press release - PALAZZO delle ESPOSIZIONI

16TH ART QUADRIENNALE
”Altri tempi, altri miti”
After eight years the Art Quadriennale is returning to the Palazzo delle Esposizioni
in the autumn and winter of 2016 with an exhibition entitled "Altri tempi, altri miti" [Other
times, other legends]. The exhibition places itself within a great historic tradition,
revitalized by innovative production formulas and unconventional exhibition features so as
to effectively carry out its mandate: mapping out contemporary visual arts in Italy.
FIGURES
Two promoters and organizers. Eleven curators for ten exhibition sections,
selected by an external panel of five interdisciplinary experts. Ninety-nine artists. One
hundred and fifty works, including sixty new pieces, almost all produced within the last
two years. One programme of fringe events around the capital, focusing on contemporary
Italian art and involving twenty-five museums, foundations and private galleries, already
underway. One international panel of museum directors. One overseas roadshow which
will start by visiting the Berlin Biennale and Art Basel. A budget of two million euros, half
of which is self-funded.
These are the starting figures for the Art Quadriennale, the only institutional
exhibition devoted to Italian contemporary art. It has been relaunched thanks to a plan put
into place by the Minister for Cultural Assets and Activities, Dario Franceschini, and will
include some highly innovative features introduced by the Chairman of the Fondazione La
Quadriennale di Roma, Franco Bernabè.
The exhibition is a Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma and Azienda Speciale
Palaexpo co-production. The two promoters and organizers have worked together to
establish the main objectives for this year: to make a significant contribution to identifying
and promoting the most innovative and original expressions of Italian art from 2000
onwards, to give a voice to multiple different languages and to release the potential of the
new generations. Another key objective will be to raise awareness of Italian contemporary
art in schools through intensive educational activities.
THE CURATORS
The 16th Quadriennale confirms the tradition of entrusting multiple curators with
the task of looking at the artistic present, but also introduces new exhibition construction
methods.
The main innovation regarded the method for selecting the curators, which took
more than six months. A broad-spectrum call for project on a national level, assessed by
an external interdisciplinary panel, replaced the traditional curatorial committee
appointed by the Board of Directors.
The call, launched in early September 2015, was targeted at sixty-nine curators
who made their debuts and became established after 2000, and who are therefore of a
similar age to most of the artists involved. The decision to entrust the 16th Quadriennale
to curators mostly in their 30s and 40s was accompanied by the decision to involve
production companies established in the 2000s in the visual communication, catalogue
and documentation, thus producing a coherent account of the style that marked the start
of the new millennium.
The curators were not only selected on the basis of their curricula, but above all
on the basis of an analysis of the exhibition projects developed specifically for the 16th
Quadriennale.
In late January 2016, the panel comprised of the writer Marco Belpoliti, the
architect Nicola Di Battista, the art historian Mariagrazia Messina, the artist Giuseppe
Penone and the art critic Angela Vettese, picked the following curators from among the
thirty-eight projects received: Simone Ciglia and Luigia Lonardelli, Michele D’Aurizio,
Luigi Fassi, Simone Frangi, Luca Lo Pinto, Matteo Lucchetti, Marta Papini, Cristiana
Perrella, Domenico Quaranta, and Denis Viva.
Although they all have different educational and professional backgrounds, they
have all influenced the contemporary cultural debate in some way, and not just in Italy.
The panel opted for the projects that, together, seemed to offer the best vision of
the expressive wealth of Italian art over the last fifteen years, while also featuring
significant cultural references and an overview of the education of the Italian artists and
curators of recent generations.
CONCEPT
The 16th Quadriennale focuses on visual arts in Italy post-2000 under the title
“Altri tempi, altri miti”. Every era has its own symbols and narrations that pervade the
imagination and shape individual and collective behaviour. The 2000s also comply with
this dynamic, although the title of the 16th Quadriennale has a specific connotation.
Other times, other legends is an expression that the exhibition curators have borrowed
from the writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli (1955‒91), in order to summarize the content and
structural conditions of this year’s event. Tondelli uses it in the summary of the collection
Un weekend postmoderno. Cronache dagli anni Ottanta, published in 1990 and
considered by many a cult work for the generations born during that period. The
collection offers a fragmented account of Italy, a dizzying sarabande of journeys around
the peninsula, whose innermost vibes are captured along with its more manifest
characteristics.
Similarly, the 16th Quadriennale is conceived as a changing map of artistic and
cultural production in contemporary Italy and is divided into ten exhibition sections, each
exploring a specific theme, method, approach or genealogy that connotes the art
projects. In the words of the curators: “The studies proposed in the ten exhibition sections are pervaded by the tension
generated by the comparison between the institutionalized narratives of Italian art of the
past and an examination of the present that is currently being defined and can therefore
not be categorized as anything but other. Difference therefore emerges as an inevitable
condition upon which this year’s Quadriennale is founded and is offered to spectators as a
tool for reading the works, inviting them to interpret the exhibition sections as
embodiments of artistic and cultural discourses that communicate with the past through
strategies of critical re-reading, innovation and overcoming."
Each section of the 16th Quadriennale is entrusted to a curator (or to two
curators in one case) and puts forward suggested interpretations of our contemporary
visual culture in relation to the international context, translating them with highly
diversified writing solutions and display devices.
In “I Would Prefer Not to”, Simone Ciglia and Luigia Lonardelli present a selection
of artists who illustrate a widespread approach to art today, which can be traced back to a
withdrawal and a resistance to codes of identification. With “Hey, you!”, Michele D’Aurizio
presents portrait art as a language that can be used to explore the most recent events in
our art because of its ability to convey a combination of the individual and social sphere.
Luigi Fassi presents “Democracy in America”, inviting us to examine certain aspects of
contemporary Italian history by re-reading the thoughts of Tocqueville. In “Italian
Oresteia” Simone Frangi turns his eye to the cultural, political and economic aspects of
our country, with an analogical and choral rewriting of certain parts of a film by Pasolini.
Luca Lo Pinto probes the subjects of time, identity and memory in “With Your Eyes Shut,
They’re Wide Open”, interpreting them in constant metamorphosis within the relationship
between the individual and society. In “Rural De Rerum”, Matteo Lucchetti focuses on
rurality as a real and speculative space in which to describe and reimagine the system of
relationships between the natural and man-made environment, even in its historic depth.
