Stefano Arienti is the artist that AMACI (Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums) has chosen to create the guiding image for the sixth edition of Giornata del Contemporaneo, the major annual event promoted by the Association and dedicated to the art of our time and its public.
Cristalli is the title of the unpublished work that Stefano Arienti created especially for the event. At a time when Italy is preparing for the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of National Unity, the artist dedicates a refined homage to our country by representing it as a fragile entity, made up of hundreds of small pieces of glass, recomposed remains of a shattered sheet of crystal. An image poised between destruction and reconstruction, poetically encapsulating that sense of suspension and precariousness that so strongly characterizes our age. At the same time, Cristalli also pays tribute to Luciano Fabro (1936-2007), one of the contemporary masters who has most influenced Arienti’s path, and in particular to his enigmatic Italia Cosa Nostra (1968): a delicate outline of the peninsula made of transparent glass.
Thus, the project of entrusting an internationally renowned Italian artist with the creation of the guiding image of the event, which in previous years has involved Michelangelo Pistoletto (2006), Maurizio Cattelan (2007), Paola Pivi (2008) and Luigi Ontani (2009), continues successfully.
STEFANO ARIENTI
Stefano Arienti’s research addresses many of the issues related to the complex “system of vision,” in the belief that artistic practice can help awaken perceptions that have been dormant due to the overexposure to stimuli to which we are subjected. In this way he addresses the viewer by engaging him in an independent, critical and conscious mental process. Arienti uses and manipulates everyday materials experimenting and elaborating from time to time novel techniques and methodologies. By folding, perforating or burning paper, erasing texts and images, tracing fabrics and photographs, the artist lets the audience enter his world dominated by seemingly repetitive acts, playful gestures borrowed from children, lightness and play. His investigation also invests the materials and techniques through which the images are constructed and presented. Thus a book can be transformed into a plastic volume, a comic strip into a cylinder, pieces of glass into evocative silhouettes. One of the most influential artists of his generation, he has participated in numerous exhibitions around the world, including the 1993 Venice Biennial and the 3rd International Istanbul Biennial in 1992, and the most recent important solo shows at Palazzo Ducale in Mantua (2009), MAMbo in Bologna with Cesare Pietroiusti (2008), MAXXI in Rome (2004), and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (2005).
Promoted by
AMACI – Associazione dei Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani
Supported by
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali – Direzione generale per il paesaggio, le belle arti, l’architettura e l’arte contemporanee
Main partner
UniCredit Group
With the contribution of
Terna SpA
Supporting partner
Intermedia Broker SpA
Partner
Tuscany Region
