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| www.strozzina.org/asap/e_index.php |
| The exhibition (14 May – 18 July 2010) will address the theme of time in our “high-speed society” and today's pressured lifestyle with rapid communication and production dictated by new technology, thorugh the works of 10 international artists: Tamy Ben-Tor, Marnix de Nijs, Mark Formanek, Marzia Migliora, Julius Popp, Reynold Reynolds, Jens Risch, Michael Sailstorfer, Arcangelo Sassolino and Fiete Stolte Time is the dominant imperative of contemporary society resulting in expectations of increasing growth in productivity and longer working hours. The ultimate goal to be more efficient and our constant hyperactivity impact on every area of life today, invading our private lives with such things as speed dating (for our love lives), power naps (for our health and exercise), quality time (for being with the family) and fast food (for staving off hunger). This desire to control and optimise every aspect of our lives is matched by a nagging feeling that we never have enough time; thus time has become an essential asset for everyone. The predominant feature of today's world is dictated by technological development, which has massively increased people's potential for worldwide mobility, triggered a constant flow of information, spawned the concept of a globalised and permanently expanding economy, and spread the idea of constantly rising productivity. Yet for some decades now we have been approaching what is virtually the ceiling of this accelerated growth, as evinced by the gradual collapse of nature's ecosystems which no longer have time to regenerate, and by widespread anxiety and depression which are frequent indicators of the malaise of people living on the edge of their own potential in a high-speed world. Today's world is characterised by what philosopher Paul Virilio calls "dromocracy", the dictatorship of speed governed by the principle which states that "if time is money, speed is power", yet revealing the paradoxical effect of real immobility which ends up taking hold of us as we are submerged by new and ever faster technologies that lead to cultural sclerosis and to the paralysis of ideas. In an effort to impart some kind of systematic order to such phenomena, German sociologist Hartmut Rosa idenitifies "social acceleration" as a typically Western phenomenon. The technological acceleration in the Western world has led to increasing rapidity in every aspect of daily life. Private life, work, and even social and romantic relationships are classified on the basis of their time span rather than on the basis of their quality. This results in a constant state of pressure and anxiety. Insecurity and relativism are the dangers perceived by philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, who has coined the term "liquid modernity" to describe how every certainty and truth in the world is fated to fall under the blows of the corrosive speed of a consumer society that seeks only the gratification of the moment. The works of selected artists will endeavour to express this aspect of today's world. They have been chosen on the basis of the various different ways in which they address the themes of time, speed, acceleration and our reaction to those themes. The exhibition can be seen as a journey designed to involve the spectator in experiences in space and time aiming to highlight the inconsistencies of our "high-speed" society. |
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| www.strozzina.org/gerhardrichter/e_index.php |
| Staged in collaboration with the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the exhibition presents the work of Gerhard Richter, one of the best-known and most sought-after living painters, in dialogue with works by seven international contemporary artists, who all share Richter’s profound distrust of the image as a guarantee of truth. Following on from Manipulating Reality, which explored the relationship between reality and representation in the medium of photography, this exhibition focus on the disappearance of the image. Gerhard Richter, one of the pioneers in depicting the dissolution of both the motif and the medium, paints over original pictures or uses a blurred painting technique. He deliberately selects trivial or random motifs as the starting point for his paintings. Well aware of the power of images, Richter strives to break or at least question their authority by making his pictures merge or disappear. He plays with reality and appearance and converts figurative images into abstract ones by focusing, for example, on fragmentary details. He pioneered the use of existing images as the basis of his paintings, primarily as a means of transferring the characteristics of one medium to another, and for placing different genres on an equal footing. Through his entire body of work, Richter addresses the difference between subjective perception and the objective experience of reality in which the artist can only offer possible approaches to address the difficult relationship between object and its representation. The CCCS has invited seven contemporary artists who also use