Marta Papini proposes an installation in progress in “The State of Things”, in which the
rotation of highly diverse artists establishes a dialectic space between the individual
studies and between them and the public. In “The Second Time” Cristiana Perrella
identifies a group of artists brought together by an interest in the use of materials packed
with past histories, which they reinterpret in unexpected combinations, in keeping with an
ethos of transformation. Domenico Quaranta analyses the impact of digital media on
various aspects of life, experience, imagination and story-telling in “Cyphoria”. Lastly, in
“Peripherals” Denis Viva identifies polycentrism as an original structural condition of our
territory, which also permeates our visual culture.
Works by ninety-nine artists will be on display, many of whom became
established in the 2000s. They will be accompanied by pieces from a number of artists
from previous generations, deemed to have influenced the development of some of the
most interesting expressive trends in existence today.
The exhibition layout does not require visitors to follow a specific itinerary.
Starting from the central Rotonda, which during the exhibition will play host to
performances, meetings and screenings that form an integral part of the exhibition
projects presented by a number of curators, visitors are free to begin their visit in any one
of the ten exhibition rooms.
PRODUCTION
50% of the 2 million euro budget for the 16th Quadriennale is covered by a loan
from the General Directorate for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Outskirts
of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities, while the remaining 50% comes
from the promoting partners and sponsors.
The 16th Quadriennale marks the start of a new form of public-private
collaboration that differs from the past, building partnerships based on specific ad hoc
projects.
Eni, the main sponsor of the exhibition, renews its commitment to culture with a
contemporary art communication project targeted at young people aged 16 to 25, with a
promotional educational display and a permanent installation at the Palazzo delle
Esposizioni.
BMW Italia, sponsor of the 16th Quadriennale, celebrates its 50th birthday and
the 100th anniversary of the BMW Group by reserving a surprise for visitors at the end of
their visit to the exhibition, demonstrating the cultural philosophy of BMW, which
provides ongoing support for major artistic events.
AXA Italia and AXA Art support the 16th Quadriennale with a partnership focused
on promoting the new artistic generations, starting with Art Basel 2016, officially
partnered by AXA Art and culminating in the annual forum of AXA Italia.
illy confirms its ongoing support and commitment to contemporary art, by
participating in the 16th Quadriennale with an important prize.
Fondazione Altagamma, which unites businesses from the top of the cultural and
creative industry, which promote Italian uniqueness and lifestyle through their intrinsic
links with art and culture, is acting as an ambassador for the 16th Quadriennale.
L’Hotel de Russie supports the 16th Quadriennale and, through the other Rocco
Forte hotels, helps to promote it in various cities throughout Italy and around the world.
Ferrovie dello Stato is the official carrier for the 16th Quadriennale and will
dedicate a special issue of La Freccia Arte magazine to the event.
EXHIBITION SECTIONS
AT THE 16TH QUADRIENNALE
I Would Prefer Not to / Preferirei di no
Esercizi di sottrazione nell’ultima arte italiana
Curated by Simone Ciglia and Luigia Lonardelli
I would prefer not to is the famous response with which the scrivener Bartleby, protagonist of the tale of the
same name by Herman Melville (1853), progressively denies himself an active life. A tireless clerk working for a
Wall Street attorney, one day he suddenly refuses to do his job for no apparent reason, sparking a crescendo
that culminates in his imprisonment and death.
The inextricable node of negation, resistance and alienation embodied by the protagonist has been associated
with artistic creation within the sphere of the reflections of Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben. Melville’s
literary creation embodies “unpredictability”, “openness to the unplanned”, “skewed moves” and “surprise”:
characteristics that seemed to provide a potential key to reading the history of Italian art over the last fifteen
years. Indeed, it seems to want to withdraw from an identity that has perhaps only ever been imagined. “I
Would Prefer Not to” is based on the ascertainment of the episodic, fragmentary and sometimes slightly
unstable nature of the latest artistic production.
The new millennium has extended the domain of precariousness from the social level to the existential level.
Precariously founded on the weakness of historical theories, the figure of the artist has appeared divided
between professionalization and impossible flights, often at the very limit of invisibility. This approach to
subtraction helps to create a climate that crosses the generations and is translated into choices targeted at
peripheral and secluded existential levels. The exhibited artists claim the right to move away from the ongoing
jumble of facts and things without losing awareness of their personal and collective experience. Just like the
scrivener Bartlebey, they prefer not to, refusing in a way that is no longer contesting or resisting, but is simply
a negation of the possibility to choose.
ARTISTS
Mario Airò
(Born in Pavia in 1961. Lives and works in Milan)
Rosa Barba
(Born in Agrigento in 1972. Lives and works in Berlin)
Massimo Bartolini
(Born in Cecina, Livorno,in 1962. Lives and works in Cecina)
Gianfranco Baruchello
(Born in Livorno in 1924. Lives and works in Roma and Paris)
Claire Fontaine
(A Paris-based collective founded in 2004)
Matteo Fato
(Born in Pescara in 1979. Lives and works in Pescara)
Anna Franceschini
(Born in Pavia in 1979. Lives and works in Milan)
Chiara Fumai
(Born in Rome in 1978. Lives and works in Milan)
Invernomuto
(Group founded in 2003 by Simone Bertuzzi, born in Piacenza in 1983, and Simone Trabucchi, born in Piacenza
in 1982. Live and work in Milan and Vernasca)
Cesare Pietroiusti
(Born in Rome in 1955. Lives and works in Rome)
Nicola Samorì
(Born in Forlì in 1977. Lives and works in Bagnacavallo)
Luca Trevisani
(Born in Verona in 1979. Lives and works in Berlin)
Luca Vitone
(Born in Genoa in 1964. Lives and works in Berlin)
Simone Ciglia (Pescara, 1982) has a PhD in History of Contemporary Art from the “Sapienza” University of Rome. He
focuses mainly on late 20th century art and art criticism. He has curated various exhibitions and has written for
catalogues and specialist magazines. He is a member of the Zanichelli editorial team, and worked with them on a school
text book about the history of art. He has written some of the entries in Appendix IX of the Enciclopedia Italiana
Treccani. He has worked as an assistant researcher for MAXXI – the National Museum of Arts of the 21st Century in
Rome and is a correspondent for several magazines, including “Flash Art”. He is currently subject expert for “History of
Contemporary Art” at the “Sapienza” University and the Roma Tre University in Rome.
