The twenty-ninth edition of Artissima, Italy’s most experimental contemporary art fair, is opening its doors from 4 to 6 November, hosting inside Turin’s Oval 174 Italian and foreign galleries from all over the world. 42 of these are participating in the fair for the first time, testifying to the fair's appeal and ability to be a catalyst for market investment and artistic interchange.
The 2022 edition undoubtedly marks a turning point. First of all, the seven sections that make up the fair are returning to full physical presence and will boast many monographic stands – not only the four most established ones, then - Main Section, New Entries, Monologue/Dialogue and Art Spaces & Editions – but also three sections curated by leading figures on the international scene – Drawings, Present Future and Back to the Future (curated respectively by Anna Gritz and Balthazar Lovay, Sam Demircan and Maurin Dietrich and Irina Zucca Alessandrelli), which, last year, were held online, on a dedicated cross-media platform.
What not to miss at Artissima 2022 and Turin Art Week
An essential guide to the unmissable event of contemporary art in Turin, and all the events taking place around the city during the 29th edition of Italy’s most experimental fair. With unpublished statements by new director Luigi Fassi.
Nina Beier and Bob Kil. Credit Installation view Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino. Photo Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Nan Golding.Credit Installation view Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino. Photo Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Superflex. Credit Installation view Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino. Photo Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Darren Bader, ‘#I am just living to be dying by your side’, Galleria Franco Noero, Antipodes: musical quartets, 2013 (detail). Courtesy the artist and Galleria Franco Noero, Torino. Photo Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, On the ground – Air Pressure (A diary of the sky)
Alice Dos Reis, Stan Rehearsal – Ensaio Para Plataforma de Lançamento, 2020, HD Video, 5', Color, Sound. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Lehmann+Silva
Alice Dos Reis, Stan Rehearsal – Ensaio Para Plataforma de Lançamento, 2020, HD Video, 5', Color, Sound. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Lehmann+Silva
Ludovica Carbotta, I come from outside of myself
Ludovica Carbotta, I come from outside of myself
Cleo Fariselli, Your Storm Our Dew, 2022, Video stills. Courtesy the artist andAlmanac (London – Torino). Project realized with the support of Italian Council (2021)
Cleo Fariselli, Your Storm Our Dew, 2022, Video stills. Courtesy the artist andAlmanac (London – Torino). Project realized with the support of Italian Council (2021)
Luca Bosani, C0036_UPO Settimo Milanese. Courtesy Luca Bosani
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- Irene Sofia Comi
- 04 November 2022
Secondly, it should be emphasised that this year Artissima has a new director, too. After five years, Ilaria Bonacossa – now director of the National Museum of Digital Art in Milan – has been replaced by Luigi Fassi, previously director of the MAN Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro, and of the 2016 edition of the “Curated_by Festival” in Vienna.
As Fassi told Domus, “the priority, after two years that were very important for the fair, albeit marked by the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, was to re-launch the strength of the fair’s national and international network, furthering the scouting and discovery identity that has made it a much sought-after international brand for galleries, particularly the younger ones. For Artissima, 2022 has been a year of travel, research and wide-ranging contacts on a global level, from Europe to America, from Africa to Asia”. This statement suggests that, after two challenging years for cultural events, the contemporary art world is ready to find new points of connection.
These transformative experiences are precisely the main inspiration of this year’s edition, explains the director: “The American contemporary philosopher Laurie Anne Paul, in her book Transformative Experience (2014), argues that the transformative experiences are the experiences that we cannot in any way rationally anticipate or predict.” The philosopher will give a lecture on 5 November at the fair, “a novel case for an international contemporary art fair,” emphasises the curator.
In the wake of this transformation, an onlife approach is adopted within the fair’s venue, where the digital media plays the role of “cultural mediator”, accompanying visitors through the Artissima Voice Over platform, a new project in collaboration with Lauretana consisting of digital audio guides accessible via smartphone. It is “as if Artissima were a museum whose works, stories and paths can be discovered,” suggests Fassi. Another major addition is the A Sud project, created to explore and support some of Artissima’s historical cultural specificities linked to the south of the country and in which the Fondazione Merz/Zac Centrale, the Fondazione Oelle and the Fondazione Paul Thorel are participating.
Also worth mentioning, among the collaborations with numerous partners, is the fair’s focus on young artists through JaguArt, Jaguar’s award, as well as the collaboration with Juventus, which this year invited artist Giovanni Ozzola for the usual project for young visitors to the fair. Thanks to the dialogue with the Fondazione Torino Musei, as well as with the Main Partner Intesa Sanpaolo and with the partners Gruppo UNA and illycaffè, with the now historical illy Present Future Award, the fair expands in the city with three “by-invitation-only” projects and an exhibition.
In addition to a very rich selection of works at the fair, in fact, the city offers a full agenda of stimulating events. “Over the years, the relationship between Turin and contemporary art has grown on several levels, from the construction of large collections of Italian and international art in the public and private spheres to the nurturing of independent spaces and the incubation of young artists. The city has developed an operational porosity that produces a virtuous and continuous interchange between Artissima, the city’s institutions and galleries, and internationally renowned public art projects such as Luci d’artista” Fassi says.
