LOOP BARCELONA

View of Harun Farocki's "Empathy," Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, 2016. Image courtesy of Fundació Antoni Tàpies and Loop, Barcelona. Photo by Lluís Bover.

Loop Barcelona June 2–4, 2016 Barcelona's Loop art fair, which started in 2003, is the oldest and most established initiative to assert the commercial potential of film and video. The medium's ephemeral nature, and its associations with the very different market values of cinema, have contributed to a continued reluctance from collectors, attracted by the aura of more traditional art forms. Paradoxically, these tricky market credentials have recently endowed the moving image with a critical cachet in institutional art spaces and museums. As the institutional assimilation of practices traditionally seen as marginal, and oppositional, to the art market continues—from experimental film to the documentary—the instrumental role of film and video takes on a significant historical resonance in art discourse. In order to assign value to this wayward and ambiguous media within the context of an art fair, Loop has to negotiate a conflicted territory. How to maintain its more market-driven function without appearing to dismiss these historic discourses of disavowal, which will themselves provide validation for the sale of moving image works? I received the answer at my hotel desk, where I received the exhibition catalogue for "Empathy," Harun Farocki's show at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. The enclosed compliment slip asserts Farocki's role as a "close collaborator of Loop, whom we would like to pay tribute to," whilst entreating me to enjoy the fair. By this overt association to a figure paradigmatic for his politically committed film practice, Loop asserts its connection to politically infused discourses of the moving image beyond the market and within the cultural institutions of Barcelona: something that was also apparent in the presence of Malcolm Le Grice and Anthony McCall at the fair, both acclaimed for their role in the radical film culture of an earlier period. The hotel is a central venue for Loop. Divested of regular guests, 49 bedrooms similar to the one in which I am staying mutter and flicker, the contours of their bedroom furniture now dimly illuminated by the blue tinted half light of numerous video screens on which commercial art galleries from across Europe, and as far afield as Mexico and Taiwan, present a diversity of moving image works. The three days of the fair were embedded in what was projected as a citywide event of the moving image, divided into three components: the fair, the festival, and the studies program. This model of dialog on different discursive registers, now common practice for art fairs and film festivals, provided an effective means of situating the market within a wider discourse about the moving image as an artistic and curatorial practice. Exemplary of this was an engaging revisitation of the Centre Pompidou exhibition "Passages de l'Image" (1990-91) by two of its key protagonists, Raymond Bellour and Christine Van Assche in dialogue with the artist David Claerbout. Deftly chaired by Erika Balsom, the conversation resonated with still unresolved matters concerning the dynamics of film as exhibition, and in particular the vexed question of the durational experience of moving image in the gallery where, as Bellour puts it, we are faced with the "disturbing problem" of "conflating different durational experiences" into a space designed for the perambulating pace of the gallery visitor, not the static immersion of the cinema spectator. Bellour's problem of durational conflation could be experienced in almost baroque intensity