Italy: Out of Order

Curated by Luca Beatrice and Giancarlo Politi (I)

Remaining faithful to its historical tradition, the system of contemporary art in Italy continues to present itself as an irregular, monadic structure, fragmented into a myriad of places in which any hierarchical relationship between the center and the outskirts is dropped, thus exploiting the particular geographical configuration modelled on tourism that is widespread in the territory. Such an absence of centrality, and therefore of strategy, can be considered a positive factor; the consequent lack, for more than twenty years now, of an unleashing event capable of making the system rotate in one direction or another is not so bad after all. Also in the context of the visual culture in Italy, the synthesis between the global expectations and the local persistence that instead maintain the characters emerged in marginal territories from the South, which is still archaic compared to the hyper-productive Northeast. The last artistic model that was exportable in bulk was the “Transavanguardia,” which happened at the time of the great success of Made in Italy (art, fashion, sport, politics, shows, cuisine). In recent years — and it is uncertain how much this is from choice and how much is out of habit — Italian art has continued to move in a disorderly fashion along the road of elegance and formal synthesis, at times exhausting the task in a hasty and superficial way, and at other times in an intriguing and innovative way.

Artists:

Paolo Consorti
Roberto Cuoghi
Davide Bertocchi
Omar Galliani
Cristina Graziani
Marcello Maloberti
Domenico Mangano
Gian Marco Montesano
Angelo Mosca
Mimmo Paladino
Federico Pietrella
Chiara Pirito
Luca Rento
Mario Rizzi
Salvo
Nicola Verlato
Kostabi World