I know - it's only rock and roll but I like it

I know I was supposed to use this space for visual art experiences. But what if something impresses me visually even though it's not visual arts? well, I suppose I should write about it anyway.

So, this is what happened to me yesterday night with the show "Underwork" from a young-brilliant-talented company from italy (verona): Babilonia Teatri (you'll find the link below as usual)

First of all I LOVED their physical presence. retro clothes in the same colors of italian flags and three clever faces.

They have a bitter bitter sense of humor, something you would usually describe with "I do not know if I should cry or laugh"

Both of them, I suppose. The reason why I laughed is because of their funny and clever jokes in the use of italian language. The reason why I should probably cry it's because they touched something in my inner deep pride. I just moved from italy because of my job and I still feel really strange about it.

So, what to say, I guess they deserve every single success on their way and wish them more and more.

At least because of them (well, with a few other reasons) i would say I AM HAPPY TO BE BACK TO ITALY this week :)

http://www.babiloniateatri.it/

I'm back - and Santa is free!!!

I was not the only one being relocated in Rotterdam this month :) Paul McCarthy's Santa Claus found a new home as well.

The sculpture was at the center of a debate from a few years and appearently could not find its own proper position in the city. Until one day a group of shop owners, the Binnenweg Association, asked to adopt him and gave him a new place to stay in Eendrachtsplein, right in center of the city.

The statue, a six-meters-tall hybrid between Santa Claus and a garden gnome, who holds in his hands a bell and a giant buttplug/christmas tree, is meant to represent american's consumerism and commercial success. This huge kind of "devotional image" had its celebration day on November 28th, with a whole afternoon of events dedicated to "him".

The program included a more "formal" part: the screening of Paul McCarthy's "Painter" in the early afternoon and a lecture by Ton Bevers (Professor in Cultural Sociology at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University) on the history of the sculpture.

Then, the celebration became some kind of folk event: a parade with children and music followed the sculpture on its way to Eendrachtsplein. Of course SinterKlaas and Father Christmas were attending the event as well.

It was incredible to see how a controversial based on a contemporary art piece could become a social event bringing together many different kinds of people, mostly not connected to the artworld at all. The celebration went on and on with music, free food and champagne and some screenings of Paul McCarthy's videos much longer after the final installation of Santa Claus in the square.

Will we ever see something similar in Italy?

playlist list :)

so, I LOVED the playlist event on thursday night and really had a lot of fun.
the title for my playlist was "homage to" and I chose a series of videoclips, videoart, movies and cartoons that represented any kind of homage to our visual heritage.

this is the list (soon it will available and clickable on Neoncampobase.blogspot.com)


Douglas Gordon 24hours Psycho
Be Kind Rewind
Beastie Boys – Sabotage
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can't Stop
The Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight Tonight
Luca Lumaca – Set the world on fire
Vanessa Beecroft – VB61 in Venice
Gus Van Sant's vs Hitchcock Psycho
The Simpsons + The White Stripes
Weezer – Buddy Holly
Baustelle – Charlie Fa Surf
Matthew Barney Cremaster 3
Johnny Depp vs Charlie Chaplin
Tim Burton – Ed Wood
Quentin Tarantino – Death Proof
Frida Kahlo Movie
Foo Fighters – Big Me
Across the Universe – Hey Jude
Sofia Coppola – Marie Antoinette
Pop goes my heart!
Blur – The Universal

I hope everyone in the gallery enjoyed it and had fun :)

PLAYLIST @neon>campobase - thursday, october 23 from 7.30 p.m.