at the art fair itself, where divergent aesthetics, stories, and temporal and sonic registers were condensed into corridors of makeshift bedroom booths. Despite this, an unexpected predominance of slow-paced observational works was evident. Quiet films, such as Escape from North Korea (2009), Chien-Chi Chang's document of North Korean defectors; The Committee (2014), Pilvi Takala's engagements with an East End London youth group; the elderly Cuban women Adrian Melis portrayed in their homes in Glorias de un Futuro Olvidado (2016); and Ângela Ferreira's research into Portuguese colonial history, Adventures in Mozambique and the Portuguese Tendency to Forget (2016), all reflected upon history and politics in ways that were arresting and thought-provoking, and spoke more to the legacy of Farocki than the prosaic business of an art fair might at first suggest. The geographical reach of the exhibitions in the festival also mitigated any claustrophobia, encouraging a flâneur rhythm which I carried into different gallery spaces as I traversed the city. In contrast to the montage of voices at the fair, the monographic focus of shows such as those of Farocki, Andrea Fraser, and McCall invited a slower pace of assimilation, which allowed me to navigate, and unpick, threads of development across a singular creative practice, albeit of artists already heavily canonized. Fraser's exhaustive survey at MACBA, "L'1%, c'est moi," underlined the depth of her enduring study of the play of gender, class, and finance in culture; bringing her appropriation of language and gestures to a grotesque pitch with a rogues' gallery of museum curators, guides, and assistants. At Fundació Gaspar, I was drawn to a close study of McCall's diagrams for early works sometimes executed and sometimes imagined, such as Room with Altered Window(1973), Notation of Fire Condition for Batterson College (1973), and Found Solid Light Installation (1974), which plots the location of lighthouses across a map of Britain. These small pencil-shaded studies and diagrams, with their emphasis on mapping and locating, were a fascinating insight into McCall's roots in Britain's conceptual art movement, and its rarely acknowledged influence on his later solid light films. The most memorable encounter was with Farocki. In the galleries at the Fundació Tàpies, the engrossing activities in Labour in a Single Shot (2011–14), his collaboration with Antje Ehmann, spoke the rhythm of human labor across continents, further unpicking a problem that Farocki has present across his career in film essays such as Workers Leaving the Factory in 11 Decades (2006), also on display. Up another flight of stairs, I am struck by the juxtaposition of Antoni Tàpies' savage canvas Claus i Corda (nails and string, 1969), impaled with nails and threaded with string, beside covers of Filmkritik magazine, for which Farocki was editor and contributor, and a row of monitors showing his first radical documentaries. Set into dialog with the art of another revolutionary, I was reminded again of Farocki's ambition and commitment to unraveling the political dynamics of film technology and its languages; so that, like Tàpies, he might confront political tyrannies and repressions, whether visible or covert. It was an encounter that resonated with a festival whose attempt to marry commerce and critical dialogue around a technology which troubles the temporal-spatial dynamics of the gallery bleeds into other discourses and urgencies outside art's white walls and cultural prescriptions. Lucy Reynolds has lectured and published extensively, most particularly focused on questions of the moving image, feminism, political space, and collective practice. See more images