Luigia Lonardelli (Bari, 1982) graduated in Florence in 2004 with a project supervising the archiving of the studio of
artist Mario Mariotti, which was acquired by the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato. The following year
she took a Masters course in Management for Curators at the Valle Giulia Faculty of Architecture in Rome. She
graduated in 2009 from the Specialization School in Siena with a study of the colour photography of Ugo Mulas. In
2012 she presented her doctoral thesis on the activities of the Incontri Internazionali d’Arte association during the
1970s, which is in the process of publication. Since 2005 she has collaborated with the Office for Contemporary Art,
with responsibility for promoting Italian art and supervising the preparatory work for the opening of the MAXXI, where
she began work as a researcher in 2010. Since 2011 she has been working in the curatorial department of the MAXXI,
curating exhibitions dedicated to Marisa Merz (2012) and Alighiero Boetti (2013), among others.
—
Ehi, voi!
curated by Michele D’Aurizio
The Hey, you! section of the 16th Art Quadriennale proposes the idea of exploring contemporary Italian art
through the language of portraiture. This section presents self-portraits and portraits of figures from within the
artist’s community (friends, former fellow pupils, partners, etc.), produced in a variety of media, such as
painting, sculpture, photography, video and performance, but also in the form of artist novels, diaries and
personal archives.
By bringing together works broadly interpreted as representations of the self, “Hey, you!” encourages a
progressive dive down beneath the “surface” of art into the human affairs of the artist. However, this section
does not aim to minimize the examination of the work itself in favour of an analysis of the social figure of its
creator, but instead sets out to present a blend of these two narratives. In this sense, the portrait is a genre
that intrinsically affirms a conformity between the life and work of the artist, proposing a reflection of the self
through the act of producing art. “Hey, you!” is a landscape of faces and bodies ‒ as well as characters and
avatars ‒ that invited the spectator to share in the artist’s narrative of the process of producing art, of living by
producing art, of existing by producing art.
Italian art, especially over recent years, is full of works that both critics and the wider public have described as
cryptic and hermetic, ambiguous and camp. These works are often “elusive”, “indescribable” and
“incommunicable”. In response to these interpretations, “Hey, you!” suggests that in the genre of portraiture
these characteristics of Italian art can be seen in a “positive” light because, if we look more closely, they are
inseparable from the very language of portrait art. In fact, the portrait is always an act of intimacy and yet, at
the same time, even in the most lifelike portrayals, it is fundamental to produce an unnatural image mediated
by the codes of representation.
Describing the work and life of the artist within the context of an institutional event such as the Art
Quadriennale means not only contributing to the debate on art, but also assessing the state of health of an
entire cultural system. The section title refers to artists who experience the invitation to take part in the Art
Quadriennale as a real “calling”. However, if it is targeted at the organizers, curators and spectators ‒
surrounded by the artists, who are the real figures in question ‒ that “hey, you!” conveys an invitation to
reassess the role that each of them plays in contemporary cultural production.
ARTISTS
Alessandro Agudio
(Born in Milano in 1982. Lives in Milan)
Francesco Cagnin
(Born in Zero Branco, Treviso, in 1988. Lives in Losanna)
Costanza Candeloro
(Born in Bologna in 1990. Lives in Geneva)
DER Sabina (Sabina Grasso)
(Born in Genoa in 1975. Lives in Milan)
Gasconade
(founded in 2011 in Milan)
Alberto Garutti
(Born in Galbiate, Lecco, in 1948. Lives in Milan)
Massimo Grimaldi
(Born in Taranto in 1974. Lives in Milan)
Dario Guccio
(Born in Milan in 1988. Lives in Milan)
Corrado Levi
(Born in Turin in 1936. Lives in Milan)
Marcello Maloberti
(Born in Codogno, Lodi, in 1966. Lives in Milan)
Michele Manfellotto
(Born in Rome in 1977. Lives in Rome)
Beatrice Marchi
(Born in Gallarate, Varese in 1986. Lives in Hamburg)
Diego Marcon
(Born in Busto Arsizio, Varese in 1985. Lives in Milan)
Momentum
(founded in 2015 in Milan)
Francesco Nazardo
(Born in Milan in 1985. Lives in Milan)
Giulia Piscitelli
(Born in Naples in 1965. Lives in Naples)
Carol Rama
(Turin, 1918-2015)
Andrea Romano
(Born in Milan in 1984. Lives in Milan)
Davide Stucchi
(Born in Milan in 1988. Lives in Milan)
Patrick Tuttofuoco
(Born in Milan in 1974. Lives in Berlin)
Francesco Vezzoli
(Born in Brescia in 1971. Lives in Milan)
Italo Zuffi
(Born in Imola, Bologna in 1969. Lives in Milan)
Michele D'Aurizio (Chieti, 1985) is editor-in-chief of the international edition of “Flash Art”. He is also co-founder of the
Gasconade project space in Milan. He has curated exhibitions at several galleries, including: the Galerie Balice Hertling
in Paris; the Boatos Fine Arts in San Paolo; the Ellis King in Dublin; the Flash Art NY Desk in New York; the Fluxia in
Milan; and the Grand Century in New York. He was curator-in-residence in 2012 at the Pastificio Cerere Foundation in
Rome and co-curated the 2010-11 programme for the “Kaleidoscope” project space in Milan with Eva Fabbris. He has
been Associate Editor of “Kaleidoscope” and editorial assistant for “Mousse”. He has had articles published in “Abitare”,
“Flash Art”, “Kaleidoscope”, “Mousse” and “Spike”. He obtained an MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at the Nuova
Accademia di Belle Arti – NABA in Milan, where he now lives.
—
La democrazia in America
Curated by Luigi Fassi
This exhibition project came about as the result of an urgent need shared with a group of Italian artists born in
the 1970s and 1980s to reflect on certain problematic aspects of the history of contemporary Italy, from its
uncertain development as a democratic republic during the post-war period, to its stop-start relationship with
the history of united Europe, its instability and the complex geopolitical transformations currently taking place.
