The Marvelous Adventure of Art
“For over ten years, the village of Volpaia was the setting for a true celebration of art (this was also the title of one of the editions). It was the first event of the season, usually held in the second week of September, when the art world was happy to reunite in the harmonious Tuscan countryside to encounter the works of contemporary artists among ancient walls. The direction of this true celebration was entrusted to Luciano Pistoi. (…)
In 1982, the Volpaia adventure began. The stage was the large Renaissance church known as the Commenda di Sant’Eufrosino, but soon the exhibitions expanded to other buildings, both inside and outside the city walls. Acting as “hostess” was Giovannella Stianti. The exhibitions usually took place in September, except for the editions from ’83 to ’85, which were held between May and June. Supported by a group of friends, Pistoi personally curated the shows.
At the beginning, there was a rediscovery of figures connected to the Tuscan land, such as Soffici, Magnelli, Magri; later came other artists, from different generations but still Italian. This “autarky,” as Pistoi explained to me in a conversation in Imprevisto, 1991, stemmed from a desire for focus: “I preferred not to scatter myself in an informational mission.” (…)
Pistoi proposed to me and to three young men—Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi, and Maurizio Rigillo—to organize an event together that would present works specially created by contemporary artists in the most beautiful places of ancient Tuscan towns. The young men had not only enthusiastically and with a pioneering spirit opened a contemporary art gallery in San Gimignano, La Continua—which Luciano had already involved in Volpaia—but had also founded a cultural association, Arte Continua, for broader public projects.
Thus, Arte all’Arte was born, with Getulio Alviani at Palazzo Patrizi in Siena, Giovanni Anselmo at the Palazzo Pubblico in San Gimignano, Luigi Ontani at the Fortress of Montalcino, and Michelangelo Pistoletto on the balcony of the cloister of the Pinacoteca in Volterra.
Alla scomparsa di Luciano, io, Mario, Maurizio e Lorenzo decidemmo che avremmo fatto in modo di realizzare la sua idea anche senza di lui: ci siamo riusciti e poi l’idea è andata avanti e ha coinvolto altre città, altri curatori, altri artisti. Il primo catalogo si apre proprio con le sue parole: “C’è l’arte, non quella antica e quella moderna”.
I hope all this helps explain why the tenth anniversary of Arte all’Arte could not be celebrated without a tribute to Luciano Pistoi. There was no better place to host it than the “home” of his friends Rosa and Gilberto Sandretto. And no better project to remember him than the invitation to five young Italian galleries to each propose two young artists. This was precisely Pistoi’s method—the same he had used many times in Volpaia: involving other forces, revaluing the role of galleries, and giving space to the young.
The artists invited to intervene in the castle space are: Pennacchio Argentato and Jordan Wolfson (7293, Naples); Francesco Arena and Robert Orchardson (Monitor Video & Contemporary Art, Rome); Emanuele Becheri and Sara Rossi (NicolaFornello, Prato); Piero Golia and Jesper Just (Maze, Turin); Christian Frosi and Giovanni Kronenberg (Zero, Milan).
There could be no better tribute to Luciano Pistoi: critic, dealer, cultural organizer—his entire life was a testimony, at the highest level, to the moral dignity and cultural role of the gallerist."
Laura Cherubini, Arte all’Arte X, 2005
Nicola Fornello, Prato
Nicola Fornello was born from an idea by Antonella Nicola and Enrico Fornello, and opened in the spring of 2003 with a solo exhibition by Attilio Maranzano. The gallery is dedicated to promoting young artists, both Italian and European, who have the opportunity to create site-specific projects within the space, a former industrial building.
Moreover, the program has been designed to connect artists from different generations, alternating exhibitions and events in order to offer opportunities for dialogue and growth.
