March 2 – May 18, 2018
Inaugurated in Pretoria, South Africa, the exhibition with which the international celebrations for 40 years after the death of Luigi Di Sarro starts. The event is promoted by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Pretoria with the collaboration of the UP ARTS Department of the University of Pretoria. The images of the opening and the academic lecture.
Opening 2018 March 8th, 6pm
The double solo exhibition of Isabella Nazzarri (Livorno, 1987) and Viviana Valla (Voghera, 1986) focuses on the direct comparison between the different methodological and stylistic approaches that the two artists used to build their own original pictorial language.
Focused on an essentially gestural and erratic process, Isabella Nazzarri’s painting coagulates in a series of surprising shapes, characterized by vivid and brilliant colors that stand out on monochromatic backgrounds in the papers as in the canvases. The light precipitated in the pigments becomes the material also of her sculptures, made of colored resins enclosed in glass ampoules (Monadi) or expanded polyurethane molded to evoke the rock formations and calcareous deposits present in nature.
Based on the stratigraphy of paper materials is the research of Viviana Valla, who through the reworking of post-it, clippings of magazines, pre-printed sheets, shreds of silver papers and much more builds an intimate and diaristic painting that paradoxically assumes the appearance of a geometric composition. The theme of her investigation is the conflict between emotionality and censorship, which is expressed in a continuous balance between the accumulative method, of an intuitive nature, and the rigid control exercised on the often orthogonal forms of his compositions.
Both Isabella Nazzarri’s erratic method, based on gestural trust and freedom and on chromatic and signic lightness, as well as the critical and conflictual one by Viviana Valla, articulated in a dynamic contrast between emotionality and rationality, prefigure the assumption of responsibility towards the pictorial language, used as an interpretative filter for the construction of a Weltanschauung, a vision of the world.
The title Not Provisional alludes to the committed and “non-temporary” character of the pictorial approaches of Nazzarri and Valla. The two Italian artists, in fact, differently from provisional painters who avoid the overload of expectations linked to a secular medium such as painting, accept to elaborate grammars capable of expressing the dubious, enigmatic and uncertain character that is on the origin of the visual art training.
The exhibition Not Provisional presents about thirty works – including paintings, papers and sculptures – of the recent production of the two artists.
Tuesday, January 23 at 6pm opening of the exhibition of selected works for the valuable publishing, now in its 15th edition, dedicated this year to Italian artists under 30.
The exhibition proposes the works of Andrea Bressan (Cittadella, Padova), Flavia Bucci (Castel Frentano, Chieti), Emanuela Cruccu (San Gavino Monreale, Medio Campidano), Francesca Dondoglio (Torino), Flavia Carla Fanara (Formello, Roma), Roberta Favarato (Milano), Marco Goi (Sabbioneta, Mantova), Xhimi Hoti (Verona), Annatonia Luperto (Galatone, Lecce), Davide Pisapia (Napoli), Andrea Schifano (Castro, Lecce), Marco Tallone (Revello, Cuneo); paintings, drawings, engravings, photographs that testify to a new generation of Italian art.
The works on show are the winners of the competition announced by Gutenberg Edizioni for the realization of the 2018 CALENDAR: a contest in which 78 young artists under 30 participated, a significant adhesion that responds to the novelty that, from fifteen editions, marks the calendar art. The commission composed of Massimo Bignardi (Storia dell’arte contemporanea, Università di Siena), Danilo Maestosi (journalist and novelist), Franco Marrocco (artist and Director of Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera-Milano) e Giuseppe Rescigno (artist) has selected the works that today articulate the GUTENBERG CALENDAR 2018.
The exhibition will run till February 3rd (from Tuesday to Saturday from 4 pm to 7 pm).
Public art has become in recent years not only an alternative form of expression, but also a real stage with which artists confront and dialogue. We no longer speak of a conflict between an artwork that is by definition donated to the community and an artwork that is born to be sold under the rules of the market: artists more and more often move freely between these two options, until a few years ago considered in antithesis. Rome offers several examples of public art: from the fantastic intervention by William Kentridge Triumphs & Laments on the Lungotevere banks under Ponte Sisto, to the SanBa project that designed San Basilio’s public housing according to a specific urban redevelopment project, to the spontaneous open-air gallery that is flourishing in Corviale at the foot of the famous building called ‘Serpentone’, to arrive at interventions in the occupied realities such as the Tufello students’ house run by the Astra activists. ARP has made a journey to discover these realities together with the South African artists Skubalisto and Jordan Sweke participating in the residency in Rome in November and December 2017.