The exhibition project intends to explore some of these crucial aspects and is based upon the shared reading,
both by the artists and the curator, of a particular source of inspiration for reflecting indirectly on the country,
the essay Democracy in Americapublished by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835.
Written as a travel journal and describing his discovery of new American democracy, Tocqueville’s Democracy
in America examines the great modern European dilemma at the time: the advent of democratic man and the
unstoppable drive towards égalité des conditions, equal rights and equal conditions for all citizens, which was
first officially manifested in the New World. Tocqueville’s ideas and the reception of his work have both always
been strongly linked with the history of Italian culture, from his visit to Sicily in 1826 to the first Italian
translation of the French text of De la démocratie en Amérique in 1884. In no other country has Tocqueville’s
text been commented upon, published and translated to the extent it has in Italy, where it has accompanied
some of the decisive moments of the country’s cultural history.
The exhibition project focuses on the key themes of Tocqueville’s thinking ‒ the relationship between freedom
and equality, the role of political parties, the function of the free press, the link between individual wealth and
political equality ‒ in order to lead to the creation of new works and new reflections by each artist. The final
aim is to read the reflections of Democracy in America from a contemporary Italian perspective in order to
trigger new ideas, theories and interpretations by the participating artists regarding present-day Italy and its
recent history.
ARTISTS
Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck
(Born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1972. Lives and works in Berlin).
Nicolò Degiorgis
(Born in Bozen in 1985. Lives and works in Bozen)
Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio
(Born in Turin in 1978. Live and work in Turin)
Adelita Husni-Bey
(Born in Milan in 1985. Lives and works in New York).
Renato Leotta
(Born in Turin in 1982. Lives and works in Turin)
Luigi Fassi (Turin, 1977) is Visual Arts Curator of the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria. From 2009 to 2012 he
was artistic director of the ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum in Bolzano. He was the Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at
the Whitney Museum ISP in New York in 2008-09, and has organized exhibitions internationally for various institutions,
including: the Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden; the Kunsthalle Helsinki, Finland; the Pori Art Museum, Finland; the ISCP,
New York, USA; the Prague Biennial, Prague, Czech Republic; the GAM, Turin; the Museo Marino Marini, Florence; and
the Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples. He has had articles published in “Artforum”, “Camera Austria”, “Mousse”, “Flash
Art”, “Art Asia Pacific”, “Site” and “Klat” and is the author of the books Clement Greenberg. L’avventura del modernismo
(Johan & Levi, 2011) and Time Out of Joint: Recall and Evocation in Recent Art (Yale University Press, 2009). Since 2010
he has been curator of the Present Future at Artissima, in Turin. In 2016 he will be a fellow on the Artist Research Trip
Program in New York.
—
Orestiade italiana
Curated by Simone Frangi
The curatorial project Orestiade italiana aims to group together a series of Italian art studies around an
interpretative theory. These studies take a critical and highly analytical approach to the issues of the Italian
context, analysed from a cultural, economic, social and political point of view.
The methodological core of this project is an analogical and choral “rewriting” of the key parts of Pier Paolo
Pasolini’s Appunti per un’Orestiade Africana (1970), which takes on the sketchy form and theoretical hubs that
have emerged from this highly complex and underestimated film in order to impress different lines of research
upon Italian “national domesticity” and on the dynamics with which it unfurls within a transnational and global
perspective.
Orestiade italiana aims to capture the propaedeutic and recognitional character of Pasolini’s project, with
which it establishes a dialogue and shares the decision to use the legend of Orestes ‒ interpreted as a “long
preparation for catharsis” ‒ as inspiration for exploring a group of practices that critically assume the
advantages and disadvantages of the contemporary democratic plan and its ideological derivations.
Winding its way through the webs of the multiple relationships between artistic practice and cultural research
on the Italian art scene, Orestiade italiana chooses to focus on a series of contributions that explore a
heterogeneous catalogue of geopolitical issues: an ambivalent link between a documentary approach and
cultural orientalism in anthropological and ethnological practice; nomadism and identity migrations; Italian
colonial issues, focusing on the impact of decolonization and the opening of the “post-colony” within the
political imagination; study of latent conflicts and European stasis; microfascism and social normalization;
turbo-capitalist and accelerationist dynamics; political and symbolic resistance.
“Notes in the margin” developed by Toni Hildebrandt in partnership with Alessandro Di Pietro.
ARTISTS
Riccardo Arena
(Born in Milan in 1979. Lives and works in Milan)
Blauer Hase
(founded in 2007, Venice)
Danilo Correale
(Born in Naples in 1982. Lives and works in New York)
Curandi Katz on Masako Matsushita
(Valentina Curandi, born in Cattolica, Rimini in 1980; Nathaniel Katz, born in Woodstock (CA) in 1975. Live and
work in Düsseldorf)
(Masako Matsushita, born in Pesaro in 1986. Lives and works in Pesaro)
Nicolò Degiorgis
(Born in Bozen in 1985. Lives and works in Bozen)
Alessandra Ferrini
(Born in Bagno a Ripoli, Florence in 1984. Lives and works in London)
Francesco Fonassi
(Born in Brescia in 1986. Lives and works in Brescia)
Invernomuto
(Group founded in 2003 by Simone Bertuzzi, born in Piacenza in 1983, and Simone Trabucchi, born in Piacenza
in 1982. Live and work in Milan and Vernasca)
Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo
(Maria Iorio, Born in Lausanne in 1975; Raphaël Cuomo, born in Delémont, Switzerland in 1976. Live and work
in Berlin)
Vincenzo Latronico and Armin Linke
(Vincenzo Latronico, born in Rome in 1984. Lives and works in Turin;
Armin Linke, born in Milan in 1966. Lives and works in Berlin)
Giovanni Morbin
(Born in Valdagno, Vicenza in 1956. Lives and works in Cornedo Vicentino)
Giulio Squillacciotti and Camilla Insom
(Giulio Squillacciotti, born in Rome in 1982. Lives and works in Milan; Camilla Insom, born in Rome in 1983.
