Artissima, International Fair of Contemporary Art, is pleased to announce the creation of Artissima XYZ, an original cross-media platform that transforms the curated sections of the fair into an immersive digital experience.
This year the fair will take place both online and offline: Artissima XYZ, focusing on the curated sections, will be presented on a devoted online platform, whereas the 27th edition will be hosted at the OVAL pavilion welcoming Italian and international exhibitors and collectors and presenting the four sections Main Section, New Entries, Dialogue/Monologue and Art Spaces & Editions.
For the 2020 edition, the sections Present Future (curated by Ilaria Gianni and Fernanda Brenner), Back to the Future (curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Mouna Mekouar) and Disegni (curated by Letizia Ragaglia and Bettina Steinbrügge) will exist on the platform Artissima XYZ online from 3 November to 9 December 2020. Supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Artissima XYZ has been formulated in continuity with Artissima Digital, the digital ecosystem of the fair since 2017.
The curated sections will be presented in an innovative cross-media space capable of getting beyond the classic structure of the viewing room and digital catalogues, offering fresh experiential content to deeply explore the work of all the main figures involved: galleries, artists, curators. Each curatorial team—thanks to a constant, stimulating collaboration and dialogue with the galleries—has selected ten projects for each section, featuring ten artists each, presented by their galleries, and pursuing a precise thematic orientation. 3 sections, 30 artists for 30 galleries, 10 for each section.
The layout of the platform will be immediate in its approach and easy to explore: after landing on a welcome page, visitors can enter the three sections in which each project has its own page, full of materials of different kinds for a 360° overview of the work and the artist, taking different paths of viewing and interpretation. Suggesting the axes of a Cartesian system, the name XYZ refers to the multi-dimensional and multi-media approach applied by the platform, designed to convey physical experience through virtual experience. Visitors can thus appreciate the value of a work of art not only by seeing it, but also by listening to its critical interpretation and discovering its creative genesis through photographs, videos, interviews and podcasts where artists, gallerists and curators are the protagonists. With the help of the same remote technologies that have become everyday working tools for all of us in recent months, some of the contents will be produced directly by the galleries and artists, while others will be created by the editorial team Ordet—composed of Edoardo Bonaspetti, Stefano Cernuschi and Anna Bergamasco—who produced the Artissima Stories and Pills for Artissima over the last few years.
Ilaria Bonacossa comments: The Artissima XYZ platform continues the concrete and experimental approach of Artissima, its commitment to research on new and emerging talents, and to the rediscovery of artists and stories that have made this fair one of the ten best in the world. Even in the era of the pandemic, Artissima moves forward with innovative responses to the necessities of the time, identifying flexible forms of observation and relation, to sustain the present methodologies of the art system and its players, transforming into a hybrid fair capable of narrating and revealing contemporary art. XYZ does not only suggest three spatial coordinates, but also the final letters of the alphabet, which brought together in an unpronounceable term open up the possibility of new and unexpected languages.
Artissima XYZ is not just an authentic, creative and effective response to the limits imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic on fair events: this new online platform also offers an original and engaging experience to both collectors and those who want to learn more about contemporary art, accompanied by the voices of the personalities who customarily make the story of the fair, be it physical or virtual.
THE THREE CURATED SECTIONS
The curated sections of the fair are Present Future, Back to the Future, Disegni. The mechanism of selection of the galleries in these sections differs from that of the Main Section and New Entries, because it is guided by a pool of international curators and museum directors who invite the galleries to take part with special projects by international artists.
Present Future focuses on emerging talents not yet over 40 years of age. The artists are selected on the basis of projects submitted by their galleries of reference, or art research spaces. The curatorial team of Present Future is composed of the independent curators and writers Ilaria Gianni and Fernanda Brenner.
Ilaria Gianni and Fernanda Brenner, curators of Present Future comment:
Reflecting on the relationship between art, language and political turmoil, this special edition of Present Future will feature artists that see art as a toolbox and a way to explore their roles as citizens and social actors. Focusing on practices that listen and give voice to those who have not been in a social, political, geographical or cultural, situation of holding the microphone, instead of labeling and exploiting occurrences, the artists included in Present Future free narratives and imageries incapsulating multiple versions in History’s timeline. Each work becomes an act of resistance, and as a breath itself, one for survival. Present Future 2020 involves the spectators in a complex discourse questioning languages and positions, visions and identities, offering a dynamic and plural interactive platform for discussion and interpretation that deliberately avoids all sorts of binary oppositions.
An international jury will evaluate the proposals of the online Present Future section and will assign the Premio illy Present Future, the award supported by illycaffè, now at its 20th edition, to the most interesting submitted project.
