Contemporary art means art that s created today; but who are today s young artists, and how do they work?

Transcription

1 Emerging Talents 2011 Young Italian Art 19 February 1 May 2011 Contemporary art means art that s created today; but who are today s young artists, and how do they work? This exhibition shows the work of 16 young Italian artists who ve taken part in a competition called Emerging Talents, organised by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi to give them an opportunity to become better known. A jury including three art-centre directors from all over the world chose the winner, who won a prize consisting of a chance to publish a book of his work. As you visit the exhibition, you ll find out that artists today work with many different techniques and materials: not only painting, drawing and sculpture but also spaces transformed by long strips of coloured felt, landscapes built with fragments of broken glass and environments constructed using sound and light. You can have even more fun with contemporary art if you use these cards. Use the map on the back of this card to find your way about and to discover the works of art in the exhibition!

2 4 2 1 Emerging Talents 2011 CCC Strozzina Use this map to find your way around the exhibition. The stars show where the works of art mentioned in the art cards are. 5 7a 7b laboratory Entrance

3 CCC Strozzina room 7a Emerging Talents 2011 CCC Strozzina In this room there are a few old radios concealed inside three wooden structures. The aerials sticking out of the radios are waiting to receive signals from our bodies to turn them into sound. Valentino Diego, Untitled, 2011, wood, modified broadcasting equipment

4 Untitled PLAY Discover what happens when you walk up to the aerials and start moving around the room. Try to use the radios as if they were musical instruments. Get other kids or the grownups with you to play, too. Find a rhythm and try improvising like a miniature musical band. discover This work of art was put together using old radios that the artist then modified. The scientific principle the artist based his work on is the same as that used by a real musical instrument called a theremin. The sound is triggered and changed by the distance between the musician s hands and the two aerials that make up the instrument, which is halfway between a harp and an electronic keyboard. FOLLOW THE THREAD You probably noticed the presence in the room of cables following the lines of the floor and forming geometric shapes inside the room. Try joining some of the objects in your own room together using coloured wires, to create new pathways for people to follow and new ways of measuring the spaces in your house.

5 CCC Strozzina room 5 Emerging Talents 2011 CCC Strozzina Two video projections face each other across the room: the righthand video shows a baseball player about to pitch the ball, while the lefthand one shows a series of items and ceramic ornaments that are smashed to smithereens when the ball hits the target. Antonio Rovaldi, The Opening Day, 2009, 2-channel video installation, loop

6 The Opening Day PLAY Walking into this room is a bit like watching a baseball match. Move around to different parts of the room. Where do you think the best place is for enjoying the game? What happens when you stand right in the middle of the room? discover This work of art was made to mark the world baseball championship that was held in Rome in The title of the work, The Opening Day, refers to the first match of the championship.the pitcher you can see in the video isn t just any old player, it s Italian champion Fabio Betto. follow the thread Sound plays an important role in this work of art. Hold your hands over your ears to block out the sound of the objects being hit by the ball and you ll find your understanding of the work of art changes. See if you can find any other works of art in the exhibition that use the sound element, and try repeating the experiment.

7 CCC Strozzina room 4 Emerging Talents 2011 CCC Strozzina Looking at these three huge photos, we feel as though we re in a beautiful garden on a spring night. A source of artificial light lights up the blossoming trees and allows us to make out their shapes and their size despite the total darkness. Giovanni Ozzola, Omnia Munda Mundis, 2008, lambda print on dibond, 266 x 150 cm each. Commissioned and produced for Castello di Ama for contemporary art, 2008

8 Omnia Munda Mundis play The camera s flash plays an important role in these photos. It allows us to see things that would otherwise be cloaked in the darkness of a moonless night. Imagine you re in a garden like this. What noises and smells can you hear and smell? discover Giovanni Ozzola never goes anywhere without a camera. Sometimes it can be a heavy, cumbersone one, at other times a small, lightweight one. When he went on this nighttime walk, he was carrying one that fitted neatly in his pocket. His work is based entirely on studying the effects of light at different times of the day and night. follow the thread Gather some flowers, leaves and twigs of different sizes, and let them dry between the pages of a book. After a few days have gone by, glue them to a piece of black card to create your own nighttime landscape. Make sure you get the proportions right: the bigger objects always have to be in foreground!

9 CCC Strozzina room 12 Emerging Talents 2011 CCC Strozzina A black tent separates the room from the rest of the exhibition. What lies behind it? When you walk into this dark and silent room, you re immediately struck by a video projected onto the wall showing a large cage lit up by dozens of tiny lights, a small group of peacocks and a motionless figure with a pyramid-shaped mask on its face. Luigi Presicce The Blessing of the Peacocks, 2011, HD video 11 loop, no sound

10 The Blessing of the Peacocks play The white gloves and the costume, the flame embroidered on a red apron, the position of the hands, the pyramidshaped mask and the stick with a picture of a saint on it all make this figure look very mysterious. Who could it be? Try weaving all of these elements together into a story. discover Luigi Presicce is an artist who stages situations in which he always pretends to be a different character, like a saint, for instance, or a magician or a knight. Using objects and accessories that hark back to paintings of the past, religious images and village festivals, he builds magical scenes, but there isn t an explanation for everything in the scenes. follow the thread The pyramid-shaped mask doesn t only prevent the artist from seeing what s going on around him, it also helps him to concentrate on what he s doing. Are you curious to find out what it feels like to wear one? Take some cardboard and try making a mask like the one the artist is wearing, and remember not to make any eyeholes! What images can you conjure up in your mind s eye in the semi-darkness?

11 CCC Strozzina room 8 Emerging Talents 2011 CCC Strozzina At the end of the corridor, you can make out a large flag hanging on a brass flagpole. The flag can t wave about in the breeze because we re in an enclosed space with no draughts, so it just hangs there, listlessly. Loredana Di Lillo, Black & White Italian Flag, 2010, silk, chrome-plated brass flagpole, emblem, flag

12 Black & White Italian Flag play The one thing that makes it difficult to work out what country this flag belongs to is the absence of colour. It suddenly feels like you re in an old black-and-white movie... See if you can list any countries whose threecolour flag looks like the one in the work of art on display. discover At the top of the flagpole there s the emblem of the Italian Republic, which helps you to understand that the flag you re looking at is our country s flag. Sometimes all it takes is a small change, like the colour, to alter the meaning of objects that are so familiar we hardly even look at them any more. follow the thread Try changing the aspect of an object you re familiar with. Choose something you use every day at home. Change the colour of the item you ve chosen by wrapping it up in white or coloured crepe paper. Now put it back in exactly the same place it was before and watch how the other people that live in your house react to it.