For the 6th edition of Arte all'Arte, curator Emanuela de Cecco curated the special project at the Teatro dei Leggieri in San Gimignano with the intervention of Mario Airò, created in collaboration with photographer Attilio Maranzano.
"One of the implicit goals of the Arte all'Arte project is the intention to establish real connections with the territory and the living realities that operate within it. The artists are called to intervene directly in the social fabric and take into account the specific characteristics of the context.
In this regard, alongside the actual exhibition, last year, for the first time, a competition was held where some young Italian artists were invited to design the spaces of the Casa della Musica-Sonar in Colle di Val d'Elsa. The competition was won by Loris Cecchini, who completely redesigned the interiors, transforming them into one of his permanent installations, an environment-artwork that hosted the opening party of Arte all'Arte this year.
This year, the competition focused on the foyer of the Teatro dei Leggieri in San Gimignano. Located in the Piazza della Collegiata, the theater is a significant presence in the history of the town. Built in the 18th century according to the standards of Italian tradition, the small theater has a recently renovated foyer, where the furniture elements, placed in a decidedly limited space, do not suggest any reference to the beauty found inside.
The competition, organized by the Municipality of San Gimignano in collaboration with the Arte Continua Association, required projects aimed at expanding the space from a perceptual point of view, as physically expanding the theater’s interiors was not possible. A stimulating but decidedly difficult task, precisely because it required reflection that could take into account the many limitations inherent in the starting situation. Five artists were invited to participate, selected from those who had already demonstrated sensitivity to space in their work, with the goal of choosing and implementing one of the five projects as a permanent intervention.
The artists invited to participate were Mario Airò, Sergia Avveduti, Massimo Bartolini, Margherita Morgantin, and Italo Zuffi. The jury, composed of the staff of the Arte Continua Association, the mayor, and the curators, awarded the contribution of Mario Airò, taking into account, in addition to the obvious quality of the proposal, also the possibility of transforming it into reality.
All the projects intelligently addressed the issue, resulting in very different outcomes: in addition to the winning project, two extreme solutions are worth mentioning: on one side, the radical modification of the spaces proposed by Massimo Bartolini, and on the other, the poetically misleading intervention by Margherita Morgantin, who suggested inserting a device like those typically found in churches and historical spaces to provide information about their history, but in this case, it included audio and images to take the viewer elsewhere."
Emanuela De Cecco, “Arte All’Arte VII”, 2002