Lives and works in Rome)
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli and Federico Lodoli
(Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, born in Rome in 1982. Lives and works in Rome; Federico Lodoli, 1982, lives and
works in Paris)
Diego Tonus
(Born in Pordenone in 1984. Lives and works in Amsterdam and London)
Simone Frangi (Como, 1982) has a French-Italian PhD in “Aesthetics and Theory of Art” and is a senior researcher in
Philosophy and in Aesthetics and Theory of Art at the Centre National des Universités (Paris, FR). He is a curator and
cultural researcher, and is artistic director of the Viafarini non-profit organization for the promotion of artistic research
(Milan). Since 2013 he has been co-curator of the Live Works - Performance Act Award (Centrale Fies, Trento, IT) and
since 2014 co-director of the nomad research programme A Natural Oasis? A Transnational Research Program run by
the Little Constellation - Network of Contemporary Art, which focuses on Geo-cultural Micro-areas and Small States of
Europe. Since 2013 he has been Professor of Theory and Current Issues in Contemporary Art at the Academy of Applied
Arts and Design in Grenoble. In 2015 he was one of the five curators of the 10th Premio Furla award for Contemporary
Art organized by the Furla Foundation. His recent curatorial projects include: Stage as a Social Platform (Teatro
Continuo di Burri, Milan 2016); Pierre Michelon. Une histoire des décolonisations, telles qu’elles n'ont pas pu être, telles
qu’elles ne sont pas encore (Centre d'Art Bastille, Grenoble 2016); Posthypnotic (Museion, Bolzano, 2015);
Documentarism (Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella 2015); Kapwani Kiwanga (Viafarini, Milan 2015); Notes on Orientalism.
Video Practices at the Age of Radical Difference (Viafarini, 2015); Performance Labour (Zhdk, Zurich 2014); Géographies
Nomades (ENSBA, Paris 2012); Room, Freedom (Rosascape, Paris 2012).
—
A occhi chiusi, gli occhi sono straordinariamente aperti
Curated by Luca Lo Pinto
This exhibition project, whose title echoes a phrase by Merisa Merz, brings together a series of works ‒ some
brand new, others already produced ‒ by artists of different styles, ages and approaches. All these pieces
share their powerful suggestion of a visual and narrative landscape from which a personal way of looking at
the world emerges, which is both singular and universal. This scenario is confronted with the trauma of history
performed through images, sounds, objects and sculptures that speak a labyrinthine, allegorical and
metaphorical language within our present.
Time, memory and identity in continuous metamorphosis, brought into question in the relationship of the
individual with society. Works like splinters of an imaginary, ephemeral icon, which symbolically indicate a
possible, fleeting portrayal of the approaches of a certain present-day Italian art.
The bulb out of which the exhibition unfurls is an object. A small fragment of painted glass with words written
on it by the brush of Emilio Villa. We can see that the words are in Greek, but they are almost illegible. Being
unable to decode the meaning of the words, we can still read them as an image. Villa’s fragment is a trace, a
complex sign to be interpreted, included in a history in which it is difficult to understand where to position
oneself. The exhibition, and the works that comprise it, should not be considered a tool for illustrating a theory
but a subject to be explored in an ongoing process of associations and disassociations. An archaeological find
from the present that encompasses a medley of identity, personality and stories in movement. The
protagonists are works where the words can change into images and vice versa, in which the objects can
speak. Unstable forms that change into others like the captions of a story that unfolds before the eyes and
minds of spectators, giving them the opportunity to mark out its plot. Living languages that can communicate
with the experience evoked by the place where they are talking. The exhibition is conceived as a vision device
in which all the works, curled up like hedgehogs, can slowly open out to see the light and look into the eyes of
the spectators.
The works on display show all the signs of a lived experience. The bodies that have lent against Martino
Gamper’s back rests. The mark of Emilio Villa left by a brush on glass. The images reflected in the surfaces of
the sculptures by Nicola Martini. The memory of Giorgio Andreottà Calò ripped from the skin of the polaroids.
Roberto Cuoghi’s dreamlike civilization of Pazazu. Visitors to the 1966 Quadriennale evoked in the images by
Rä di Martino. Urban landscapes translated in the sounds of Stargate.
ARTISTS
Giorgio Andreotta Calò
(Born in Venice in 1979. Lives and works in Venice and Amsterdam
Roberto Cuoghi
(Born in Modena in 1973. Lives and works in Milan)
Rä di Martino
(Born in Rome in 1975. Lives and works in Rome and Turin)
Martino Gamper
(Born in Merano, Bozen in 1971. Lives and works in London)
Nicola Martini
(Born in Florence in 1984. Lives and works in Paris)
Stargate (aka Lorenzo Senni)
(Born in Cesena in 1983. Lives and works in Milan)
Emilio Villa
(Milan, 1914 – Rieti, 2003)
Luca Lo Pinto (Rome, 1981) lives and works in Vienna and Rome. He is currently curator of the Kunsthalle in Vienna. He
is founder and editorial director of the “NERO” magazine and publishing house. He has curated several exhibitions,
including: Charlemagne Palestine (Kunsthalle Wien and Witte de With); Individual Stories (Kunsthalle Wien); Function
Follows Vision, Vision Follows Reality (Kunsthalle Wien); Le Regole del gioco (Fondazione Achille Castiglioni); Pierre
Bismuth (Kunsthalle Wien); Trapped in the Closet (Carnegie Library/FRAC Champagne Ardenne); Antigrazioso (Palais de
Tokyo, Paris); Luigi Ontani-AnderSennoSogno (Museo H.C. Andersen); D’après Giorgio (Giorgio and Isa de Chirico
Foundation). He has had articles published in numerous catalogues and international magazines and has edited books
by artists such as Olaf Nicolai, Luigi Ontani, Emilio Prini, Alexandre Singh and Mario Garcia Torres. In 2012 he edited the
publication Documenta 1955-2012. The Endless Story of Two Lovers. In 2014 he developed an editorial project based on
the concept of a time capsule with the title 2014.
—
De Rerum Rurale
Curated by Matteo Lucchetti
Italy is a country with some of the highest land use in Europe, a prime example of a post-rural landscape in
which the boundaries between urban and agricultural have disappeared to an extent almost directly
proportional to the expansion of speculative land management policies. At the same time, the weakening of
the great national and supranational narratives has made way for new localisms, which express new
relationships of strength between individuals and the various communities to which they belong, expressing
new negotiations on the use of spaces and the rules that govern them.