Both artists chosen this year by the ARP-Art Residency Project (created by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro with the contribution of MAECI and with the collaboration of Everard Read/CIRCA and RainbowMediaNPO) have an interest in the investigation of urban reality, as well it is the gentrification of the peripheral areas or redevelopment planned by social and housing policies, or even fertile ground of public artistic commission. Their investigation of the Roman reality has therefore often turned to those areas that could offer fertile inspirations. In parallel to the study that led to the realization of the exhibition REALTA’ IMMAGINARIE/IMAGINING REALITIES that was held at the Centro Luigi Di Sarro (30th November-14th December 2017), the two artists also wanted to bet on the public art front, realizing some works in the Roman suburbs: in Corviale (where they worked thanks to the hospitality of Alessandro Fornaci and the Laborintus Association and to the Prenestino, in a center for asylum seekers, a place of high symbolic value. In these years there is much discussion about what to do and how to give meaning to interculture: Art is one of the most universal means of communication and friendship between people.
“In the middle of the walk of our life, I found myself in a dark forest … (Dante, The Divine Comedy, Hell)”, the quote of the greatest Italian poet is not accidental and takes on meaning at the end of the long journey of meetings and crossings of routes that the two artists, guests of the ARP residence, have completed in the Capital. Jordan Sweke’s forest and the Skubalisto’s portraits tell of the past and the present. The immediate interest that both have shown for the urban socio-economic structure integrated with their artistic research has given rise to a very deep dialogue in their practice and with the inhabitants of the city. Dialogue that was realized with the final two-handed work performed in Corviale.
On show, under the umbrella of “Passeggiate Fotografiche Romane” powered by MIBACT, the exhibition will runs untill the 30th of January 2018, LA FOTOGRAFIA SPERIMENTALE DI LUIGI DI SARRO. The show will officially open the international and national celebrations of 40 years from Luigi Di Sarro death. Guided tours with the curator can be booked in advance. (info@centroluigidisarro.it)
In the forty years of the death of Luigi Di Sarro, the Center for Contemporary Art Research named after him celebrates his memory with a series of exhibitions dedicated to his work, starting with LA FOTOGRAFIA SPERIMENTALE DI LUIGI DI SARRO, curated by Carlotta Sylos Calò and focused on the photographic production from 1968 to 1976 and enriched by an in-depth study of drawing and sculpture.
Since the Sixties Luigi Di Sarro has worked with different techniques and languages: drawing, painting, graphics, sculpture and photography. The latter becomes, starting from the end of the decade, one of the elective means to develop themes already strongly linked to his work. According to an open approach, already applied to other techniques, photography becomes a way to observe reality, create new forms and points of view, even ‘playing’ with the photographic medium, both in the shooting phase and in the development and printing phase. In his research, in fact, the artist does not involve only the image but its constitutive process: sets up sets in his studio to make particular shots, and often, after printing in the darkroom, intervenes again, cutting out the prints, creating maquette and collage that then re-photographs. The leading actor of many of the images of the ample photographic corpus produced by Di Sarro between 1968 and 1976 is the same artist who often puts himself on stage to measure analytically the functioning of some phenomena such as movement, sign, color and light.
.
Jordan Sweke (1991) and Skumbuzo (Skubalisto) Vabaza (1987), from Cape Town to Rome thanks to ARP-Art Residency Project, will show their outlook on the City and its suburbs. People and landscapes, imagining realities: a journey that explores the present and the history of the Caput Mundi through various expressive media (painting, graphics and videos). The two South African artists produced artworks for this exhibition during the six-weeks residency period in Italy.
The ARP, a Bilateral Residency Programme for Young Artists between Italy and South Africa, is promoted by the CENTRO DI DOCUMENTAZIONE DELLA RICERCA ARTISTICA CONTEMPORANEA LUIGI DI SARRO and realized with the contribution of MAECI, Italian ministry of Foreign Affaires and International Cooperation, and with the collaboration of the Everard Read/CIRCA Gallery. In Cape Town, next February and March 2018, ARP will host italian artists Elena Giustozzi and Caterina Silva, selected to the residency programme, which will also see the collaboration of Ruth Prowse School of Art and Rainbow Media NPO.
Skumbuzo’s narrative is multifaceted (including visual art, design, music and fashion), he often incorporates contemporary figuration, imbued traditional iconography and several urban ‘graffiti’ based languages. Skumbuzo’s work aims to break down the human experience to its very core in order to expose the man made social constructs that serve to separate. His work is a bridge illustrating commonalities of consumerism, industrialization, corruption, hope, family, heart break, race , nationality and religion. His graffiti background and street art influence become obvious with his abstract use of colours and stylistic figure painting technique.
Jordan works within notions of the landscape and the natural environment. He abstractly explores ‘nature’ – a sublime and all-encompassing force. More specifically, he explores the relationship which currently exists between humanity and nature and ways in which this relationship might be reconstituted. His main focus of production lies in large oil paintings, but a rounded conceptual framework is achieved through his creation of photographs, sculptures, video works, print media and installation.
