Two new exhibitions
1988: VENT’ANNI PRIMA, VENT’ANNI DOPO
2 November 2008 – 15 February 2009
MAURO STACCIOLI:
PENSARE LA SCULTURA
2 November 2008 – 11 January 2009
Viale della Repubblica 277 Prato, Italy
Curated by Marco Bazzini
Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato Italy
Exhibitions sponsored by Tuscany Region, Province and Municipality of Prato
With contributions by Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation
Supported by ASM, Gruppo Consiag, CariPrato and Unione Industriale Pratese
1988: VENT’ANNI PRIMA, VENT’ANNI DOPO
Presented on the occasione of the museum’s 20th anniversary, the new exhibition is a journey through contemporary Italian art seeking to pick up some of the threads that link 1968 to today.
Works by Nanni Balestrini, Vanessa Beecroft, Anna Valeria Borsari, Gea Casolaro, Michele Dantini, Daniela De Lorenzo, Piero Gilardi, Ketty La Rocca, Fabio Mauri, Liliana Moro, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pietro Ruffo and Andrea Salvino, illustrate a “story by images” based on issues that emerged in those years of controversy or which have been picked up directly from then and projected on to our lives today.
Conceived as a series of mini one-man shows the exhibition itinerary which encompasses forty years of Italian art, illustrates the various periods of each artist’s work, and creates an original dialogue between the works on show and the generations they belong to.
The exhibition features works and events that made history like the Teatro delle mostre (La Tartaruga, Rome, 1968, from which the Luna and Il muro della Sorbonne installations by Fabio Mauri and Nanni Balestrini respectively are exhibited), the birth of the Pecci Centre in the late Eighties (the title of this exhibition comes from this period, and there are artists like Pistoletto, Gilardi, Liliana Moro, Daniela De Lorenzo who exhibited in those years and who have pieces in the permanent collection). There are also important personages from the ‘Seventies (such as Ketty La Rocca and the lesser known Anna Valeria Borsari) up to the latest generations (Pietro Ruffo, Andrea Salvino, Michele Dantini and Gea Casolaro), and the aim of the exhibition is to bring together themes that link ’68 to the present day.
During the exhibition, a series of meetings complementary to the project will be held in which high-profile personalities and intellectuals will contribute to a debate which forty years on is still important. The conference acts will be published in the catalogue by Giunti Editore and will be an integral part of the project.
MAURO STACCIOLI: PENSARE LA SCULTURA
Twenty years after Scultura Prato, which in the meantime has become one of the distinctive icons of the city, the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art presents an exhibition of original works by Mauro Staccioli, an internationally renowned Tuscan artist, which will also be the first to feature his combined planning work.
The event itself is part of “Territoria #3. The place of the contemporary”, a multifaceted network project on contemporary culture sponsored by the Province of Prato with the contribution of the Tuscany Region
The exhibition focuses on the preparatory drawings, sketches and models produced by the artist for the “large constructed signs” which he has created over forty years in many part of the world, from Italy to Korea and from the United States to Israel.
Staccioli began expressing his own ambient perception of sculptural work in the late ‘Sixties, and it involves interaction with the actual space that the individual works are intended and created for. Staccioli believes that sculpting is the result of the encounter and dialogue between the sculpture and the setting; in his own words “creating a sculpture means existing in a place”.
Before building anything, a lot of extensive planning at architectural level goes into experimenting with the impression within the mental space of the imagination.
“Planning an idea – the artist states – involves research by imagery. A drawing is firstly an idea, it is the image of something that must become: the sculpture, the physical object”.
Exploring these “places of thought” with all their variants and hypotheses some of which are never brought to completion in the sculpture that finally “gets built” just as imagining its full-scale collocation in situ, opens a new dimension on the complexity of relations that the mere form that characterises all the artist’s productions has with the environment.
Corraini Edizioni will publish a special monograph for this exhibition of every project actually created by the artist with critical reviews by Luca Massimo Barbero, Marco Bazzini and an introduction by Gillo Dorfles.
Exhibitions: “1988: vent’anni prima, vent’anni dopo” + “Mauro Staccioli: pensare la scultura”
Curator: Marco Bazzini
Venue: Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
Period of the exhibition: 2 November 2008 / 15 February 2009
Address: Viale della Repubblica 277 Prato
Admission hours: every day 10 am – 7 pm closed on Tuesdays
Catalogues: Giunti Editore (“1988:vent’anni prima, vent’anni dopo”) + Corraini Edizioni (“Mauro Staccioli: pensare la scultura”)
Organization: Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci
Info: +39 0574 5317
Website: www.centropecci.it
e-mail: info@centropecci.it
Press Office: Ku.ra, Rosi Fontana – Via Garibaldi 63, Pisa, Italy
Tel. +39 050 9711343 – fax +39 050 9711317
info@rosifontana.it – web: www.rosifontana.it
on-line press kit: www.rosifontana.it