Emanuele Becheri
Senza titolo (Ambiente n. 7)
At the heart of the project is the choice of room no. 7, which offers the possibility to extend certain aspects typical of two-dimensional works without betraying their original principles—allowing the experimentation of a new scale for drawing, attempting a large-scale work directly inscribed on the horizontal plane of the floor. Rendered white to match the walls, the floor marks a boundary, a sharp break from the adjoining spaces, destabilizing optical perception up close and even more so from a distance. (…)
With physical access to the room denied, one can only lean in at the threshold of the two doors to observe, from different points of view, a constellation of almost invisible signs scattered across the ground, unfolding as far as the eye can see, like a landscape. (…)
Sara Rossi
Visit to the castle. I have the keys—a large one made of rusted iron, and others smaller on the keyring. The village is deserted, seemingly abandoned. I approach the door, which opens without creaking into the darkness of the first room. Other doors and openings present various possibilities.
First, I go up, toward the top floor, where the still-pink walls give the rooms a feminine quality. The objects—furniture and other furnishings—seem to soften, to humanize this place in ruins. They endure as silent witnesses. (…)
I go back upstairs and step out into the garden. (…) From the garden, the castle seems to me the perfect container for a series of short stories, freely re-edited from footage filmed by tourists, plentiful in this area of Tuscany.
Maze, Torino
What you enjoy in a space is not its seven or seventy-seven wonders, but the answer it gives to one of your questions.
Italo Calvino
Piero Golia
Sono davanti al foglio per scrivere queste cinque righe da più di un’ora ma continuo a non aver nulla da scrivere. In fondo credo che il problema sia che non c’è nulla da scrivere. Si tratta solamente di una buffa modificazione genetica ottenuta per accidente. Un incontro tra un oggetto reale ed una tipica forma dell’arte. In questo caso dall’incontro tra un cubo minimalista probabilmente giallo con un set per il barbecue come quello che ho in giardino. Una sorta di piccolo scontro tra funzionalità e forma a discapito della funzionalità. Qualcosa che spero dia senso a queste cinque righe che finalmente ho raggiunto.
Jesper Just
Jesper Just partecipa alla decima edizione di Art to Art con due video realizzati nel corso dell’ultimo anno, “Bliss and Heaven” (2004) e “Something to love” (2005) particolarmente adatti alle atmosfere sospese del Castello dei Linari. “Bliss and Heaven” – sciolto remake della “Beaver Trilogy” di Trent Harris – è la storia di un ragazzo che segue di nascosto un maturo camionista nel rimorchio del suo tir. (…) Su un analogo registro di ambiguità di relazione, e usando sempre un linguaggio intriso di riferimenti cinematografici, gioca “Something to love” – inedito in Italia – che si apre con la ripresa in slowmotion di una macchina che percorre i corridoi deserti di un garage sotterraneo. (…)
Monitor Video and Contemporary Art, Roma
The Monitor gallery, founded in Rome in 2003 by Paola Capata, has as one of its main objectives the role of being a research space dedicated to the latest generations of artists.
Monitor positions itself on the international scene as a young and dynamic structure, where mostly under-30 artists are invited to create site-specific projects in the name of an ever-new and varied collaboration with the space, the city, and its audience.
Francesco Arena
For the Castello dei Linari, I envisioned two different interventions that are, in some way, in communication with each other.
In the cellar on the ground floor, where the built-in barrels are located, in the farthest corner from the kitchen door, I planned to install 3.24 sqm, a large wooden crate like those usually used for transporting sculptures.
On the outside of the crate, there is a small door, well camouflaged within the crossing of the planks; this door leads into a small antechamber measuring 120×70 cm.
Inside this space, there is another door that opens into the “larger” space, which measures 200×120 cm and almost completely fills the area of the crate.
These two rooms are a 1:1 scale reconstruction of the prison cell where Aldo Moro was held captive on Via Montalcini in Rome. (…)
For the second intervention (Trampoli), the attic space is perfect—another storage place for disused but always potentially retrievable things.
On two old stone blocks, originally part of a sidewalk, I placed two iron structures with bases shaped like the soles of shoes, with leather straps designed to secure actual shoes.
The iron structure strongly resembles the old-fashioned roller skates.
Robert Orchardson
Among the many aspects of the Castello dei Linari that interested me, I was mainly drawn to the abandoned furniture that fills the building.