In De Rerum Rurale the concept of rurality is understood as zero degree manmade space, a place in which the
creation of laws and their application find themselves in a constant state of negotiation and flexibility, an ideal
dimension in which new communities can constitute themselves and illustrate new interpretations and uses of
what we consider common assets. Within the exhibition space the term rural becomes permeable and
transitory in meaning, allowing the works on display to recount different possible interpretations. The “rural
things” of the title can therefore be recognized both in the evocations of the agricultural world, and in the
scenarios of the exploitation of resources and the people who cultivate our lands today. Rurality lends itself to
imagining new scenarios with a low level of anthropization, where existing rules and codes can be collectively
rewritten, making way for new forms of living. Rurality also acts as a catalyst for lesser narratives from
temporary, imagined, nomadic, oppressed or resistant communities that populate contemporary Italy.
Circumnavigating rurality, describing new meanings and possible interpretations is, inDe Rerum Rurale, a
means of exploring recent artistic productions that choose social fabrics and their backgrounds as their
operating space, crossing through society as a modus operandi and commitment to it as a compass for their
operations. Contemporary rurality should be understood as a hybrid, evolving space, where the
metamorphosis between states generates brand new and transformational scenarios.
ARTISTS
Nico Angiuli
(Born in Adelfia, Bari in 1981. Lives and works in Bari and Tirana)
Rossella Biscotti
(Born in Molfetta, Bari in 1978. Lives and works in Amsterdam and Bruxelles)
Beatrice Catanzaro
(Born in San Donato Milanese, Milan in 1975. Lives and works in Milan)
Leone Contini
(Born in Florence in 1976. Lives and works in Tuscany)
Michelangelo Consani
(Born in Livorno, 1971. Lives and works in Castell’Anselmo)
Luigi Coppola
(Born in Lecce in 1972. Lives and works in Bruxelles and in Salento, Apulia)
Danilo Correale
(Born in Naples in 1982. Lives and works in New York)
Riccardo Giacconi with Andrea Morbio
(Born in San Severino Marche, Macerata in 1985. Lives and works in Milan)
(Born in Montichiari, Brescia, in 1984. Lives and works in Paris)
Adelita Husni-Bey
(Born in Milan in 1985. Lives and works in New York)
Marzia Migliora
(Born in Alessandria in 1972. Lives and works in Turin)
Moira Ricci
(Born in Orbetello, Grosseto in 1977. Lives and works in Italy)
Anna Scalfi Eghenter
(Born in Trento in 1965. Lives and works in Trento)
Marinella Senatore
(born in Cava de’Tirreni, Salerno in 1977. Lives and works in Paris and London)
Valentina Vetturi
(born in Reggio Calabria in 1979. Lives and works in Geneva and Bruxelles)
Matteo Lucchetti (Sarzana, 1984) is an art historian, freelance curator and critic. His principal curatorial projects
include: Don't Embarrass the Bureau! (Lunds Konsthall, Lund, 2014); Enacting Populism in Its Mediæscape (Kadist Art
Foundation, Paris, 2012); and Practicing Memory (Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, 2010). He has been curator in residence
at the Para Site in Hong Kong, the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris and AIR in Antwerp. He is co-director of the Visible
research project (Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna) and of the associated biennial prize for socially engaged
artistic practice in a global context (2013, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; 2015, Tate Liverpool; 2017, Queens Museum,
New York). He is visiting professor at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, the Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp, the
HISK in Ghent and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. He has organized and taken part in several public
lectures at various institutions, including at the Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva; the Steirischer Herbst, Graz; the
Centre for Historical Reenactments, Johannesburg; and Creative Time, New York. He lives in Brussels where he codirected the “Art as Something Else” programme in 2015 at the Galerie de l’ERG, with film screenings, talks and
exhibitions with artists such as Giuseppe Campuzano, Chto Delat?, Marinella Senatore and Jonas Staal.
—
Lo stato delle cose
Curated by Marta Papini
Adelita Husni-Bey, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Alberto Tadiello, Cristian Chironi, Margherita Moscardini, Elena
Mazzi (in partnership with Sara Tirelli) and Yuri Ancarani: seven key names from the current national and
international scene, each very different from the next. Their styles differ so much that it is impossible to
assimilate them in a single reading. A dialectic space for comparison between the individual pieces and
between them and the public is formed.
The project consists of a programme of seven exhibitions and seven events that extends over the entire period
of the 16th Art Quadriennale. The invited artists will alternate within the space in a sort of relay, an interlocking
exhibition mechanism that adopts a different timeframe to the other shows being held in the Palazzo delle
Esposizioni at the same time.
Lo stato delle cose is not a group exhibition, where the images and meanings of the works overlap and
interweave thanks to the work of the curators. Instead, it is an exercise in attention: the public, in a one-to-one
relationship with the work, has the possibility to linger on the research of each artist both within the exhibition
and through a public programme, conceived as an integral part of the project, which studies it in depth.
On the one hand, the installed works are never seen side by side in a visually unifying space, but can only be
linked and compared in the mind of the visitor. On the other, as well as exhibiting their own work, each artist
has the opportunity to invite speakers to hold talks on the areas of research of interest to them, to arrange film
screenings, to organize public workshops and to hold studio visits.
Lo stato delle cose offers a key to entering the worlds of the artists, an opportunity to explore their work in a
new context, without relegating the research to an ancillary moment of the exhibition, but taking it back to the
fundamental point of sharing the work, within an institutional context that thus becomes performative,
dynamic and discursive.