ARTIS CONTEMPORARY | GRANTS

Sharon Ya'ari, 3 women, old fair grounds, 2001. Courtesy of the artist and Sommer Contemporary Art.

Grants awarded to nine solo and three group exhibitions in Asia, Europe, South America, and the US www.artiscontemporary.org www.artiscontemporary.org/calendar Facebook / Twitter / Instagram Artis is pleased to announce 12 new Exhibition Grants to support the presentation of work by contemporary visual artists from Israel at critical moments in their careers. Among the funded projects are solo exhibitions and presentations at prestigious biennials, renowned museums, and community-focused nonprofits and educational institutions. The 2016 Artis Exhibition Grantees demonstrate a high degree of ambition, critical support for both emerging and established artists, and strong potential for long-term outcomes and impact. Each exhibition will include public programs, publications, and online resources designed to expand the reach to local and global audiences. Since 2004, Artis has awarded 1.35 million USD for international exhibitions and projects that advance innovative thinking about contemporary visual art from Israel. Applications for 2017 Exhibition Grants will open on November 4, 2016. 2016 Exhibition Grantees: Mika Rottenberg Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL Solo exhibition curated by José Carlos Diaz November 30, 2016–May 23, 2017 Memory Goes As Far As This Morning Chengdu MOCA, Chengdu, China Group exhibition with Gideon Rubin and Shu Qun, curated by Xiaohui Guo September 23–November 18, 2016 Nahum Tevet—Works on Glass 1972-1975 Hunter College Art Galleries, The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, NY Solo exhibition curated by Thierry de Duve September 22–November 20, 2016 Jan Tichy: Installation no. 29 (Neues Rathaus - New Town Hall) Kunsthalle Osnabrueck, Osnabrueck, Germany Solo exhibition curated by Julia Draganović and Barbara Kaesbohrer November 18, 2016–January 8, 2017 Manifesta 11: What People Do For Money: Some Joint Ventures Manifesta, various locations, Zurich, Switzerland Solo presentation by Shelly Nadashi, curated by Christian Jankowski June 9–September 18, 2016 Enough About You TRIAD (Towards Regional Integration of Artistic Development) and MAXXI (Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo), Rome, Italy Solo presentation by Einat Amir, curated by TRIAD and MAXXI October 20–24, 2016 Sharon Ya'ari. Photography National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania Solo exhibition curated by Ieva Mazūraitė-Novickienė June 17–September 4, 2016 Conditions of Political Choreography Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin, Germany Group exhibition with Yochai Avrahami, Yael Bartana, Noam Enbar & Jonathan Levy, Christian Falsnaes, Ohad Fishof, Michal Helfman, Leon Kahane, Adam Linder, Antje Majewski, Markus Meißen, Ohad Meromi, Slavs and Tartars, and Susanne M. Winterling. Curated by Marius Babias, Sergio Edelsztein, Sophie Goltz, and Chen Tamir June 16–July 16, 2017 Incerteza Viva (Live Uncertainty) São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil Solo exhibition by Michal Helfman in the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, curated by Jochen Volz and co-curators Gabi Ngcobo, Júlia Rebouças, Lars Bang Larsen and Sofía Olascoaga September 6–December 11, 2016 Zvi Goldstein - Distance and Differences Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent, Belgium Solo exhibition curated by Ory Dessau June 25–October 30, 2016 The Yellow Who Wants Uppsala Art Museum, Uppsala, Sweden Solo exhibition of Tamar Ettun, curated by Rebecka Wigh Abrahamsson May 12–August 21, 2016 Curfew Unlimited: Nothing But Longing (NBL) Void Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland Group exhibition featuring Ilit Azoulay, Asaf Ben Zvi, Rafram Chaddad, Keren Cytter, Effi & Amir, Guy Goldstein, Talia Keinan, Yonatan Levy, Jonathan Ofek, Eli Petel, Tchelet Ram, Shai Ratner, Netally Schlosser, Naama Tsabar, and Shahar Yahalom. Curated by Sagit Mezamer and Bill Drummond (The Curfew Tower) December 3, 2016–February 11, 2017 About Artis Artis is an independent nonprofit organization that broadens international awareness and understanding of contemporary visual art from Israel. We champion innovation, experimentation and artistic excellence, and support freedom of speech and expression for all people. Artis aims to cultivate a global network of resources that advance opportunities for contemporary artists—regardless of religion, race or ethnicity. For more information, updates about 2017 grants, or to sign up for Artis' email list, visit artiscontemporary.org. For upcoming programs visit our calendar. For grants queries: grants@artiscontemporary.org For press queries: info@artiscontemporary.org

GEORGE HENRY LONGLY | RED BULL STUDIOS NY

George Henry Longly, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Red Bull Studios New York.

George Henry Longly
We All Love Your Life

June 9–July 31, 2016

Red Bull Studios New York
220 W 18th St.
New York, NY 10011
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday noon–7pm

redbullstudiosnewyork.com
Facebook / Instagram

Red Bull Studios New York is proud to present We All Love Your Life, the first US solo exhibition of London-based artist George Henry Longly. On view from June 9 until July 31, the exhibition reconfigures Red Bull Studios New York into a series of disorienting, obliquely formal and technological references. As viewers traverse the gallery, they encounter a variety of experiences alluding to subjectivity in outer space, to the coexistence of classical and digital orders, to self-help and reality television, to seeing the earth from space—to space-age subjectivity.

We All Love Your Life germinated from A House in Space, a book about NASA’s Skylab space station written by journalist Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr. in 1976. By matching the existential thrill of viewing Earth from a floating vantage that is moving through space with quotidian details pertaining to diet, clothing, and daily routine, A House in Spaceportrays a world that is exceptional and banal, unique and universal. Longly sets up a structure where the power relations between ground control and the space station are examined—played out through a narrative that includes a public artwork in space and an onsite performance venue housed within the space station.