Fragmentary remnants of previous use that now seem redundant, scattered throughout rooms that have also fallen into disuse.
Tutto questo sembra un contesto interessante nel quale esibire lavori che cercano di articolare gli aspetti di una complessa, se non paradossale, posizione tra potenzialità e ridondanza, utilità e disfunzionalità. Lavori che si giustappongono e oscillano continuamente tra l’importanza della loro fisicità e la loro presenza materiale, contro qualcosa di meno tangibile che si manifesta nella relazione tra gli stessi lavori. Per Art to Art propongo di creare un’installazione di più lavori collocati in diverse stanze, quasi a creare un’unità di frammenti fatta di parti disparate che alludono tanto al mobilio quanto alle sculture, nel tentativo di esplorare alcune di queste tensioni che costituiscono il fulcro del mio lavoro.
T293, Napoli
T293 was founded in 2001 by then 24-year-old Paola Guadagnino, with its first location at Via Tribunali 293, in the heart of Naples’ historic center.
T293 was born with the intention of introducing entirely new artistic research to Naples through a selective scouting of young international artists, aiming to formulate market hypotheses based on a personal aesthetic vision.
Over the years, T293 has become an important point of reference for collectors, curators, critics, artists, and art enthusiasts from Naples and around the world.
Thanks to its intense activity, the gallery has earned a central role in the contemporary art scene, receiving significant recognition in specialized magazines and participating in prestigious international art fairs such as Artissima (Turin) and Liste (Basel).
Pennacchio Argentato
(…) The architectural dimension of the Castello dei Linari is brought into relation with the exterior space of the garden in front of it.
The project alters perceptual predictability to create a sort of “visual passage.”
By deconstructing and reconstructing the landscape through an ingenious system of mirrors, an illusory vision of the landscape is reflected inside one of the rooms.
Jordan Wolfson
A film about something that doesn’t exist—or perhaps might never exist.
I was thinking of considering a formally subjectivized space and transforming it into a video that makes time subjective.
Zero Milano
You enter from an almost metaphysical space.
A staircase of iron and wire glass, a small door that opens onto an open and clean environment, a balcony somewhere between the prehistoric and the futuristic.
Galleria Zero. Truly unconventional, located on the rooftop of a building, it could not better express the Zero philosophy—aimed at a concept of contemporary art that inevitably overflows beyond the boundaries of the exhibition space.
Founded in March 2001 in Piacenza by Paolo Zani, it moved to Milan in September 2003, to Via Ventura 5, in the former Faema Factory in Lambrate.
A space that clearly has all the credentials to become the new Milanese hub for contemporary art.
Zani’s intention is to break the habits of Milan’s intelligentsia to “stay comfortably in the city center.”
The gallery reflects Paolo’s ideology and path, focused on the relationship between art, science, and the existential condition of humanity—a central theme developed through the works of young artists.
Christian Frosi
The loss of control is a practice that is difficult to sustain in any field of human activity, except perhaps as a metaphor.
It would result in undefined and incongruous areas and images—variations of possibilities that are hard to calculate and manage. (…)
One should more freely wander in a context without any specific value, among works that are defenseless and purely emotional—works capable of nullifying even that seed of context that naturally tends to form.
It’s difficult to create “tools” within such a landscape. Difficult, but not impossible.
A parallel reality, though not too far removed. A more simplified and impoverished script.
A neutral tension, in both space and context.
My will to control, which either loses or takes on symbolic value in its own detached representation.
Giovanni Kronenberg
“In my opinion, (children) are much more complete beings than adults; they are born complete and then begin to acquire flaws along the way, because society imposes on them how *not* to be themselves.
They are born as very natural and spontaneous beings and die as completely unnatural people; every day they gain information but lose health.
A writer once made a beautiful comparison when speaking about children; he said that children are not like silkworms—worms that later become butterflies;
human beings, instead, are born as butterflies—very free—and then are reduced to worms.”
from “The World Through the Window: The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami,” Edizioni della Battaglia, Palermo 2002