the dissolution of the image to engage in a dialogue with Richter’s work. To maintain their own artistic identity the works of each artist will be presented in its own space. Xie Nanxing (China, 1970) uses video and photography as intermediate media for his reflections on painting and the human condition; Lorenzo Banci (IT, 1974) investigates the boundaries between representation and abstraction by painting dissolving shapes in which mere light is the object; while Scott Short’s (USA, 1964) conceptual work is based on photocopying a blank sheet of paper hundreds of times until incidental marks create an accidental image which then becomes a painting. Roger Hiorns (UK, 1975), one of the four artists shortlisted for the 2009 Turner Prize, works with chemical components and choreographs planned incidents to create his sculptural work. Marc Breslin (USA, 1983) uses the pictorial surface like a palimpsest, scratching signs and graffiti into the many layers of paint, thus creating a metaphor for mental processes, memory and oblivion. Wolfgang Tillmans (DE, 1968) treats the photographic paper as canvas. He started by representing everyday subjects and from there he went further into abstraction, following the logic of the medium itself. Antony Gormley (UK, 1950) will produce a site-specific installation for the exhibition, that further develops his research for a new social art where the interplay between abstraction and figuration is the result of a process of dissolution of the human figure. Meanwhile Richter remains true to the medium of painting, yet questions its possibilities, the other seven artists take as their theme the absence (and sometimes impossibility) of making a clear statement by means of a picture today. |
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| www.strozzina.org/manipulatingreality/e_index.htm |
| The CCCS' new exhibition explores the theme of the manipulation and reconstruction of reality through photographic images and videos, in the work of 23 international contemporary artists. Photography and video art have always been based on the conflict between recording reality and, at the same time, becoming themselves a falsification of that reality, a viewpoint that builds a particular image of the world. Today, with the spreading popularity of easy-to-use digital technology, that ambiguity has if anything increased, pushing the conflict between appearance and reality to its outer edges. The material on display in this exhibition, entitled Manipulating Reality, is the work of photographers and video-artists who have developed the potential of these new techniques or who reject post-production procedures, sharing the common aim of playing both with the medium's possibilities and with the viewer's expectations, thus creating totally original visions of the world. Do artists still care about the concepts of reality and truth? What is true and what is real in our daily lives today? The exhibition will show the work of the following artists: Olivo Barbieri, Sonja Braas, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Gregory Crewdson, Thomas Demand, Elena Dorfman, Christiane Feser, Andreas Gefeller, Andreas Gursky, Beate Gütschow, Osang Gwon, Tatjana Hallbaum, Ilkka Halso, Robin Hewlett & Ben Kinsley, Rosemary Laing, Aernout Mik, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Sarah Pickering, Moira Ricci, Cindy Sherman, Cody Trepte, Paolo Ventura, Melanie Wiora. |
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| www.strozzina.org/greenplatform/e_index.php |
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curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Valentina Gensini Green Platform takes a complex critical view designed to examine at stake in an interdisciplinary fashion the issue of the environment in the dual sense of a crisis in our thermo-industrial society based on non-renewable sources of energy and of an ecological crisis caused by pollution and by the worrying overheating of our planet. The problem of ecology cannot be confined merely to an environmental approach, it needs to be analyzed and understood in its myriad philosophical, psychological, environmental, economic and social implications. Thus ecology is no longer defined solely as a natural science but as a science of interrelations, confines and cross-border osmosis, the focal link in the partnership between nature and culture. The exhibition presents a series of works by international artists who, acting in the wake of the pioneer experience that developed in the avant-garde movements of the Sixties and Seventies, address the issues of the environment, ecology and sustainability. Different artistic approaches and attitudes are compared, ranging from an awareness of the critical state of the everyday and pragmatic relationship between man and nature, to the choice of sustainable practices that put at stake a new idea of progress, to a creative pro-activism that pursues a real ecological struggle through the artistic languages. Not only thought as an exhibition but as a working composite platform, Green Platform is based on the attempt of offering various kinds of active experience: workshops with