Refracting the lens through which viewers watch everything from men walking on the moon to cooking food in front of a live studio audience, We All Love Your Life is a thrilling mix of surveillance and exhibitionism, astral focus and deep parallax. A tightly cropped film of snakes slipping across a studio desk; a mutated Dionysus, based on a three-dimensional scan of an Elgin Marble; a web camera and a bedroom: these subjects and settings of We All Love Your Life invert the commonplace and the phenomenal—a spatial reorganization that refers back to the astronauts’ experience aboard Skylab. In the absence of gravity, “local-vertical” orientation between floor and ceiling, up and down, cease to matter. As this most basic binary erodes, it takes with it other structural divisions that once ordered our lives: personal and public space, times and sites devoted to work and leisure, individual and collective subjectivities, the seeing and the seen.
About George Henry Longly
George Henry Longly works with sculpture, video, music and performance. Recent solo exhibitions include; The Smile of a Snake, Valentin, Paris (2016); Volume Excess, Koppe Astner Glasgow (2015); The Moving Museum, Istanbul (2014); Hair Care, Jonathan Viner, London (2014); GHL, Park Nights / Serpentine Gallery, London (2013); Pleats Please, Hanway Place, London (2013). He has been included in the group exhibitions; The Boys, The Girls and The Political, Lisson Gallery London (2015);Septic Finger, Kostyal, Stockholm (2015); Adventures in Bronze, Clay and Stone, Icastica Arezzo, Italy (2015); British Summer, Elizabeth Dee, New York (2015); The Crack-Up, ROOM EAST, New York (2015); A Journey Through London Subculture, ICA (off-site) (2013), London; Reading the Surface, David Zwirner, London (2013); Abstract Cabinet, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2013); Prodigal in Blue, Laura Bartlett, London (2013); and Managing Bounces, Cell project space, London (2013).

About Red Bull Studios New YorkRed Bull Studios New York is a multidisciplinary contemporary art space. Recent projects include BIO:DIP, a two-part exhibition composed of large-scale solo projects by Hayden Dunham and Nicolas Lobo curated by Neville Wakefield (2016); Scenario in the Shade by Justin Lowe, Jonah Freeman, and Jennifer Herrema (2015); NEW INC: End-Of-Year Showcase presented in collaboration with the New Museum (2015); Alone Together by Ryder Ripps (2015); Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior, a group exhibition curated by Phong Bui and The Brooklyn Rail Curatorial Projects (2014);Living: An Exhibition by Peter Coffin (2014); and DISown: Not for Everyone a group exhibition including Lizzie Fitch, Ryan Trecartin, Amalia Ulman, Bjarne Melgaard, Jon Rafman, Carissa Rodriguez, Simon Fujiwara, Antoine Catala, Dora Budor, GCC, Arunanondchai, Nicolas Fernandez, Shanzhai Biennial, Anne de Vries, Timur Si-Qin, Katja Novitskova, Leilah Weinraub, Telfar, and HBA by art collective DIS and curator Agatha Wara (2014).

ART BASEL 2016 | ISABELLA BORTOLOZZI GALERIE

Oscar Murillo, Human Resources, 2015-2016

Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi
is pleased to announce
participation at Art Basel 2016

Main Fair
Booth M6 Hall 2.1

Ed Atkins
Bepi Ghiotti
Anne Imhof
Oscar Murillo
Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff
Carol Rama
Stephen G. Rhodes
Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys

Art Basel
Basel, June 16–19, 2016
artbasel.com

Image: Oscar Murillo, Human Resources, 2015-2016
Oil and oil stick on canvas with eyelets, steel poles, steel brackets, steel cable ties, 340 x 330 x 30 cm
Photo: Matthew Hollow

Main Fair
Booth M6 Hall 2.1

ED ATKINS
BEPI GHIOTTI
ANNE IMHOF
OSCAR MURILLO
CELLA HEN & MAX PTGOFF
CAROL RAMA
SEPHEN RODES

THE PRESENT IN DRAG | 9TH BERLIN BIENNALE

Wu Tsang, Duilian (production still), 2016.

“The Present in Drag,” 9th Berlin Biennale

VARIOUS LOCATIONS, Berlin

June 4—September 18, 2016

by TRAVIS DIEHL

“Advertisting … is the only art form we [in the United States] ever invented.” Gore Vidal (1)