Both these young Cape-Town-based creatives have come together in ARP Rome 2017/2018 for IMAGINING REALITIES. This presentation comprises separate artworks, as well as collaborative work resulting from merging conversations between the two artists. At the Centro Luigi Di Sarro, Skumbuzo’s portrait paintings (in various mixed media) and Jordan’s landscapes (monochrome drawings, canvas based paintings and video work) are installed alongside collaborative linocuts and paintings executed together while in Rome on the ARP Residency.
The relationship between people and their environments is one of the major themes of the exhibition. IMAGINING REALITIES aims to address the notions of each person’s ‘reality’- how they see the world, and in contrast what goes on unnoticed around us all. Skumbuzo’s and Jordan’s active conversations illustrate and imagine what is taking place for many, addressing ideas of ‘marginalized poverty and the many unseen inhabitants of Rome’. This speaks about relationships between foreigners and the Roman landscapes, and serves to address “the social impact of immigrants, and the realities that lie behind the idealised ways people frame what they see and live.”
Skumbuzo and Jordan exist within the organic creative frameworks that pulsate around them in Cape Town, and both artists have an ongoing interest in periphery spaces and working-class areas. The ARP experience in Rome has served to ignite a joint conversation about the peoples in Rome, their ‘landscapes’ and the city itself. Although both artists actively acknowledge that this is a social commentary from an outsider’s perspective, they too feel ‘there are ridges of social and cultural similarities between Rome and Cape Town, that they both had been addressing in Cape Town. By creating some mural artworks in Rome both Skumbuzo and Jordan hope to reimagine the reality of what is present there. In addition to their social commentary, the artists have endeavoured to critique the juxtaposition between nature and urbanization: the kind of relationship the people in Rome have with their natural environments, and natural selves. The artists have observed there are ‘remnants of human artefacts in nature, nature is surviving in heavily built up spaces, nature it feels is versus the city, and humans are versus nature’. The artists explain: ‘Rome is like a big breasted mother who feeds the whole of Italy. All of Italy is in Rome, not just Romans. One can almost feel Rome struggling under the pressure’. IMAGINING REALITIES, investigates this reality too and gives scope to see the world re-examined and envisioned through Skumbuzo’s and Jordan’s synergistic discourse.
Emma Vandermerwe – Senior Curator Everard Read/CIRCA Cape Town
Mercoledì 9 agosto 2017 Inaugura a Budapest nella splendida cornice di Palazzo Vigado l’edizione ungherese delle Latitudini dell’Arte. La mostra nata dallo scambio con la Biennale Le Latitudini dell’arte. Ungheria e Italia del 2015 a Palazzo Ducale di Genova, è curata da Martà Simonffy e Virginia Monteverde con la critica d’arte Viana Conti e il critico ungherese Sulyok Miklós. Gli artisti italiani presenti in mostra sono trenta:
Connie Bellantonio, Isabel Consigliere, Giacomo Costa, Pier Giorgio De Pinto, Alessio Delfino, Luigi Di Sarro, Sabina Feroci, Armando Fettolini, Michelangelo Galliani, Lory Ginedumont, Gian Luca Groppi, Pina Inferrera, Luca Lischetti, Federica Marangoni, Giancarlo Marcali, Luisa Mazza, Virginia Monteverde, Silvio Monti, Antonio Pedretti, Alex Pinna, Davide Ragazzi, Elettra Ranno, Marco Nereo Rotelli, Enzo Rovella, Sergio Sarri, Tedman&Strand, Francesco Vieri, Marilena Vita, Christian Zanotto, Corrado Zeni.
We are delighted to announce the arrival in Cape Town of Italian artist Valentina Colella, who was selected for a residency in the framework of ARP-Art Residency Project V Edition. The project, ideated by Centro Luigi Di Sarro of Rome in collaboration this year with Everard Read Gallery Cape Town, began in 2009 and involved various important galleries as well as 13 artists. This fifth edition enjoys the support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Co-operation; in the period 2015-2017 the project’s activities increased, witnessing many young art enthusiasts as well as art students actively contributing to the residencies in Rome and Cape Town of the two winners of the selection, Valentina Colella for Italy and Zwelethu Machepha for South Africa. Young curators, art historians, photographers, videomakers and students of various disciplines collaborated with the two leaders of this exchange, the artists, through training contributions and the participation to meetings and workshops. It is because of this activity, considered of high cultural, educational and social value, that ARP project was invited this year to take part to Cape Town Art Fair in the Cultural Platforms section, next to the most important South African non-profit organisations.
We invite you to visit stand F13, where the artworks of all Italian and South African artists who took part until today to ARP project will be exhibited, and where it will be possible to find out more about all the events organized by ARP between now and the end of March.