artists and other players in the environmental associations and NGO's, a series of lectures with experts in various relevant disciplines and the screening of videos and documentaries on environment-related issues. The exhibition’s catalogue with entries by international authors from a variety of different backgrounds and cultures (from economy to architecture, from social sciences to public art) sets up a perfect tool for reflecting about a new idea of art and about its possible, new and “sustainable” development. Artists whose work will be on display in the exhibition: Alterazioni Video, Amy Balkin, Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna, Michele Dantini, Ettore Favini, Futurefarmers, Tue Greenfort, Henrik Håkansson, Katie Holten, Dave Hullfish Bailey, Christiane Löhr, Dacia Manto, Lucy and Jorge Orta, Julian Rosefeldt, Carlotta Ruggieri, Superflex, Nicola Toffolini and Nikola Uzunovski |
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| www.strozzina.org/inventoriesofabstraction/e_index.php |
| site specific installation in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi |
| After the Chinese artist Wang Yu Yang with his light installation ‘Artificial Moon’, this will be the second of a series of works by international artists who have been invited to Florence to create and present installations conceived for the cortile of Palazzo Strozzi. The Swiss artist Yves Netzhammer, selected to represent Switzerland at the last Venice Biennial 2007, is known for his poetic 3D installations which reflect the human condition. The Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina has invited him to conceive an installation which will homage the unique renaissance architecture of Florence and specifically the one of the marvellous courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi. |
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| www.strozzina.org/emergingtalents/e_index.htm |
| Artists: Rossella Biscotti, Carola Bonfili, Alice Cattaneo, Alex Cecchetti, Paolo Chiasera, Danilo Correale, Andrea Dojmi, Michael Fliri, Giulio Frigo, Christian Frosi, Anna Galtarossa, Nicola Gobbetto, Francesca Grilli, Simone Ialongo, Marzia Migliora, Nicola Pecoraro, Alessandro Piangiamore, Farid Rahimi, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, Davide Rivalta, Valerio Rocco Orlando, Marinella Senatore, Luca Trevisani, Nico Vascellari, Enrico Vezzi This exhibition is devoted to the finalists in the Emerging Talents Award,. created by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and organised by the Centre of Contemporary Culture Strozzina – the CCCS of Florence - . The competition is designed to encourage young Italian artists and draw critical and international attention to their work. Contributions from twenty-five artists will be displayed in the rooms of the CCCS. The finalists were selected by a committee made up of four of the new generation of leading independent Italian curators: Andrea Bellini, Luca Cerizza, Caroline Corbetta, Andrea Lissoni together with the artist and teacher Paolo Parisi. The two prize winners, chosen by an International jury - Rudolf Frieling, Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco MOMA; Jan Boelen, Director of Z33, Belgium; Hubertus Gassner, Director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle; Cornelia Grassi, of the Greengrassi Gallery in London and Kathrin Becker, Director of the VideoForum at the Neue Berliner Kunstverein; with the additional advice of Franziska Nori, project director of the CCCS, Heiner Holtappels (director of Netherlands Media Art Institute/Montevideo) and Christoph Tanner (director of the Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien) will be given scholarships to the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and to the Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo in Amsterdam. This project fully reflects the mission of the CCCS, providing a platform and point of reference for future projects. The exhibition of the finalists’ work serves to promote these artists while also stimulating a new arena for discussion among artists, critics and the public. The selected works will be displayed in five sections to create a dialogue of formal and conceptual encounter-clash, through painting and video, sculpture and graphics, photography and installations, presenting a vast range of stimuli and ideas. Visitors will be drawn into contact with intimate domestic scenes, colourful symbolic paintings, small conceptual objects, ethereal installations of insubstantial material and large sculptures charged with hidden meaning. The narration of this young Italian art requires a rich diversity of language and technique. It also reveals a wide ranging creative energy, intimate, private, authentic and absolutely aware of its European and international context. |
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| http://www.nimk.nl/nl/ |
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| http://www.bethanien.de |
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| www.strozzina.org/artpriceandvalue/ |