I was invited to take part to an super interesting project called PLAYLIST which will take place on thursday night @neon>campobase in Bologna. I have the possibility to choose my own visual playlist and I have to tell it's a really chalenging and funny project (at least for me). I decided not to choose videoart only, but instead to mix popular culture and high culture...so for those of you who might come I hope will be a nice surprise...and for those of you who are too far to come, stay tuned and I'll post my playlist on friday!!!!!!

wishlist

I wish the young curator was a REAL JOB in italy

one more work I love

I saw this work last winter and I LOVED it. it's the kind of picture that tells everything without need of explanation. and so, I won't tell anything more about it. I like it when a work speaks for itself and I had the feeling that these pics know very well how to speak.
Suzanne Opton, Soldier portraits.

I know I know...

This was supposed to be a daily practice but it's not at all.
Luckily, a few things are happening and my schedule is a little packed sometimes.
And this one will not exactly be a news, but it's something that caught my attention anyway.
I was in Milan for START last week and had the chance to see a really interesting place called Brown Project Space, which is born from an online magazine that later became a physical space. The Project Space will not only be the office to work on the magazine, but will host an exhibition program, revealing itself as a new way to think about curatorial practices today.
Artists-run-spaces are not that popular in Italy, and this is why I feel the choice of artists Luigi Presicce and Luca Francesconi was so interesting.
They probably have to face lots of troubles that other similar places in europe do not have to, but anyway they are doing a really good job.
The place itself is really interesting, as it is an underground, almost hidden couple of rooms.
The space opened with a double-solo-show from artists Jacopo Miliani (ita, 1979) and Richard Clements (uk, 1983) and the two exhibition work so well together as they play on echoes of shapes and colors.
They both play very well with the space, creating a sort of stage and playing with the interaction with the spectator (Miliani) and reflecting on shape, colors and materials (Clements).
Brown represents a breath of fresh air to the local and national scene and I can't wait to see what's next.

70.545.100

This is the amount of £ that were payed yesterday for the first day of auctions at Sotheby's for Damien Hirtst's pieces. Some of them were sold for three times the expected prices of the quotations. And this is already considered a historic event, even more if you think that there's still many pieces that are going to be sold tonight.
Not bad if you consider that even TG5 (italian people know what I am talking about) was talking about it today :)

blurring edges

I already told how much I love art in which there's no clear definition between one technique and the other. I was doing a research yesterday and got to see some amazing pictures of Jenny Holzer's installation at Neue Nationalgalerie in 2001.

One could say it's a visual art installation but I really cannot help thinking it as architecture. And I find amazing how the lights reflect on the glass of the windows and look like as if they were continuing in the sky. This is just perfection and it's so hard to decide WHICH kind of art it is.

More Notes on Manifesta7 - favourite works

One of the best works shown in the exhibition was Omer Fast's piece Looking pretty for God. His video is a sort of documentary about small funeral houses held by families from several generations in the US as a business which is fast disappearing.
The definition of boundaries in Fast's work is definetly useless: his video are not exactly documentaries but not exactly fictional either.
The borders in his works finish to melt and blur as it's really hard to give a definition of them.
Different points of view and voices join and confuse themselves in this work, which talks about death without showing it, and instead chooses images of childhood, make-up and emptiness.
This creates a much stronger effect even though it's not showing anything about death, working on a sense of anxiety which is very subtle and slight.
There's a cultural gap in the way we see death, and this underlined so many aspects we do not consider in our society about dead bodies.
The video reflects on the difficult passage from the painful private dimension of death to the public one, which has to look more pretty and -possibly- healthy.
It's really moving, in some points, to see how normal this job is for people who do it, and how hard it is for the one who have to relate to them.
The choice of using children with lipsync from the interviews is incredibly delicate and lyrical.

Notes on Manifesta7 - favourite works

I have to say there's some works that are worth a whole exhibition.

There are so many good pieces shown @Manifesta7 it would be stupid to try to talk about all of them. But there's a few that cannot really be missed

The first one I want to talk about is Beth Campbell's "Following room".

I already saw this piece last winter @Whitney museum, but as I read her name on the wall and turned the corner to enter the room I was amazed as the first time I saw it.

