The exhibition, entitled 1984. Evolution and regeneration of writing, curated by Pietro Rivasi, produced with the Cassa di Risparmio di Modena Foundation, in collaboration with the Luigi Poletti Civic Art Library of Modena, will offer an overview of the multiple evolutions of street art, examining some of its most significant artists, such as Taps & Moses™, Olivier Kosta-Thefaine, PAL Crew, who are laying the future aesthetic and theoretical foundations of this form of expression.
Modena can count on a solid tradition linked to street art which began in 1981 with the presence in the city of Jean-Michel Basquiat for his one-man show at the Emilio Mazzoli gallery and continued thanks to the activities of Icons, the Giorgio De Mitri Foundation and the Avia Pervia and D406 tunnels. The Luigi Poletti Civic Art Library also boasts one of the most important patrimonies at a national level as regards the documentation of writing and street art.
The review will highlight the most controversial aspect of street art: the "non-commissioned interventions" in the public space. Thanks to a strong presence of photographic and video material, the viewer will literally be projected into the reality lived by the artists.
The exhibition will reveal how writers have adapted to society and time: some of them have tried to renew themselves in terms of language and codes, others have transferred the experience of the street into a more classical form of art intended for galleries and to institutional spaces, still others have stubbornly continued the original spirit of the New York pioneers.
The exhibition itinerary is made up of two sections: the first will focus on the more strictly documentary aspect with photos, videos and installations by Zelle Asphaltkultur, Taps & Moses™, BBS Crew, Fra32, Sauli Sirviö, Porto.
Of particular interest will be Never going home, the film that tells the stray life of Utah and Ether, two international writing jet setters, during a trip to Japan, and a video installation entitled Writers' bench curated by Spraytrains.com.
The documentation material is of fundamental importance for constructing the history of non-commissioned urban interventions, ephemeral by their nature due to exposure to atmospheric events, cancellations made by the authorities and interventions by other authors who modify the already existing works.
Finding and studying these supports, mostly paper, is therefore an indispensable tool for understanding the path of well-established artists, who began their journey by writing signatures on the walls, just as it is essential to clarify the difference between writing, street art and muralism.
The second section will offer works by Francesco Barbieri, Egs and PAL Crew, from public and private collections, and works created specifically for the Palazzina dei Giardini by Olivier Kosta-Thefaine and Matteo Ceretto Castigliano/CT.
The title of the exhibition recalls that of George Orwell's novel 1984, published in 1949, which represented for the readers of the time the date of a disquieting and distant future. “Today that premonition of global control – affirms Pietro Rivasi – has become a reality and 1984 has now passed by 32 years, the same years that separate us from the release of Subway art, the book which more than anything else was responsible of the explosion of writing in Europe and in the world, and of the Arte di Frontiera exhibition, in nearby Bologna, which brought the most important New York writers of the time to Italy, in an important institutional context”.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog curated in layout and printing by Luca Lattuga of Anonima Impressori of Bologna with the works on display and texts by the curator, by Jacob Kimvall, Jens Besser and Pierpaolo Ascari.
On the occasion of the inauguration, on Thursday 23 June, starting at 19.00, a DJ set will be set up by Museek, the Modenese label that boasts numerous collaborations with the world of writing and street art.
Modena, May 2016
1984. Evolution and regeneration of writing
Modena, Civic Gallery, Palazzina dei Giardini (Corso Canalgrande)
23 June – 18 September 2016
