Eleven graphic and photographic works by ten great international masters enclosed in the new collective of mtn | temporary naval museum of Bologna, entitled “ALL STARS. The unexpected as human language” which opens on Tuesday 4 May: an opportunity to reflect on the role of art and its function in our society.
The exhibition project was born in an attempt to elaborate a question that in the last period, characterized by a profound global crisis, many have asked themselves: what is art for, what is its real utility within the complex facets of a civil society?
In some ways, the emergency circumstances have determined, at least, less ambiguity between the parties, therefore a greater possibility of clarifying the balance of power between the cultural world and the juridical-state one. What emerged as a response tells of a completely negligible vision of artistic practice as a whole, linked mostly to entertainment or to a surplus very far from the real essential needs of a community. A practice therefore in no way organic to the construction of a balanced, plural and democratically healthy society.
But is it really so? What is this conception of art defective in, if any?
To try to answer these questions, we decided to address them to some of the most significant masters of western modern and contemporary art, questioning their works and what they imply. What all these champions have in common is the conscious and voluntary assumption of a posture of discontinuity with respect to one's own era and to what was given for certain in it. A constant and progressive tension aimed at responsibly elaborating new territories of thought that were previously unexplored or unknown. The complex phantasmagoria called reality, which today appears so tragic and so in need of competent and free narrators, was not perceived by them as something to be assumed passively, but as a mobile and in some ways chaotic material to be forged with the rhythm of knowledge . The creative praxis assumed a significant "political" task, that is transform resentment, which was cyclically forming as a destructive force of social balance, into the ability to evolve thought and action: today we would call this welfare. Thus the world was renewed in a vital cycle formed, not by fatality, by nature or by law, but by the will of aware beings who, thinking in a radically new way, recreated the world itself and its structures.
So what is art for?
According to these great masters, art is the symbol of the human being's ability to constantly create new thought contents which, once formed and shared, can build that portion of the unthought that awaits us beyond the obsolescence of conceptual structures that are now unsafe.
The project is curated by Marcello Tedesco and is part of the institutional program of ArtCity Bologna 2021 as part of the Bologna Estate. Hours: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 15 to 19 by appointment only. The exhibition is always visible from outside the museum.
Works on display:
JOSEPH BEUYS, UNTITLED, MULTIPLE IN DOUBLE-SIDED PRINT ON PVC, RETOUCHED BY HAND, EDITION STAECK, HEIDELBERG, 70X70 CM, 1973.
JOSEPH BEUYS, UNTITLED (TRAM STOP), SIGNED TYPOGRAPHICAL POSTER OF THE “TRAM STOP” EXHIBITION, 100X70 CM, HELD AT THE FERRUCCIO FATA GALLERY, BOLOGNA, ON 19-11-77.
ALEXANDER CALDER, BULLES ROUGE, YELLOW ET BLUE, 4 COLOR LITHOGRAPH SIGNED IN PENCIL, EX. 23/99, 75,2X110,2 CM, C. 1969.
GINO DE DOMINICIS, THE HOLY FAMILY (THE SON), FROM A LITHOGRAPHIC TRIPTYCH, 70X70 CM, COPY 67/100, 1972.
EMILIO ISGRÒ WITHOUT TITLE, ETCHING AND TYPOGRAPHICAL WRITTEN, 50X70 CM, COPY PA, SD
URS LÜTHI, UNTITLED, DOUBLE COLOR PHOTOGRAPH MOUNTED ON CARD 30X42 CM, PLURA EDIZIONI MILANO, FROM THE FOLDER “DON'T ASK ME IF YOU KNOW THAT I'M TOO WEAK TO SAY NO”, 1977.
JANNIS KOUNELLIS, UNTITLED, LITHOGRAPHY, 70X50 CM, 1970
JOSEPH KOSUTH, TEX/CONTEXT. CONVENTIONAL I, SERIGRAPHY, EX. 41/125, 70,5X100,5CM, 1978
HERMANN NITSCH, UNTITLED (UBERMALTE BILD-LITHOGRAPHIEN), LITHOGRAPH ON CARDSTOCK WATERCOLOR 300 GR. FROM THE FEDRIGONI PAPER MILLS, WITH HAND OPERATION, BOXED ON INDUSTRIAL CARDBOARD 71X101 CM, 1991. DOMUS JANI EDITIONS, ILLASI (VR).
LUIGI ONTANI, ZEFFIRO, 9 COLOR LITHOGRAPHY, 64X45,7 CM, COPY 80/99, 1982, ED. LUCIA CAVALIERI, FRANCESCO MORINI ROME.
VINCENZO AGNETTI AND CLAUDIO PARMIGGIANI, DE-ISCRIPTION, 6 DECEMBER 1972 AT 21.15 PM. CLAUDIO PARMIGGIANI – MARIO DEACON. PANTHEISTIC PROJECT BY VINCENZO AGNETTI, 1973, PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT, 100X70 CM.
