Curated by Casa Testori Associazione Culturale, Davide Dall’Ombra, Luca Fiore, Giuseppe Frangi, Francesca Radaelli.

 

Never in the history of man have we ever had as much artistic production as we have in our time. Never have there been this many artists, not only in terms of pure quantity (which would be logical considering that there are 7 billion people), but also as a percentage of people who have chosen the profession.

Why is there a great desire and need for art? Art is the activity that makes man jump out of himself, that is the space for the unexpected, the unnecessary, and the gratuitous. It is the place in which the desire that moves man in every instant of his life, tries to objectify itself in a form or in words.

It is the same thing as always, from the time of the petroglyphs of Lascaux up to today. Just as there has never been a time without art, there has never been a code that ensures the goodness of art. As Damien Hirst, one of the artists present in the exhibition and a phenomena of modern art (his person along with scandal and cover), said, “Art is true if you understand something about being alive that you never understood before.”
One thing is certain, that art can never be the same as itself; it has to always accept the risk of newness, of what hasn’t been said. Even at the cost of failing, of dramatically derailing with respect to its nature.

There is another characteristic of art: it only knows one time, and that is the present. This has always been true, in the sense that even when we look at a great work of the past, it is not great because of its status, but because it stirs our feelings in the present. One does not have to look at it with a gaze from another time period.

This exhibition offers a way to access a world that most of the time seems to be far away and difficult to understand. The path begins with an introductive video that, in a simple language, presents the characteristics of today’s art; about how it is done everywhere, with everything, about everything, and risking all. The narrative starts with a famous scene from the film Tre uomini e una gamba by the trio Aldo, Giovanni, and Giacomo. The voice of Giacomo Poretti accompanies visitors along this path of examples of artistic experiences that range from the mid-twentieth century to the present day.

The video invites the listener to discover the following rooms by himself, where videos, images, and brief captions will recount seven works by seven artists. The path is free and there is no predetermined order between the rooms. The visitor is asked to question himself by the works and, at the end of the path, he is able to ask the guides present in the exhibition. The intention of this is to provoke one’s eyes and promote dialogue, rather than an explanation.

The works of which stories are told are: The Artist is Present (2010) by Marina Abramovic; Temporali (2008-2014) by Alberto Garutti, Shooting Into the Corners (2009-2013); @LARGE: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz (2014) by Ai Weiwei; Couple under an umbrella (2013) by Ron Mueck; The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) and the series Study for Pentimenti (2010-2011) by Jenny Saville.