Venice 2013 - Arsenale:
55th International Art Biennale; National Pavilions – Italy. The Italian Pavilion presents Vice Versa, an ideal journey through Italian art of today, an itinerary that
tells of identities, history and landscapes, real and imaginary, exploring the
complexity and layers that characterize the country's artistic vicissitudes.
The Italian Pavilion, is curated by Bartolomeo
Pietromarchi, who describes the exhibition as, "A portrait of
recent art, read as an atlas of themes and attitudes in dialogue with the
historical legacy and current affairs, with both a local and international
dimension. A cross-dialogue of correspondences, derivations and differences
between acclaimed maestros and artists of later generations. An unusual
topography, that permits a reevaluation of some basic trajectories in recent
Italian art, a vice versa 1
retracing of forgotten paths, the healing of cultural amnesia and gives new
visibility to solitary authors." In a dialogue between artist and artist,
room and room, the exhibition presents
works that have mostly been created specifically for the occasion, twelve out
of fourteen, and is proposed as a platform for reflection on the
characteristics and contradictions of Italian culture, returning that vital
complexity to our recent art which is created out of intuitions and
contradictions in which the game of vice
versa is one of its fundamental elements, thus asserting the status of
originality and international importance that it deserves.
Italian Pavilion:
Francesco Arena – Massa Sepolta, 2013. Francesco Arena begins with social and
political episodes that have characterized the Italian news for the last
decades. The fact, which are too often concealed or hidden, are reinterpreted
through a sculptural approach using synthetic forms.
Seen inside the Italian
Pavilion archistar Alessandro Mendini.
Italian Pavilion: Massimo
Bartolini – Due, 2013. The artist's poetic is developed through different
languages, giving life to works that are always closely connected to their settings.
Through the use of diverse elements, Bartolini acts on the space, destroying
the classic space-time coordinates and creating new and unexpected dimensions. The
viewer, with his senses and his perceptions, plays a determining role in these
works. He explores new points of view and acquires a different sensibility in
front of objects and spaces, reinterpreting them through new forms where the
individual embraces the entire world.
Italian Pavilion:
Francesca Grilli – Fe2, O3’, Ossido Ferrico, 2013. Grilli’s experimentation explores the realm
of sound, in its multiple expressive and perceptive implications. Opting to
utilize the language of performance, her works move from private and personal
elements into spectators' space of action, drawing them into an ambiguous and
unsettling territory. In fact, two central aspects can be traced in her
research: sound processing in all its forms and registers, and the spectators'
space of action. If the first is a linguistic element with infinite
possibilities of expressive modes, the second is a boundless space of physical
and emotional involvement for the viewer.
Seen inside the Italian
Pavilion Vittorio Sgarbi and artist Luca Vitone.
Italian Pavilion:
Elisabetta Benassi - The Dry Salvages, 2013. Making references to cultural,
political and artistic traditions of the Twentieth Century as well as to
controversial contemporary themes, Elisabetta Benassi's work dwells in the
difficult space of our present. Her work has recurrent forms such as the use of
installation, video and photography that together as devices create strong
emotional suggestions and a different moral focus in the viewer. Underlying her
work, we can always find a question about the contemporary condition and
identity, specifically their relationship to the historic past, and a cue to
reconsider it, looking at it against the light. Reconstructing a different way
of reading reality and broadening the field of consciousness are thus the
fundamental operations of her work.
Italian Pavilion: Flavio
Favelli – La Cupola, 2013 and Rome Bone China, 2013. Falvio Favelli’s work is
marked by continuous shifts between personal and collective memory, and poetic
adaptation of autobiographical elements. La Cupola is a monumental installation that originated from a liberal
interpretation of a familiar element and the re-assemblage of its parts,
inspired by the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The architecture assumes an important role in
the artist’s memories, as a destination of cultural trips taken during his
childhood that provided an escape from everyday routines. He also intervenes on twelve vintage plates,
applying to them the profile of the dome, transforming it into a new image,
thus concretely reflecting the process that underlies the development of memory
and its cancellation.
Flavio Favelli
Italian Pavilion: Giulio
Paolini – Quadri di un Esposizione, 2013. His artistic efforts deal with themes
that question the concept, manifestation and vision of the artwork. From his
first investigations surrounding the constituent elements of painting, his
attention has been oriented toward the act of exhibition, the consideration of
the work as a catalogue of his own possibilities, as well as the figure of the
author and his lack of contact with the work, which preexists and transcends
it.
Seen inside the Italian
Pavilion Olle Granath.
Seen outside the Italian
Pavilion photographer Maria Mulas.