The fourth floor of Berlin’s Akademie der Künste overlooks Pariser Platz: the Brandenburg Gate, the French embassy fringed with barricades, a teeming Starbucks. Tourists mill around the square, while up on the mezzanine, between a set of marble statues of animals improbably swallowing other animals, a queue forms behind an Oculus Rift rig: Jon Rafman’s View of Pariser Platz (2016). At first the rendered scene in the headset matches the architecture and sculptures. A dog gags on a lion, an iguana gulps a sloth. Slowly, the animals start swelling, expelling, gyrating; the view fills with fog. Human figures blow upwards like flapping skins. Soon the pavement and building break apart; the viewer freefalls among the debris, landing, after a moment, among ranks of featureless mannequins… Rafman’s technical hallucination takes roughly three minutes. For three minutes, the setting in all its very real paradox—a symbolic gateway between West and East, Reagan and Gorbachev, also known as the place where Michael Jackson dangled his baby from a balcony—falls away beneath an encompassing, scripted but nonreactive spectacle. Thus the city rebrands itself: a new ad on a dirty bus stop, trendy clothes on a chipped mannequin, a twenty-first-century ideology on a pockmarked prewar building.

The digital media platform DIS comes to Berlin as four curators programming a biennial and as young New Yorkers interpreting a foreign town—but also as an image all its own. Accordingly, many of the works in the 9th Berlin Biennale seem not to disturb their context so much as augment, sex up, imitate, and artify. At the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), one of five official venues scattered throughout the city, Katja Novitskova has installed acrylic standees printed with horns and flames; one group, superimposed on a first-floor window, appears to lick at a thicket of nearby construction cranes (Expansion Curves (fire worship, purple horns), 2016). This much, at least, satirizes more self-satisfied didactic art, while still managing to raise the specter of a gentrifying city. Most other works are more ambivalent. At the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the fashion label 69 has reupholstered a few hanging chairs in denim (69 R&R, 2016); even if visitors notice, the material is unlikely to evoke, as the artists would have it, everything from blue collar jobs to sweatshops to the hipsters that wear designer workwear to biennials. A clip from Amalia Ulman’sPRIVILEGE (2016) provides an even more vacant take on the exhibition’s title, “The Present in Drag”: an “old crone” effect overlaid on the artist’s eternally youthful face.

Jon Rafman, L’Avalée des avalés (The Swallower Swallowed) Rhino/Bear, 2016.

While little here presents as substantive, let alone sacred (the video What the Heart Wants [2016], a gauzy cyber romance by Cécile B. Evans, is one exception), the DIS brand itself offers the Berlin Biennale’s most forceful proposition. Add to the art in the official venues: a series of lightboxes (“LIT”); several musical collaborations (“Anthem”); a thoroughly designed web and social media presence; and a dense, intelligent catalog. Listed in exhibition materials as “Not in the Berlin Biennale” are the paratexts and ads and other finishing touches that make the Biennale a coherent, even compelling brand experience. (Roe Ethridge, for instance, shot the photos in the brochures.) Under DIS, gestures that would tip into banality or plain narcissism in another context—Josephine Pryde’s photographs of hands and devices (Hands “Für mich,” 2014–16) at the Feuerle Collection, or Wu Tsang’s meta-Orientalist, quasi-revisionist video installation (Duilian, 2016) at the KW—feel like profound emblems of the zeitgeist. Never mind how ironically consumerist, sincerely complicit, and cynically new-agey that zeitgeist is. Advertising’s immemorial claim remains: if you’re not buying, you don’t get it.

Yet this entrepreneurial confidence rests like denial on the old world. ForBlockchain Visionaries (2016), installed at the ESMT (once an East German government building, now a management school), Simon Denny has mounted a miniature trade show for three actual companies promoting blockchain technology—from privatized, bespoke security for existing financial markets; to a Bitcoin-based centralized protocol; to a decentralized, nodal anarchism. A fourth element dominates the room: an extant Soviet-era steel relief of a cooling tower, a dove, two stalks of grain. Indeed, the blockchain promises the same nonhierarchical, impartial security as the Communist state; yet where Stalin refused to wither away, Bitcoin is already headless. At the AdK, a video installation by Christopher Kulendran Thomas (New Eelam, 2016) makes a similar case in the guise of an ad for a fictitious but plausible “housing subscription” service. Paraphrasing existence as capital, the narrator extolls a “liquid form of citizenship”: no citizens, but subscribers; no nations, but brands. The name references the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, an armed utopian group in Sri Lanka violently crushed in 2009 by the Western-backed government. Investors in the cultural sector next waged what the narration calls a “soft ethnic cleansing.” Might technological revolution succeed where the militant fails? Maybe—but no brand of collectivity is without an agenda. More to the point: ironic or not (and we’re not sure it is), to spin ethnic cleansing as a lifestyle choice is spectacular bad taste.