Saturday 18th February from 11 until 3, artists Colella e Machepha will be at ARP’s stand to introduce themselves to CTAF visitors. At 2 pm, the Italian Consul in Cape Town, Antonio Tagliaferri, and the Director of the Italian Insitute of Culture of Pretoria, Anna Amendolagine, will be in conversation with the Project Director, Alessandra Atti Di Sarro, of Centro Luigi Di Sarro, about ARP project and its history. All artists and gallerists who took part to ARP exchanges in the last eight years have been invited to join and share their experiences.
Last hours in Rome for the 26 years old Zwelethu Machepha who ended his artistic residency within ARP – Art Residency Project, at the Centro Luigi Di Sarro he had the final interview by the filmmaker Angelica Farinelli which is building the documentary about the whole project. As location, the ‘virtual piazza’ that the big Machepha’s works had crowded into the central room of the exhibition space of the Center for Documentation of Contemporary Artistic Research in Rome. All around, on the walls and the floor, the huge sheets spread out like the many figures who crowded the six weeks of meetings and emotions. After the opening, Machepha continued to visit the City. Together with Emanuele Meschini, who accompanied him throughout the period of the residency, he noted the different architectures of neighborhoods, as Eur, Flaminio, Historical centre, Villa Borghese. He visited the MAXXI, the Roman temple of contemporary art and the Auditorium Parco della Musica, the Colosseum and the archeological sites at the Foro Romano, and the Vatican Museums with the wonder of the Sistine Chapel.
Finally last week for the young South African artist even a day trip to Florence thanks to a meeting with the sculptor Nicola Rossini who drove in the cradle of the Renaissance, and accompanied him in the visit to the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence.
A millennial history summed up in a forty-five-day trip that probably will bear fruit in the coming months. “I will need time – said Zwelethu Machepha – to rework the multitude of informations and emotions that I got. If I think about it now, I feel just overpowered.” What will remain of the meetings, human and artistic exchanges, the wires stretched between worlds, definitely not so far, are some works created during the residency, one of which, entitled “Made in Rome” entered in the Centro Di Sarro collection. The ARP project is now preparing for the second phase. The team will travel to Cape Town, South Africa, to prepare for the arrival of Valentina Colella, in February 2017.
NOT a LINE (a shadow line)
A project by Paolo Baraldi selected for the Artistic Residency in Cape Town, South Africa, September 1- October 15 2014
The second edition of the Italo-South African artist’s residency exchange programme, facilitated by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro, Rome Italy and SMAC Art Gallery is marked by the arrival of Italian artist Paolo Baraldi in Cape Town. This follows on Paolo Bini’s visit to Cape Town from September to October2013 and South African artist Jake Aikman’s visit to Rome from May to June 2014. The Art Residency Project in South Africa is supported by the Consulate of Italy in Cape Town and the South African Embassy in Italy.
PAOLO BARALDI will be living and working on a specific project in Cape Town for a period of 30 days, after which , he will present a solo exhibition at SMAC Art Gallery in Cape Town. The project “Not A Line (a shadow line)” is an urban art intervention, focused on and projected onto the grid map of the new MY CITY bus route in Cape Town which has revolutionized public mobility in Cape Town. The title “Not a Line”, in its literal sense is relevant as the map or network of bus routes is far from linear. Baraldi also sees the movement of people as a form of human exchange. My City buses concurrently run through the well-known tourist spots, and the various suburbs of the city. Each bus stop will represents a new discovery and encounter for the artist with places, people, situations and images which he aims to reproduce in shadow form, creating a body of work which is both a social survey and study in urban ethnography.
Paolo Baraldi describes the project in Cape Town as follows:
“Drawing, photography and engraving, are steps in a process of memorization: the faces, the lives, the lights and shadows of people who might meet in my experience will be stored and played back in memory.
This project fits into the body of work which I have been developing around public spaces over the last few years, in Bilbao (Spain), Tampere (Finland), Rome and Bergamo (Italy). Recurring themes and devices in my work are issues surrounding equality, as well as highlighting the acquiescence and complicity of the individual to change appearance within the public context, reflecting a specific visual and cultural aspect, which is provoked and encouraged through artistic intervention. The extent and nature of these interventions relaxed or intensified, depending on the context.”
The timing of the project coincides with various initiatives surrounding the City of Cape Town as World Design Capital for 2014, and the conceptual basis of the project aligns itself with this theme: artistic intervention and urban intervention are interrelated and connected as tools in contemporary new social planning. In recent years, there has been increased criticism and concern about commercial art practices and the art market which stifles creativity and authenticity in artistic production and there is a move back towards a vision of art which is more closely linked to the creative act, where the artist is an interlocutor, engaging with its audience, operating from within an open/public space.
Paolo Baraldi will also have a live workshop with the photography and graphics students from the “Ruth Prowse School of Art” based in Woodstock working with them at the near My City bus stop.