ARTISTS
Yuri Ancarani
(Born in Ravenna, 1972. Lives and works in Milan)
Giorgio Andreotta Calò
(Born in Venice in 1979. Lives and works in Amsterdam and Venice)
Cristian Chironi
(Born in Nuoro in 1974. Lives and works in Italy)
Adelita Husni-Bey
(Born in Milan in 1985. Lives and works in New York)
Elena Mazzi and Sara Tirelli
(Elena Mazzi born in Reggio Emilia in 1984. Lives and works in Venice)
(Sara Tirelli born in Gorizia in 1979. Lives and works in Venice)
Margherita Moscardini
(Born in Donoratico in 1981. Lives in Tuscany)
Alberto Tadiello
(Born in Montecchio Maggiore, Vicenza in 1983. Lives and works in a former bakery at the bottom of the
Dolomites)
Marta Papini (1985, Reggio Emilia) lives and works in Italy. In 2010 she obtained her specialization degree with a
research thesis on the relationship between art/the public/museums, which she carried out at the Whitechapel Gallery
in London. Since November 2014 she has been Head of Research and Public Programs of the Centro Pecci, where,
among other initiatives, she assisted the organizing committee in arranging the first Forum of Contemporary Art in Italy.
Recent projects include: Shit and Die, organized with Maurizio Cattelan and Myriam Ben Salah (Palazzo Cavour, Turin,
2014); UN HOMME JUSTE EST QUAND MÊME UN HOMME MORT (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013); and THESE
PEANUTS ARE BULLETS (Family Business, New York, 2012). She was project manager of “TOILETPAPER
magazine” (2012-2014) and was responsible for the editorial coordination of: Shit and Die (Damiani editore, 2014); 1968,
(Deste Foundation, 2014); and Postmonument (Silvana editoriale, 2010), and has collaborated with several magazines,
including “Purple Magazine”, “L’Officiel Italia” and “L’Uomo Vogue”.
—
La seconda volta
Curated by Cristiana Perrella
This project presents the work of five artists born between 1966 and 1981 who, despite their different
expressions and individual styles, demonstrate a shared focus on the use of materials packed with stories of
the past, interpreting them in a new way and bringing them back to life in unexpected combinations. Theirs is
an art of remains and fragments, composite, residual and hybrid. An art of assembly, transformation, rebirth,
and perhaps also an art of crisis. Reuse and assembly, ever since their introduction as artistic techniques in the
early 20th century, have always had close links with the concept of trauma and, upon closer inspection, this
was also the case in more distant times, when the reuse of waste materials expressed the desire to take
possession of a glorious past and the need for economical materials.
Lara Favaretto, Martino Gamper, Marcello Maloberti, Alek O. and Francesco Vezzoli measure themselves
against a time that ‒ despite the unprecedented acceleration of scientific and technological progress and the
future that seems to be running towards us ‒ still looks to the past a lot and in which the euphoria of
consumption, of the new, is a sentiment that seems foggy and inappropriate. It is no coincidence that the work
of these artists is often characterized by a “low-fi”, artisanal approach and a focus on manual techniques and
bricolage.
Lara Favaretto’s research involves neglected paintings found in street markets, which she conceals and reveals
by weaving a monochrome weft of brightly coloured wool around them. Martino Gamper remixes old furniture
and objects with affection and skill, creating new forms and functions. Marcello Maloberti puts together
different faces, stories and images in his performances, in a new kaleidoscope of figures, gestures and
expressions. Alek O. performs the poetic action of destroying and reassembling everyday objects packed with
memories, glimpsing new forms and modern patterns inside them that help to free them not from the past but
from his weighty position as the youngest artist. Francesco Vezzoli comes face to face with history and fame,
progressing from his embroidery produced with slow, patient stitches to the appropriation of Roman
sculptures, forcing them into an ideal dialogue ‒ not lacking in humour ‒ with the present. These are all ways
of measuring oneself against the past and against history ‒ whether on a small or large scale ‒ and seeking to
come to terms with it, to draw vitality, new thoughts and new forms from it.
ARTISTS
Lara Favaretto
(Born in Treviso in 1973. Lives in Turin)
Martino Gamper
(Born in Merano, Bozen in 1971. Lives in London)
Marcello Maloberti
(Born in Codogno, Lodi in 1966. Lives in Milan)
Alek O.
(Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1981. Lives in Milan)
Francesco Vezzoli
(Born in Brescia in 1971. Lives in Milan)
Cristiana Perrella (Rome, 1965) is a curator and critic. From 1998 to 2008 she directed the Contemporary Arts
Programme at The British School in Rome. From 2007 to 2009 she planned and developed the activities of an agency
for the promotion of art among young people (SACS-Sportello per l'Arte Contemporanea in Sicilia) on behalf of RISO the Sicily Museum of Contemporary Art, and was its curator for the first two years and again in 2012-2013. Since 2010,
she has been responsible for the artistic section of the activities of the Golinelli Foundation in Bologna. As an
independent curator, she has collaborated with Italian and international institutions including MAXXI, where she
curated one of the exhibitions with which the museum opened in 2010, going on to collaborate on another three
exhibition projects. From 2004 to 2010 she taught "The Phenomenology of Contemporary Art" at the Literature faculty
of the University of Chieti. She is currently lecturer at the IED in Rome. She has had numerous articles and essays
published, the most recent being an essay on Francesco Vezzoli for Rizzoli International, to be published in February
2016.
—
Cyphoria
Curated by Domenico Quaranta
“We live in an era infused with mediation, which has found its way into every aspect of life, experience,
imagination and story-telling. Politics, the economy, work, forms of communication and society, but also
intimacy and dreams have been overturned by the impact of digital media. Issues such as privacy, surveillance
and the capitalization of social life define an important part of what we call the present. Cyphoria, the section I
am curating at the 16th Art Quadriennale, raises these questions and investigates how they are reflected in
Italian contemporary art.” Domenico Quaranta
The last twenty-five years have seen the progressive extension to the entire globalized world of the political,
economic, social and cultural consequences of a technological evolution that began after the Second World
War. It is no coincidence that we have chosen to use the term “evolution” instead of the more commonplace
“revolution”: while a revolution occurs at a specific moment in time, evolution knows no reprieve, and the
series of changes and the speed at which they took place played a precise role in shaping the contemporary
condition. There is no aspect of life that has not been transformed by the meeting and clash with the digital
data flows that come from the computer, a universal medium, and travel over networks, and by the experience
of mediation.
Cyphoria, is an exhibition that aims to investigate the way in which the contemporary condition is reflected in
the work of some Italian artists who started to work, at different times, during the course of this evolution.