Camille Henrot's Office of Unreplied Emails, 2016.

Here lies the danger in shelving an aspirational future in favor of a self-evident, inevitable now: if the future is just the present in drag, future thinking may as well be totally outmoded. A precious few works explore what it means to take a progressive position. The top floor of the KW is given over to Camille Henrot’sOffice of Unreplied Emails (2016); scattered between breathy, bright paintings of kissing animals are dozens of silicone prints of thoughtful but exhausted replies to the likes of the Sierra Club and Uber. In the KW’s bunker-like basement, Josh Kline’s video Crying Games (2016) stages a wishful kind of propaganda. Actors digitally masked as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Bush Jr., and Tony Blair sob in regret over the Iraq War. “I’m so sorry,” they moan, “all those people…” Here, technology achieves exactly this: a simulation of the apology we deserve but will never get—and that wouldn’t help anyway.

How much easier, says DIS, to embrace our complicity. Each of the five hangs more or less parallels the expectations of its host institution—cueing that their codes have been understood, not scrambled. At the AdK, ad-like works occupy the ancillary spaces of advertising and signage. A Blue-Star tour boat on the Spree, decorated by artists Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic, is still a tour boat. At the Feuerle Collection, a waterfront bunker barely converted for art, Yngve Holen presents a series of “evil eyes,” artisanal blown-glass airline windows in powder-coated Apple-type settings. Stretched out in a row spaced to match the layout of a Boeing 787, a work such as Window seat 42–43 F (2016) looks like collector bait—and it is. Forget the droll stakes, or lack thereof, for whatever jet set precariat. When things get too urgent, too specific, too earnest—all that advertising really proposes is that you buy in. For Suprem(e), a fashion line by Bjarne Melgaard in collaboration with skateboarding clothing brand Supreme, the covers of even such left-justified Semiotext(e) tracts as The Invisible Committee’s The Coming Insurrection (2007) become embroidery on puffy streetwear. Brands subsume brands like Russian dolls, with DIS as the outermost layer.

View of "LIT" at Akademie der Künste, Berlin Biennale, 2016.

But then you leave, and you fly straight home from TXL in an aisle seat, or you walk around a postmodern Berlin suffused with lifestyle adverts as caustic and beautiful as anything in a reality augmented by DIS. DIS understands art’s redundancy. It would therefore rather be something else. Yet theirs is less a critical position than a bid for self-preservation—a final return to future thinking. In this, too, DIS synthesizes a sense of gagging optimism, like an image lewdly trying to python a city but unable to swallow, that feels nothing if not now.

(1) Gore Vidal, from an interview with David Barsamian for The Progressive (October 2006), http://www.progressive.org/mag_intv0806.



Travis Diehl lives in Los Angeles. He is a recipient of the Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. He edits the artist-run arts journal Prism of Reality.

Thanks to : http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/%E2%80%9Cthe-present-in-drag%E2%80%9D-9th-berlin-biennale-2/

ARTISSIMA 2016 |

Visual identity by Tassinari/Vetta (Leonardo Sonnoli with Irene Bacchi).

November 3–6

Oval, Lingotto Fiere
Turin

info@artissima.it
www.artissima.it

Innovative and experimental, Artissima focuses on young and avant-garde artists, curated booths and special projects. The high quality of the fair, which is guaranteed year after year by a growing number of international curators who contribute to the research and selection of the artists on show, attracts sophisticated collectors from around the world and an attentive specialist public. 

Artissima 2016 revolves around the commitment to promote artistic and curatorial experimentation, and the exploration of the notion of performance. The latter has inspired the performative exhibition project In Mostra and guides the public through the fair’s sections, stimulating an active dialogue between the visitor’s eye and body and the art object. 

An active curatorial research platform
Backed by the success of the previous years, in 2016 the curated sections Back to the Future, Present Future and Per4m are enriched by new inspirations and visions. Back to the Future continues to develop its curatorial research on the most relevant yet underestimated avant-garde figures, and this year concentrates on works dated between 1970 and 1989. This time-tested formula has turned into one of the most stimulating platform for rediscovery and market success. Similarly, Present Future has affirmed its role as a hotbed of emerging talents, expanding geographically thanks to the field research conducted by a team of young curators. The vision of the curators in this section has always proven to be groundbreaking, as evidenced by the future career trajectories of the featured artists.  