There's something so perfect and fascinating about this piece that makes me feel moved everytime I see it. There's this slightly maniac attitude in it and in its realization that makes me think THIS is the kind of art that can really be considered a high quality work, for its realization and its inner meanings.

There's so much about chances and possibilities in this work (as in the whole production of Campbell's works) and it leaves so much up to you. This is what I think art should do.

I also had the chance to meet her in her studio in Brooklin and after that I appreciated her work even more if possible, considering how incredible she is even as a person.

notes on Manifesta7 - the approach to the public

Last week I went to Manifesta7 (again!) as I wanted to see some of the works better than how I did during the opening days. I have to admit it was much better this way (no more than...let's say 7 visitors in each one of the venues?!)

I have enough topics about it to fill this blog for weeks so I guess it's better to write different posts.

What I noticed immediately is that the different curatorial approaches were so evident in the different venues.

Rovereto was almost didactic: each work had a short text and info about the artist. The visitors had a lot to read before they started looking at the works.

Trento was completely opposite (I guess how does a "normal" visitor react to something like this - someone told me they felt completely lost).

Bolzano had the same short text (this time in 3 languages: don't forget the German translation please!) while Fortezza was something I really couldn't explain. The infos on the works were so hard to find that at some point I gave up and just wandered around.

It's not so important to discuss from my point of view, but I would really like to think about a visitor that does not know anything about contemporary art. Some of the venues really tried to reach the public while other were rejecting it completely, and this is something I don't really feel as a right position. I don't want to sound obvious, but as long as we will have exhibitions like this everyone in Italy will say they don't understand contemporary art and that contemporary sucks. (You should have read the comments of people outside the venues after 1 month of exhibition!!!)

One more thing I would like to say is about the ordinary maintenance of the exhibition: after one month the exhibition looked already like it was 3 months old.

The works in Rovereto railway station were mostly damaged. Seems like no one is looking after them, I guess they expected this when they decided to show part of them in a place which is so crowded (and where people didn't choose to see art) but I think most of the damages could be avoided. It's almost the same for Trento: the day I visited it a lot of works were closed because I guess the people that were working there didn't know how to use it: when they changed their working turns, the new staff put everything back to normality.

It's such a huge event, I guess this should not happen. Uhm.

(But I still have lots to say about it, also a lot of good things! So I will be back soon)

about Damien and money

Seems like everytime you read something new about Damien Hirst some part of the article HAS to talk about money. And so it's also this time: I was reading about his next auction at Sotheby's in september.

He will sell something like 220 works for a total expected amount of about 65.000.000 £ (without any mediation from his galleries - which I bet are pretty happy about it)

And what it's even more interesting is the title of the auction session: "The Beauty Inside My Head Forever". Uhm. I am wondering what's the use of such a poetic and tragic title for something like this.

I prefer to look at The Little Artists and their funny reproductions of Hirst's works. At least there's still something ironic in it.

spruzz

"spruzz - scene del contemporaneo" is a website held by young and passionate Daniela Lussana. the site has different sections and presents interviews to young artists and pages about their works. Daniela chooses the works and the artists that best represent her idea of art, and gives them space and voice. you can now find an article about a talented italian sculptor, Stefano Calligaro, and an interview to the turkish artist Sukran Moral.
Daniela usually asks three questions to the young artists she wants to talk about, so for my blog I decided to ask her three questions as well, to make her talk a little about herself too. I found it really interesting as she usually prefers to give room to works of others.
Check the link section at the bottom of the page to visit her website


1. who's daniela lussana?

Daniela is someone with a free spirit, a dreamer with her feet on the ground, who likes people and all their differencies. Good in organizing, unable to follow the rules, passionate, who is still surprised by many artworks, and still is moved by manual, poetic and lyric abilities.

2. how did you decide to create spruzz?

Spruzz comes from the will to say my opinion in this wide artworld.
The “young artists” section comes from the need to give my opinion about artistic choices.
The “interviews” section is because of my curiosity, the pleasure of having a reply to my questions, to know, discover, study other people and their knoledge, the need to choose the person I want to interview and the type of questions with freedom.
Spruzz will grow more and more, I have lots of ideas that will become reality at the right moment.