In a new guise, starting with the artistic direction of Sarah Cosulich and going all the way up to the distinctive fiery red visual identity, Pinacoteca Agnelli, a stone’s throw from the fairgrounds, reopened its doors a few months ago and is ready to welcome visitors at Artissima with the second edition of “Beyond the Collection”, an exhibition project created to occur again year after year and which develops from an ever-changing work from the Agnelli collection. This time, Giambattista Tiepolo’s work A Halberdier in a Landscape is compared with Simon Starling’s exhibition project as part of the Tiepolo x Starling exhibition, on view until Feb. 5. At the same time, four new installations by artists of different generations are on display on La Pista 500 (i.e., on the rooftop of the Lingotto, an area of the Pinacoteca renovated for the new opening): the parking area by Liam Gillick, the billboard with photography by Nan Goldin, the SUPERFLEX sign, and the special road signs by Marco Giordano. These join the eight works previously exhibited in a tight dialogue with the architecture of the former FIAT factory. Enriching the proposal is the performance All Fours by Nina Beier and Bob Kil, which overturns the symbols of power represented in the monuments. On view on La Pista 500, at sunset, until Nov. 6.
Curated by Irene Calderoni and Amanda Sroka and on view in Turin until Feb. 26 – along with a series of new exhibitions opening on the occasion of Artissima at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, including the Illy Future Prize won by Diana Policarpo – Air Pressure (A diary of the sky) is the new multichannel video and audio installation by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, an independent audio researcher and winner of the third Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media, awarded jointly by the institutions Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Based on a screenplay written by the artist, the work explores the ecology of noise typical of Lebanese airspace and focuses on incidents in which the Israeli Air Force crossed Lebanese skies in violation of agreements between the two nations. To produce the work, the artist drew on visual and sound recordings and archival materials, which include digital content posted by users and citizens through social media, using the Arabic hashtag #حربي_بالاجواء (which translates to #warintheatmosphere). Abu Hamdan also made his research accessible through an online database AirPressure.info.
Moving in that hybrid territory between art and cinema that brings together the different technical experimentations related to moving images under the term video art, the collective exhibition includes works mostly unreleased in Italy made by internationally renowned artists such as Larry Achiampong, Yael Bartana, Adelita Husni-Bey and Jonathas de Andrade. On view until April 30, 2023, the group show addresses urgent contemporary issues such as the relationship between the individual and the collective, providing multiple readings from different cultural contexts, capable of highlighting the contradictions of the present in a society increasingly polarized between conflicts, ideologies and inequalities. The event, organized by Artissima in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo, can be visited downtown at the Gallerie d’Italia headquarters in Piazza San Carlo. Leonardo Bigazzi has curated the project, curator of In Between Art Film and Schermo dell’arte, who recently co-curated another unmissable exhibition in Venice, entitled Penumbra, dedicated to video art too (on view until Nov. 27, for those in the lagoon).
Until November 6, OGR is hosting Ludovica Carbotta’s project I come from outside of myself, an ideal pavilion, a fragile, mobile and extra-territorial architecture designed to move ideally from country to country. Moreover, it does not, as its traditional functions would have it, include hosting people. In doing so, the space is transformed into a source of production of pavilions and displays sculptures made from casts, replicated thanks to self-made machinery that recycles plastic. The exhibition, curated by Samuele Piazza, speaks of the present time through a device to reflect on the nature of European borders, between limits and possibilities. After the Turin launch phase, the pavilions will begin to circulate, giving rise to other occasions for debate. The next one will be in Rome, on November 17, on the occasion of The European Pavilion, a multidisciplinary and pan-European initiative.
Cleo Fariselli’s exhibition Your Storm Our Dew at the Almanac Inn space is inspired by the events of the past two years and reflects on the concept of “dilated emergency”, a contemporary topic that has established itself as a paradoxical state of normality. In response to this constant feeling of distorted and inherent unpredictability, the artist creates an emotional environment on view until Jan. 29, made up of imaginative narratives that revolve around object elements typical of states of emergency, capable of generating alien and distorted ecosystems. Realized thanks to the support of the Italian Council (2021), the work consists of a video with a documentary and at the same time surrealistic style where the movements and visual effects are inspired by those of black light theater, an expression of puppet theater based on a principle of optical illusion, where the human eye does not distinguish the actors from the background.
Like a TV series starring a number of detective investigations which are difficult to solve, a performance by artist Luca Bosani will be held on Nov. 5 from 6 to 11 p.m. at the headquarters of Osservatorio Futura. Bosani will stage a series of elements related to a strange, apparently unidentifiable event that occurred on the morning of Sept. 30, 2022 in the Lombardy countryside between Saronno and Paderno Dugnano. From that moment on, Bosani has been investigating the event, playing the role of a private detective. A series of unexplained events, involving strange morning sightings, lead him to Turin at Osservatorio Futura, a nonprofit space founded in September 2020 and dedicated to experimentation and research for emerging art. At the end of the exhibition, Bosani’s props and sculptures will remain on display and go into a set design. To find out if you can solve the puzzle, there is time until Dec. 9.