Ah, si va a oriente!
Curated by Daniela Bigi
Fondazione per l’Arte, Rome
3 June – 3 September 2014
Fondazione per l’Arte will inaugurate its exhibition spaces in the Mandrione – one of Rome’s first and best known industrial peripheries – with a project entirely focused on the emerging scene: the acting protago- nists of this three week residency-workshop will be four young artists who will work together in our warehouse at the heart of this lively industrial complex that for decades has characterised the district’s daily life.
Conceived and curated by Daniela Bigi, the plan proposes to restore a thoughtful dimension to an in-depth exploration of the expressive research of the generation of artists that have emerged on the Italian scene during the first decade of the new millennium – a group primarily characterised by their mobility and their forceful propositional approach, entrenched in independent spaces: their experience is at present, among the most valid and lively in the country. Conceived as a comparative platform built around a shared working place and time, the planned project is the joint realisation of an exhibition that will be opened at the close of the residency. The warehouse will be the place in which the artists Giuseppe Buzzotta, Gianluca Concialdi, Andrea Kvas, Vincenzo Schillaci will plan and execute their works, but it will also be the location in which they will be invited to meet briefly and informally – privately or publicly, in the context of talks, studio visits, debates, dinners or interviews – the many figures who animate the roman, national and international art scene.
Many artists, curators, collectors, dealers, directors of museums, founda- tions and journals will be invited to participate in this shared journey, through which it is hoped to verify and raise issues that will both be the result and the engine of activity focusing on content and approaches beyond the process of producing an exhibition. The title of this first residency-workshop Ah, si va a Oriente! is the free citation of a line in a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It is both a physical and intellectual invitation to escape east, which, in the text, is acted out in a road trip through Rome’s suburbs. His ‘Ah, fuggiamo a Oriente!’ was the exhortation to explore an alternative psycho-geographical dimension that by extension could also include a certain way of understanding those suburbs. A series of considerations were implicit in his invitation: read in another light they can be understood as a subtext to the work that will resolve at the Mandrione.
The Fondazione per l’Arte has worked for two years to support young artists through various initiatives, with this project head-quartered in the spaces of the Mandrione, it inaugurates an activity of research and production that will focus on maintaining a constant dialogue with similar national and European realities.
