It will be a special year for Arnaldo Pomodoro and the Foundation that bears his name. In fact, 2016 will see the unfolding of the many events organized to celebrate the Maestro's 90th birthday, which will culminate with the great anthology at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, from 29 November to 5 February 2017, and in other symbolic places in the city.
The activities of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation will open with the series of guided tours by appointment, to discover the work Entrance into the labyrinth, scheduled from March 2016 to January 2017. A fundamental stage in Arnaldo Pomodoro's artistic journey and one of the most secret places fascinating parts of Milan, Entrance into the labyrinth – of about 170 square meters – was created in 1995 for an exhibition at the Galleria Marconi in Milan and subsequently found its definitive location in the underground spaces of the former Riva Calzoni building in via Solari 35, formerly exhibition space of the Foundation and now Fendi's Milanese headquarters.
For the occasion, in collaboration with con-fine editions, the publication of a volume is planned which will tell, through the texts of Aurora Donzelli, Federico Giani and Gino Fienga, and the graphic design of Dialmo Ferrari, the emotions and suggestions aroused by a visit to the opera.
Numerous initiatives will be planned in the Foundation's exhibition venue, in via Vigevano 9 in Milan, starting with the reopening of the Project Room, a space dedicated to the experimentations of young Under 30 artists, curated by Federico Giani.
The first appointment, from 6 to 16 April, will be with Andrea Cozzi (1989), Stefano Cozzi (1989) and Marie Janssen (1988), authors of The matrix of all secrets, an installation that arises from the suggestions contained in the work 1200 sacs de charbon suspendus au plafond au-dessus d'un poêle presented by Marcel Duchamp at the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Paris in 1938. Through the languages of sculpture and photography, the three artists will question the preponderance of social media in contemporary era and will wonder how much technological innovation, the instantaneousness of communication and the much celebrated transparency favor the human ability to know the world.
The second appointment, from 21 September to 1 October, will feature Maria Teresa Ortoleva (1990) with a new production of Triumphus Visions, a digital collage printed on chiffon. The young Milanese artist will face a new stage in her research on the phenomenon of imagination starting from the case study of the bestiary, a form of encyclopaedic knowledge that attributes equal value to empirical, scientific and observational data, as well as to fantastic, symbolic and mythological.
On the occasion of the twelfth Contemporary Day promoted by AMACI, Saturday 15 October, the Project Room will host the project conceived by Francesca Schgor (1988), entitled Good Old Neon. During a twice-weekly workshop that will take place within the Foundation, Francesca Schgor will work with actors, musicians and choreographers to create a performance inspired by the homonymous story by David Foster Wallace.
The exhibition of Antonella Zazzera, winner of the second edition of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Prize for sculpture, will be held from 11 May to 22 July. The exhibition, curated by Ada Masoero, will offer a large installation and eighteen works of different formats, most of which created specifically for this exhibition.
The research of Antonella Zazzera (Todi, 1976), conducted through the exclusive use of copper, is based on light, always studied in relation to the surrounding space and structured according to a carefully calibrated form.
From 29 November to 5 February 2017, a network of exhibition projects will pay tribute to Arnaldo Pomodoro for his 90th birthday. The fulcrum will be the major exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, curated by Ada Masoero in collaboration with the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation.
The Hall of the Caryatids will host an anthology that recounts the Maestro's artistic career, from 1955 to today, through a selection of his most important works, set up in one of the most significant places in the city's ancient and recent history.
In Piazzetta Reale, for the first time in its entirety, the sculptural complex The Pietrarubbia Group will be exhibited, an environmental work made up of six elements created in an ongoing aggregation process that began in 1975 and was completed in 2013.
The planning and documentary materials of this work (maquettes, drawings and photographs) will be presented in the exhibition venue of the Foundation in via Vigevano 9 together with the project, never completed, for the Urbino cemetery (1973).
For each of the initiatives promoted, the Foundation will organize specific educational activities and workshops supervised by professionals in the sector, as an opportunity for children, teenagers and adults to deepen their knowledge of contemporary art.
