Aldo Mondino Foundation.

Artworks have been chosen to interact with these objects, sometimes through deliberately fortunate affinities and sometimes through more elaborate reflections. In both cases, the interaction between objects and artworks creates extra levels of meaning that forge a narrative: at times it seems arbitrary and non-exhaustive and at others it shapes as a cohesive tale inhabited by Torino’s characters—historical and contemporary—and by their obsessions, their fears, their vices and fetishes that are, in the end, our obsessions, our fears, our vices and fetishes.

Thus the space turns into a surrealist dream—or nightmare—where Contessa di Castiglione rubs elbows with Nietzsche’s ghost, while more than 60 artists occupy what used to be the house of Camillo Benso Conte de Cavour, invisible but still present head of household.”

The exhibition features five site-specific projects including more than 20 specially commissioned works.

The list of artists includes Lutz Bacher, Davide Balula, Will Benedict, Lynda Benglis, Guy Ben-Ner, Julius von Bismarck, Thomas Braida & Valerio Nicolai & Emiliano Troco & Aleksander Veliscek, Vittorio Brodmann, Valerio Carrubba, Contessa di Castiglione, George Condo, Martin Creed, Enzo Cucchi, Eric Doeringer, Tracey Emin, Valie Export, Stelios Faitakis, Lara Favaretto, Roberto Gabetti & Aimaro Oreglia d’Isola, Tim Gardner, Ramin & Rokni Haerizadeh, Petrit Halilaj, Jonathan Horowitz, Dorothy Iannone, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Chao Kao, Myriam Laplante, Zoe Leonard, Natalia LL, Sarah Lucas, Tala Madani, Carlo Mollino, Aldo Mondino, Nicolas Party, Yan Pei-Ming, Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini, Carol Rama, Markus Schinwald, Jim Shaw, Dasha Shishkin, Roman Signer, Alexandre Singh, Sylvia Sleigh, Claire Tabouret, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Ida Tursic & Wilfried Mille, Andra Ursuta, Iris Van Dongen, Maurizio Vetrugno, Francesco Vezzoli, Aleksandra Waliszewska, Matthew Watson and Jakub Julian Ziolkowski.

Press release