According to Basar, Coupland and Obrist, the expression ‒ a neologism that combines the prefix cyber and
the termdysphoria ‒ describes the state of those who believe that the Internet is the real world. However, it
has been adopted here to describe the effort and discomfort involved in living a condition that man has
produced, but has not been instructed how to inhabit, of deciphering and revealing the languages and the
influence on forms of work, communication, social life and politics, of adopting and shaping aesthetics and
imaginations. The exhibition brings together artists who explore this condition both in its public dimension ‒
tackling issues such as censorship, the intellectual property crisis, surveillance, the new black economies of
the web, the ubiquity of the production of cultural artefacts ‒ and in its private dimension, investigating the
intimate and personal consequences introduced by hyperconnection, accelerationism, the deluge of
information, and the new balance between public and private dimension to which living in the web has
accustomed us.
ARTISTS
Alterazioni Video
(Collective founded in Milan in 2004, works in Milan, New York and Berlin. Members: Paololuca Barbieri
Marchi, Alberto Caffarelli, Matteo Erenbourg, Andrea Masu, Giacomo Porfiri)
Enrico Boccioletti
(Born in Pesaro in 1984. Lives and works in Milan)
Mara Oscar Cassiani
(Born in Pesaro in 1981. Lives and works in Gradara)
Paolo Cirio
(Born in Turin in 1979. Lives and works in New York)
Roberto Fassone
(Born in Asti in 1986. Lives and works in Asti)
Giovanni Fredi
(Born in Brescia in 1984. Lives and works in Brescia)
Elisa Giardina Papa
(Born in Medicina, Bologna in 1979. Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York)
Kamilia Kard
(Born in Milan in 1981. Lives and works in Milan)
Eva and Franco Mattes
(Born in Brescia in 1976. Live and work in New York)
Simone Monsi
(Born in Fiorenzuola d’Arda, Piacenza in 1988. Lives and works in London)
Quayola
(Born in Rome in 1982. Lives and works in London)
Federico Solmi
(Born in Bologna in 1973. Lives and works in New York)
Marco Strappato
(Born in Porto San Giorgio, Fermo in 1982. Lives and works in London)
Natalia Trejbalova
(Born in Košice, Slovakia in 1989. Lives and works in Milan)
Domenico Quaranta is a critic and curator of contemporary art. He focuses in his work on how art responds to the
changes brought about by the new means of communication and production in culture and society. He is one of the
authors of Mass Effect (MIT Press, 2015). His essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in books, magazines,
newspapers and on websites, including Flash Art and Artpulse. He has had two books published, Media, New Media,
Postmedia (2010) and In My Computer (2011) and was co-editor of the book GameScenes. Art in the Age of
Videogames (Milan 2006) with M. Bittanti. He has curated and co-curated various exhibitions in Italy and abroad,
including: Connessioni leggendarie. Net.art 1995-2005 (Milan 2005); Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age (Brussels 2008);
RE:akt! (Bucharest, Ljubljana, Rijeka, Maribor, 2009-2010); Playlist (Gijon and Brussels 2009-2010); Collect the
WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age (Brescia 2011; Basel and New York, 2012); Unoriginal Genius
(London 2014) and Mankind / Machinekind (Vienna 2015). He lectures at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara and is
artistic director of the Link Art Center, Brescia.
—
Periferiche
Curated by Denis Viva
“Aware polycentrism”: this was the expression used, a few decades ago, by Enrico Castelnuovo and Carlo
Ginzburg to profile Italian visual culture over the centuries. A wealth of centres, of numerous false peripherals
that were not actually the places of a “cultural delay”, but stations of a plurality and a conflict that refused to
exhaust itself within a single dominant model. Does Italy still preserve this polycentrism in the era of
globalization? Does it find a voice equally capable of offering alternatives to global homologation in its
“peripherals”?
Periferiche is a project dedicated to the artists who have chosen to work “on the outskirts”, not for romantic
reasons or solipsism, but because of the intrinsic needs of their style. Periferiche is therefore a metaphor that
indicates a device free to connect and disconnect itself, to associate and seclude itself, from the unstoppable
flow of the global centres. The style of these artists does not ascetically eschew the centre, nor does it
condemn it. It simply dictates when it will connect and draws its life blood from heterogeneous and diverse,
often marginal territories.
These artists are united by a different conception of time and space: a time reclaimed as biological and
mediated, with length times of constitution, reflection and reception; and a polycentric space, different from
global mainstream information and production. The only central role is that assumed by the work as the
ultimate operative destination of action and research. The project unites eight Italian artists, of different
generations and origins, bringing the youngest together with some older Italian artists, who established
themselves over the last decade.
ARTISTS
Emanuele Becheri
(Born in Prato in 1973. Lives and works in Vaiano)
Paolo Gioli
(Born in Sarzano, Rovigo in 1942. Lives and works in Lendinara)
Carlo Guaita
(Born in Palermo in 1954. Lives and works in Florence)
Paolo Icaro
(Born in Turin in 1936. Lives and works in Tavullia)
Christiane Löhr
(Born in Wiesbaden in 1965. Lives and works in Vernio and Cologne)
Maria Elisabetta Novello
(Born in Vicenza in 1974. Lives and works in Udine)
Giulia Piscitelli
(Born in Naples in 1965. Lives and works in Naples)
Michele Spanghero
(Born in Gorizia in 1979. Lives and works in Monfalcone)
Denis Viva (Cividale del Friuli, 1979) teaches History of Contemporary Art at the University of Trento and is T.D.
researcher at the University of Udine. In addition to his work as art historian, since 2008 he has also gained experience
as a curator: he was artistic director of Palinsesti (San Vito al Tagliamento, 2008-2012), coordinated the “young
galleries” section of the Premio Terna 2012 and was curator of temporary exhibitions at the Mart in Rovereto
(2012-2014). He is currently curator of the Ibidem art and architecture projects at the Ado Furlan Foundation and the
Paradoxa projects in far-eastern art at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Udine. In addition to his art
history work, he has contributed to the scientific research for the general catalogues of some of the most important
museums in Italy (the GAM in Turin, the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Milan, the Museum of Twentieth Century
Art in Florence). His particular interest in Italian art is evident from his participation in www.capti.it (a project for
digitalizing Italian art periodicals with the help of government research funding) and the research journal
www.palinsesti.net.