Inauguration: Saturday April 30 at 6pm
"10 Years at Fondazione Antonio Ratti"
Opening:
Tuesday—Sunday
4pm—7.30pm
Saturday 30 April 2005 the exhibition Generations of Art – 10 years at FAR opens in Como, celebrating the X anniversary of the Advanced Course in Visual Arts.
The workshop conceived by Annie Ratti, curated in the past editions by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Angela Vettese, was strongly encouraged by Antonio Ratti to open to contemporary art the Foundation, now directed by Mario Fortunato.
The exhibition, under the patronage of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, is organized in collaboration with the Comune di Como – Assessorato alla Cultura and supported by the Camera di Commercio di Como. Curator and selector of the exhibition is Giorgio Verzotti, assisted by Anna Daneri.
Since 1995 the Course, closed every year by a collective exhibition of the Visiting Professor and the Students, has featured some of the most important protagonists of the international contemporary art scene. Every year the artists created new site-specific projects for the city of Como and its spaces.
Generations of Art – 10 years at FAR aims to underline the relevance reached by the Course among the numerous initiatives for the promotion of young artists in the international art system.
The exhibition brings together the works of the ten Visiting Professors - Joseph Kosuth (1995), John Armleder (1996), Allan Kaprow (1997), Hamish Fulton (1998), Haim Steinbach (1999), Ilya Kabakov (2000), Marina Abramovic' (2001), Giulio Paolini (2002), Richard Nonas (2003), Jimmie Durham (2004) – together with the works of twenty selected students. From Italy: Simone Berti, Gianni Caravaggio, Giuseppe Gabellone, Stefania Galegati, Luisa Lambri, Claudia Losi, Marzia Migliora, Gabriele Picco, Paola Pivi and Pietro Roccasalva. From abroad: Elizabeth Aro (Spain), Mircea Cantor (Romania), Jorn Ebner (Germany/UK), Lisa Lapinski (USA), Polonca Lovsin (Slovenia), Mauricio Lupini (Venezuela), Laura Matei (Romania), Barak Reiser (Israel), Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir (Iceland) and Salla Tykkä (Finland).
The exhibition spreads through Como’s historical centre, in various sites.
At the first floor of Fondazione Antonio Ratti there will be Haim Steinbach’s installation Fern, Hudson / Como, Volta, created in Como in 1999 . In this work the artist, famous since the ‘80s for his object assemblages, brings together photos of instruments used by Volta, old toys and wooden boats from a shop in Hudson.
In the garden at the entrance of the Foundation, the visitors will find a work by Richard Nonas, the American artist-anthropologist ,and a work by Jimmie Durham, the Cherokee 2004 Visiting Professor. On one side Nonas’ Mappa Mundi made of a minimalist series of porphyry curbs, on the other Durham’s Stones Rejected by the Builder, the ironic and anti-functional tube that “connects” the lawn to the building.
The Broletto will host the great installation L’opera autentica by Giulio Paolini, leading artist of Arte Povera. The work consists of a cubic white space containing four canvases with artist’s drawings of the four possible positions of the plexiglas shape hanging at the centre of the white cube.
In the same space the Swiss artist John Armleder, European member of the Fluxus movement, presents Labyrinth, an installation made of plexiglas that overlaps its meanders to the surrounding space. The Broletto will also host photos and video installations by Allan Kaprow, inventor of the happening. This section will illustrate some of the most famous actions of the great American artist.
The association Borgovico 33 will screen a video of the most famous body-artist, Marina Abramovic'. The video belongs to the Energy Clothes series illustrating the clothes-sculptures created in 2001 in Como.
This space will also feature one photo from the series entitled Essay by Joseph Kosuth, father of conceptual art. This work illustrates the installation created in Como in 1995: a room of the Fondazione Ratti is completely painted in black with writings on the walls. The writings are fragments of letters by Pliny the Younger describing the natural and architectural beauties of the Lake Como, together with sections from Wittgenstein's Tractatus and parts of a text on the etiquette of XIX century English aristocracy.
Hamish Fulton, the British walking artist, will present one of his works inspired to his experience as Visiting Professor in 1998 in Como.
Outside the former Church of San Francesco, the Russian artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov will install once again The Fountain - Mother and Son, a big iron skeleton of a bottle with a spring of water flowing from it.
In San Francesco there will also be the exhibition of the 20 former students with either works created during their workshop, or more recent or new projects conceived specifically for this occasion.
The catalogue, published by Charta, will include texts by Annie Ratti (President of the Foundation), by the curator Giorgio Verzotti (chief-curator at Mart in Rovereto and member of FAR’s scientific committee), Anna Daneri (coordinator of the Advanced Course in Visual Arts since 1995), Angela Vettese and Giacinto di Pietrantonio (first curators since 1995), and by the ten Visiting Professors.
Info:
Coordinate della mostra formato pdf
download.pdf
Curator:
Giorgio Verzotti
Assistant Curator:
Anna Daneri
Associazione Culturale Borgovico 33
via Borgo Vico 33
22100 Como – Italy
phone
++39 031 57 60 29
fax
++39 031 33 85 220
info@bv33.com
www.bv33.com
Info Fondazione Antonio Ratti:
tel.: 0039 031 233111
info@fondazioneratti.org
www.fondazioneratti.org
Press office Fondazione Antonio Ratti:
Ilaria Gianoli
mob.: 333 6317344
e-mail: ufficiostampa