| From 14 November 2008 to 11 January 2009 the CCCS presented the exhibition ART, PRICE AND VALUE - Contemporary Art and the Market, curated by the author Piroschka Dossi and Franziska Nori, project director of the CCCS. The exhibition scrutinised the increased links between contemporary art and the international market. The power now exerted by the economy on political, social and cultural life has extended its hold on art production so that the whole system is undergoing a complete transformation in response to the demands of an increasingly global market. Contemporary art plays an ever more prominent role in our culture. Its economic power is reflected in the exorbitant prices now reached at international auctions and in the increased popularity of exhibitions, biennales, festivals, shows and mega-happenings. In the last twenty years contemporary art has become a specialised industry with its own rules and a network of professional operators. Artists are drawn into the international dynamics of a highly competitive system. This places them in competition with artists from widely different backgrounds but demands they speak a global and commercial language. There has been a drastic change in the rules: witness the impact of the emergence of contemporary Chinese art on the market. In recent years with the growing interest of collectors, galleries and institutions in the west it has become the ideal environment for speculators. With pressing demands for the new and sensational the process of production and commercialization is speeded up but art is also increasingly drawn into mass culture and commerce. The exhibition featured the work of contemporary artists which throws light on the mechanisms of the international art system. The selection explored different points of view, ranging from complete conformity to the prevailing rules of the market, to irony and sarcasm and even to an “anti-market” stance, taken by those anxious to avoid the commercial aspects of the art market entirely. |
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| www.strozzina.org/worldsonvideo/e_index.htm |
| worlds on video – international video art 19.09. – 02.11.2008 |
| curated by: Anita Beckers |
Artists: Marina
Abramovic, Victor Alimpiev, Laura Belem, Candice Breitz, Rä di
Martino, Nathalie Djurberg, Kota Ezawa, Harun Farocki, Charlotte Ginsborg,
Philippe Grammaticopoulos, Cao Guimarã es, Frank Hesse, Runa
Islam, Alfredo Jaar, Jesper Just, Clare Langan, Zhenchen Liu, Domenico
Mangano, Jenny Marketou, Bjoern Melhus, Almagul Menlibayeva, Sarah Morris,
Guy Ben Ner, Julia Oschatz, Isabel Rocamora, Marinella Senatore, Eve
Sussman, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, Gillian Wearing, Arnold von Wedemeyer,
Clemens von Wedemeyer+Maya Schweizer, Suara Welitoff, Sislej Xhafa,
Zimmerfrei |
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| Exploded Views – Remapping Florence is the first of a series of site specific works which the CCCS has commissioned to address current forms of sculptural and artistic expression. |
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| www.strozzina.org/chinachinachina/ |
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| The artists are: Cao Fei, Chu Yun, Duan
Jian Yu, Kan Xuan, Lu Chunsheng, Pak Sheung-Chuen, Ren Quinga, Shen Shaomin, Tseng Yu-Chin, Wang Yu Yang, Wu Ershan, Xu Tan, Yang Fudong, Zhaoliang |
| The exhibition project has been entrusted
to three independent curators: Zhang Wei (Guangzhou), Li Zhenhua
(Beijing) and Davide Quadrio (Shanghai) who critically reflect on
the current situation and on the contemporary art scene in China,
tackling themes such as cultural identity and the impact of western
culture. Catalogue Silvana Editoriale |
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| www.strozzina.org/atlas_of_the_future |
| every thursday and friday from 5.45
- 8 p.m. Programme of artist videos and documentaries Realized in collaboration with Festival dei Popoli and Schermo dell'Arte, curated by Silvia Lucchesi What are the key thoughts of reflection about tomorrow? Atlas of the Future offers us likely visual trajectories that project our day into forthcoming scenarios and patterns. The exhibit is an annotation of moving images which address key themes in social development and in our world studied through video clips and documentaries, the latter hailing from the archives of Festival dei Popoli. From Mexico to India, from the United States to Nigeria, from Israel to China, from Italy to the Congo to Russia, the works tell stories and utopias, imagine worlds and offer speculations for life in the future. |
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| www.strozzina.org/emotional_systems |
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| The artists are: Antonella Anedda, Maurice Benayoun, Elisa Biagini, Andrea Ferrara, Katharina Grosse, William Kentridge, Valerio Magrelli, Teresa Margolles, Yves Netzhammer, Christian Nold, Bill Viola |
| curated by Franziska Nori and Martin Steinhoff Opening hours: daily 11,00 a.m.– 8,30 p.m. Monday closed Tickets: €5 (five entries including lectures), €4 school single entry, 10€ Strozzina + ControModa Catalogue Silvana Editoriale |
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