An extended stage for performance
Per4m, the performance section of the fair inaugurated in 2014, has evolved into an unprecedented project curated by the Dutch collective If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution. This new programme—coherent, innovative, cutting-edge and specifically created for the context of the fair—takes the public on a surprising journey through the latest forms of experimentation in the field of performance. 

New framesworks; new visions within gallery booths
Unprecedented fresh attention will be given to the New Entries section devoted to young galleries, which for the first time are presented together on a main axis of the fair, along its entrance. Furthermore, joining the traditional Main Section and Art Editions, a new section called Dialogue features specially curated presentations in the booths.

An exhibition space for outstanding art collections
The notion of performativity emerges in the curatorial approach of the 2016 edition of the exhibition project In Mostra. This ambitious show, curated by Simone Menegoi, revolves around the relationship between the human body, gesture and posture, and it includes exceptional artworks from the major public and private collections of the Piemonte region.

Artissima: a supporting fair for art and artists
Once again, Artissima awards six prizes: illy Present Future Prize, Sardi per l’Arte Back to the Future Prize, Promos Scalo Milano New Entries Prize, Fondazione Ettore Fico Prize, Prix K-Way Per4m and Reda Prize for Photography. This underscores the ambitious and visionary approach of Artissima, reflecting the tangible commitment and support of artistic research from the fair’s generous partners.

A place for reflection on experimentation
A talk entitled “What is Experimental?”, curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol, tests the fair’s pursuit of experimentation. In this talk, a group of curators discuss and debate leading approaches to commercial and non-profit art display. They join the more than 50 international museum directors and curators involved in the fast-paced programming of Artissima: walkie-talkies, guided tours, encounters, juries and awards. 

Collectors’ Extravaganza
Artissima, an awaited event for sophisticated and committed collectors the world over, has increased its area of influence in recent years with an ever-growing geopolitical perspective. The fair is now a platform for global exchange, thanks to the active participation of collectors from Brazil, Peru, Israel, Colombia, the Philippines and Eastern Europe, besides the traditional important presence of American and European collectors. Acknowledged as the fair of discovery and rediscovery, Artissima stimulates the most vivid and international exchange, putting Turin on the map as the city of reference for the perceptive art public.

Turin: the most performing city 
Turin has turned contemporary art into its main vocation, becoming an unrivalled cultural gem in Italy. Artissima is rooted in the fertile territory of a city that counts on the serendipitous convergence of great public and private institutions, foundations and collections. It counts on being the cradle of Arte Povera, on the important local curators who are active internationally, on its many exceptional artists, on gallerists as well as visionary collectors who make up its unique yet mysterious identity.

Artissima: a forerunner for the tendencies of contemporary art 
For the fifth year running, Artissima is directed by Sarah Cosulich, who has worked actively on the fair’s development and innovation. Artissima is an unmissable event in the international art calendar because of its high-quality presentations and careful selection of works and galleries, as well as for its ability to introduce new projects and anticipate trends, and for the unprecedented attention it pays to the curator’s role and to experimentation. We look forward to welcoming you this November!

Artissima is a brand of the Regione Piemonte, Città Metropolitana di Torino and Città di Torino; mandated by the three organizations, it is connected with the Fondazione Torino Musei. The 23rd Artissima is staged thanks to the support of the three bodies that own the brand name, together with the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, Compagnia di San Paolo and the Camera di commercio di Torino. Artissima is organised by Artissima Srl, a company established in 2008 to manage the fair’s artistic and commercial relations. 

The event involves the collaboration of:
Main Partner: UniCredit
Partners: illycaffè, K-Way, Lancia Laurentana, Leica, Reda, Fondazione Sardi per l’Arte, Promos Scalo Milano
In-kind Sponsors: GL Events Italia – Lingotto Fiere, Guido Gobino, Sagat
Official Carrier: Gondrand
Media Partners: La Stampa, AD, Vogue Italia