Since 2012, this prize has granted its winner the exceptional opportunity to have a show at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. On the occasion of Artissima 2020, the solo exhibition by aaajiao, winner of last year’s edition, will open at the museum. The exhibition is curated by Marianna Vecellio. Thanks to the contemporary vision of illycaffè and the active partnership with Castello di Rivoli, the Premio illy Present Future offers an important contribution to the success of emerging international talents, confirming the company’s active role in the fair.
Llano – Noe Martínez, Un Acto Antes de un Concepto, 2016. Exhibition view, Parque Galería, Mexico City. Courtesy the artist and Llano, Mexico City
Back to the Future presents monographic projects for the rediscovery of great pioneers of contemporary art. The section, which is also open to artists’ estates, brings together works made over a specific time span. This year the selected period is from 1960 to 1999. The curatorial team of Back to the Future is composed of the Director of GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Lorenzo Giusti, and the independent curator and art critic Mouna Mekouar.
Lorenzo Giusti and Mouna Mekouar, curators of Back to the Future, comment:
We have decided to give this edition of Back to the Future the same title as a work by David Lamelas, one of the artists involved in the project: When the Sky is Low and Heavy. While the representation of the man-nature relationship as a process marked by continuing strains and adaptations seems to shed light for an interpretation of our time, it also seems important in relation to factors that have always been the primary goals of this section: the conservation of memories and the current contextualization of languages.
T293 – Isabella Ducrot, Ripetizione Rossa, 2018. Collection Matteo Novarese, Bologna. Photo: Roberto Apa
Disegni presents monographic projects on contemporary experimentation with the practice of drawing, originally associated with paper and then impacted by radical transformations. The curatorial team of Disegni is made up of the independent curator Letizia Ragaglia and the director of the Kunstverein of Hamburg and managing director of Kunstmeile Hamburg Bettina Steinbrügge.
Letizia Ragaglia and Bettina Steinbrügge, curators of Disegni, comment:
In the Disegni section we have chosen to deepen multiple facets of the “drawing cosmos” through the works of ten women artists of different ages and origins. We want to explore the fluidity of the borders of this medium and discover how its inclination to contamination confers liveliness to it. Furthermore, we want to point out how every single artist finds freedom and an augmented possibility of experimentation (and risk and fun!) in the practice of drawing. That is because we want to see the future even if only momentarily.
Gallleriapiù – Ivana Spinelli, Zig Zag Protofilosofia – Serie di segni, 2017-2018. Courtesy Gallleriapiù and the artist. Photo: Stefano Maniero
LIST OF GALLERIES
XYZ – PRESENT FUTURE
EDU DE BARROS, SÉ GALERIA Sao Paulo – SIMON DENNY, ALTMAN SIEGEL San Francisco – RADAMÉS “JUNI” FIGUEROA, PROYECTOS ULTRAVIOLETA Guatemala City – SHADI HAROUNI, TIZIANA DI CARO Napoli – LUÍS LÁZARO MATOS, MADRAGOA Lisbon – NOE MARTÍNEZ, LLANO Mexico City – SARA NAIM, THE THIRD LINE Dubai – ANTONIO OBÁ, MENDES WOOD DM Sao Paulo, Brussels, New York – MANUEL SOLANO, PERES PROJECTS Berlin – KANDIS WILLIAMS, NIGHT GALLERY Los Angeles
XYZ – BACK TO THE FUTURE
GUILLAUME BIJL, HUBERT WINTER Vienna – LISETTA CARMI, MARTINI & RONCHETTI Genova – FELICIANO CENTURIÓN, CECILIA BRUNSON London – ISABELLA DUCROT, T293 Roma – ROSE FINN-KELCEY, KATE MACGARRY London – JULIJE KNIFER, FRANK ELBAZ Paris, Dallas – DAVID LAMELAS, JAN MOT Brussels – IVENS MACHADO, FORTES D’ALOIA & GABRIEL Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro – MOHAMED MELEHI, LOFT ART Casablanca – REGINA VATER, JAQUELINE MARTINS Sao Paulo
XYZ – DISEGNI
SARAH ABU ABDALLAH, ATHR Jeddah – MONICA BONVICINI, KÖNIG Berlin – ELLEN CANTOR, ISABELLA BORTOLOZZI Berlin – KEREN CYTTER, PILAR CORRIAS London – SARAH FAUX, CAPSULE SHANGHAI Shanghai – HEIKE-KARIN FÖLL, CAMPOLI PRESTI London, Paris – MARGUERITE HUMEAU, CLEARING New York, Brussels – BETHAN HUWS, VISTAMARE/VISTAMARESTUDIO Pescara, Milano – OLIVIA PLENDER, MAUREEN PALEY London – IVANA SPINELLI, GALLLERIAPIÙ Bologna