3. what impresses you in an artpiece so much to make you choose and artist and dedicate him/her a space on your website?

The research, a professional way of working, passion, and the “need” to make art. It's not a work itself to attract me, it's everything that surrounds the artist and his/her need to produce artworks.
I am attracted by art as a research that looks to the future, which is experimental but did not lose emotions and passion, and above all, humbleness.

aspra.mente

I really appreciate when a project doesn't need to be defined with useless borders and this is the reason why I really like aspra.mente. you should put in a mixer 4 clever minds, artists, curators, cooks and even gardeners to produce something that could taste close to them.

aspra.mente is a project born in Venice from a workshop, but soon became something different: a group in which each member has her own identity, goes on with her works, travels and brings something new to the whole group. their project mainly focuses on food design connected to social practices, but here (again!) is quite hard to draw a line that could separate their work from other art practices.

their last (and great!) installation, called Vaccinium, is currently on view @Manifesta 7, the european Biennal that is taking place in Italy, in Trentino Alto Adige. the work focuses on one of the less famous products that the territory, the blueberry. (Trentino Alto Adige is really famous because of its apples, actually).

the linear and clear installation includes some wallpapers that explain to the spectators the benefits of the blueberry and what really impressed me positively what the total "understatement" appearance of the whole installation, who underlines the content of the project.

good job indeed! I can't wait to see what next..in the meantime you can check their website in the blog section on your right.

Everybody Pecha Kucha!

...here's what I learned today (and it's something I really want to share with you readers)
I feel really good tonight because I can finally say I know what a Pecha Kucha is! It consist in a format of presentation for creative works in a fast and informal way. It was originally created in Tokyo in 2003 and soon spread in many other cities around the world, as a way for young designers, artists and architects to talk about their works and keep the interest of their audience up.
The original idea was the format of 20x20, 20 images shown for 20 seconds each, but it can be adapted to many different occasions and presentations, and it also became a format used in the business world.
What I found even more interesting about it is the great amount of websites and videos that explain and show techniques about it.
So that's all for today..stay tuned :)

Cattelan @Boijmans van Beuningen

During my recent trip to the Netherlands I had the chance to see the famous work by Maurizio Cattelan realized for that Museum as a site specific work. I always thought that piece was great because it worked very well as a picture also: the inner meaning of it remained equally strong even if not seen in the "real" version.

But what I found in reality was both funny and tragic at the same time: a plexiglas cube has been placed onto Maurizio's head.

I feel this changes the whole meaning of the work and I don't understand if it was really necessary as a solution to avoid people touching the piece. So there was a little bit of a strange bitter taste in my mouth as I left the museum (even though it was a great place to visit) and the curatorial corner of my brain kept thinking about that all the day...

Let's start!

My first post will explain the idea of this blog (which came out during my last sleepless night!).

Everything begun last winter during my stay in NYC. I had the chance to meet a brilliant artist and art professional, Jesse Hamerman. He told me about his artistic project called "another day, another word". (You find the link in the link section of this blog).
Basically the project consists of an archive of words that Jesse records everyday. Each day corresponds to a word. When you visit the website on the homepage you find the word of the day and when you go through all the words in the archive you can create different sound mixes just by passing your mouse on the different words, so that it becomes something between a sound and a visual/conceptual work.
The words can be chosen for their sound or because they're connected to something happened during the day and this is really fascinating because you can find from the most complex to the most trivial ones.
What I love about this project is that it's all about using art as a daily practice, to fight laziness and to keep the mind busy having a "mission" to do every night.

This is what I would also love this blog to become.
It will be a way to keep my mind busy just by writing something (hopefully every night). I will use artworks, articles, exhibitions or quotes that came to my mind during the day as materials to write about.