Art in a Suitcase

Curated by Germano Celant, a new exhibition at Fondazione Prada declares an intention to lay bare the roots of the avant-garde promotion and dissemination project, displaying works and artistic performances that lack the aura of the unique piece.

You have to wonder whether there might not be a symbolic connotation behind the title The Small Utopia, chosen for the first exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Venice. The opening of the Ca' Corner della Regina premises during the 2011 Biennale offered a taster of programmes and intentions. Laying out the hopes for the future, the works shown provided an overview of the collection, and on display was also the latest version of the OMA project for the Fondazione's Milan premises. Now that we all know the recession is going to last, the perfectionism of the exhibition and wealth of contributions from a vast network of foreign collections seem to suggest that the ideals of art and fine exhibitions will be kept alive by the private patrons of worldwide luxury, the new princes of small utopian realms that are immune to the financial constraints suffered by the empires of the great public institutions.

Actually, the exhibition title declares an intention to lay bare the roots of the avant-garde promotion and dissemination project, conducted via works and artistic performances that can be reproduced or that lacked the indescribable aura of the unique piece: multiples, publications, mass objects with mundane content — re-themed, redefined, repeated…

It is no coincidence that the first thing Ars Multiplicata (the subtitle of the exhibition) shows visitors ascending to the piano nobile is Marcel Duchamp's boîte-en-valise. The works by the forerunner of "editions" are the key to this exhibition, the design of which has no one direction or order but a route on which hundreds of documents grouped by theme in shatterproof glass cases do not come in succession but are amassed. "No hypothesis of an "elsewhere", but pure duplication of artistic and everyday reality" is what connotes these numerous attempts by the 20th century avant-gardes. Not so much enlightened inspiration aimed at overcoming human and social contradictions and at teaching the masses but the cynical realism of the fragmentary, personal and close-up (but also fun and ironical) solace of an art that was for itself, close to the self and personalised, but extended to all.

Top: <em>The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata</em>, installation view with works by Man Ray, Meret Oppenheim, Maurice Henry, Max Ernst, at the Prada Foundation, Venice. Above: works by Marcel Duchamp — Top: *The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata*, installation view with works by Man Ray, Meret Oppenheim, Maurice Henry, Max Ernst, at the Prada Foundation, Venice. Above: works by Marcel Duchamp

The works should be put in boxes and our relationship with them is a suitcase that "...emphasised the boundaries and the closure of a something to be rediscovered and recomposed each time, implying at times a different understanding of art that was no longer linear and chronological, but disorderly and random", writes exhibition curator Germano Celant, in his preface to the show. This rediscovery should perhaps be accompanied by Chiara Costa's exemplary, precise and fun chronology of the artistic events featured in Ars Multiplicata, included in the catalogue.

<em>The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata</em>, installation view at the Prada Foundation — *The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata*, installation view at the Prada Foundation

This tenor is also prompted by the intimate atmosphere in which the exhibition is perceived, conjuring up the memory of these rooms once equally crammed with the documents of the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee della Biennale, allowing for the reassurance of a continuity that had previously seemed at risk. The rich cases, with their anonymous design, feature discreetly silkscreened glass stating the contents and naming the pieces within, without reducing the transparency and multiplying the reflections. The old frescoes actually dialogue with these reproductions as if with a richly laid table, in an effect increased by the presence of the visitors. Squeezed into the corridors created by the glass cases, they enter a state of commotion, reference and discovery of familiar faces — on the other side of the glass and among the works on display. The warehouse-feel of the sections of the exhibition dedicated to books, records and art-house films in the "introductory" small rooms of the mezzanine and ground floor only confirms this intimacy.

The answers given by the exhibition at Fondazione Prada seem to offer an array of experience and a realisation on which to base a private role, offering an alternative to the media-fuelled scandal of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and the comical threats of the outstretched tentacles of Cardin's monstrous palace of light on the mainland

<em>The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata</em>, installation view with works by Marcel Duchamp, at the Prada Foundation — *The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata*, installation view with works by Marcel Duchamp, at the Prada Foundation

Given what is happening in Venice — where Palazzo Grassi is currently home to the extremely "visual" exhibition La voce delle immagini where, in a labyrinthine series of cabinets d'images en mouvement, soft partitioning curtains cry out for visitors to touch them —, all criticism of the part played by rich foreigners in the extreme conversions — of the historic city to an exhibition showcase for their collections, and the urban fabric into a background reserved for their wealthy companions — seems finally to have received a constructive and substantial response.

It is unclear if by doing this, these people and institutions want to show that they are like us, to allow us nearer to their privileges or to allow us to share their tastes up close. However, there are some important signs in the results of this Neo-Renaissance patrician-like domesticity: an understanding of the specificity of "displaying" in a cultural context as consolidated as Venice; an assimilation of the accumulated experiences and the stimulus provided to other local exhibition spaces (in fact, in terms of exhibition details, approach and objects shown, the current exhibitions in private spaces are unknowingly in dialogue with those on Franco Vimercati and Maurizio Donzelli at Palazzo Fortuny and Enrico Castellani and Gunther Uecker at Ca' Pesaro); an ability to hold exhibitions with certain traits and a profile that is not as hackneyed as that of the big "village fair" or of the non-critical acquisition of contemporary art rubbish; and, also, clear communication of every event, its works and its intentions plus the stated desire to stage exhibitions that seek specifically to stimulate creation.

<em>The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata</em>, installation view with works by Meret Oppenheim and Man Ray, at the Prada Foundation — *The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata*, installation view with works by Meret Oppenheim and Man Ray, at the Prada Foundation

Rather than eliminating the Venice private art & jet set issue by means of controversy and alienation, we should once again make the effort to find a better way to develop this phenomenon by bringing it into a local dialogue. If this design is properly formulated in a context that has been experiencing similar dynamics since the 18th century at least and that has practised them ever since like no other city, it could become a unique testing ground.

We are still far from suggesting a tangible contribution to the constructions in situ, from imposing a concrete local design, from requesting a productive as well as exhibition contribution to the area and facilitating access to residents and those who "would gain from learning" to exhibition venues. However, the answers given by the exhibition at Fondazione Prada seem to offer an array of experience and a realisation on which to base a private role, offering an alternative to the media-fuelled scandal of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and the comical threats of the outstretched tentacles of Cardin's monstrous palace of light on the mainland. Roberto Zancan (@robertozancan)

Art in a Suitcase

Curated by Germano Celant, a new exhibition at Fondazione Prada declares an intention to lay bare the roots of the avant-garde promotion and dissemination project, displaying works and artistic performances that lack the aura of the unique piece.

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