Massimo Torrigiani for the Centre for contemporary art and culture, Bari: Trame. Reality Art Cinema Invention
Bari’s new centre for contemporary art and culture, a project wanted by the Municipality and directed by Fantom’s Massimo Torrigiani, has officially started its activities with Trame: Reality Art Cinema Invention.
The exhibition is dedicated to the work of eight artists among the most prominent of the international scene: John Akomfrah, The Atlas Group, Yto Barrada, Rossella Biscotti, Ho Tzu Nyen, João Penalva, Thomas Sauvin and Wu Tsang.
Trame (in English both plots and weaves) is open to the public until February 5, 2017 at Spazio Murat, the first of the three buildings which will be home to the centre for contemporary art and culture of the city.
Trame. Reality Art Cinema Invention, installation view. Curated by Davide Quadrio and Francesca Girelli, 9 December, 2016 – 5 February 2017, Comune di Bari – Spazio Murat
Born out of a project curated by Francesca Girelli and Davide Quadrio for the OCAT – Contemporary Art Terminal in Shanghai, Trame explores (through a renewed edition, conceived specifically for Bari under commission of Torrigiani, and enriched by the participation of The Atlas Group, Rossella Biscotti and Wu Tsang) the ways in which art and artists react to the challenge of the media – the internet, the television, documentaries and literature – to search the boundaries, both formal and moral, between truth and fiction. How are myths, history, our beliefs constructed?
Trame is an exhibition mixing up historical and artefact scenarios, individual and collective vicissitudes, transforming original documents in fictional tales; and invented stories into indisputable facts.
“The artists we selected for this exhibition” explain Girelli and Quadrio “unmask the strategies used by power to reshape narratives in order to impose factious readings of history. In this context, by means of tools such as sensorial perception, empathy, psychological portraiture and aesthetic suggestions, the artists embrace revisionist practices which unearth – willingly or unconsciously – events previously left out of official historiographies. The narratives at the core of their works are threads, pulled cautiously out of the complex fabrics that collective memories are made of.”
From Portugal to Lebanon, Morocco to Italy, to China, the artists dismantle and reassemble facts, known or secret, in order to trigger new readings and to take us elsewhere, where truth and fiction blend. Where time is suspended. Just like in myths.
The backbone of the exhibition is cinema, also documentary: a device which is more and more used by artists to fill the gaps and the rifts that divide us from mythological constructions, from the secrets of their duration. A tool to highlight – in a fluid, prompt and reversible manner – how an aware sharing of experiences and imageries can produce that game of mirrors, both creative and emotional, which gives space and sense to our lives together.
“The work itself dictates the timing of the spectator’s fruition and perception,” add Francesca Girelli and Davide Quadrio. “The integral viewing of a filmic artwork allows us to accept the artist’s conditions, which suggest to respect the expected duration for the efficient communication and comprehension of a theme, an idea, a feeling, a message. Trame is a conceptual and sensorial reflection on time and its multiple forms and declinations. With their works, the artists pave the way for a world where the past is always transforming, and the future is a conglomerate of conjectures in the process of becoming. The present, where these two dimensions meet, exists live in the spectator’s perception, which synchronises to the timelines created by the film editing. The present coincides with the narration flowing before our eyes, instant after instant.”
Trame: Reality Art Cinema Invention is supported by Poste Italiane and was made in collaboration with OCAT – Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai and Arthub, the platform dedicated to the production, curating and promotion of Asian art and of art in Asia directed by Davide Quadrio, co-curator of the exhibition. The coordination and production of the exhibition are curated by DOC Servizi – Filiale di Bari.
TRAME. Reality Art Cinema Invention 9 December 2016 – 5 February 2017 Spazio Murat Piazza del Ferrarese, Bari www.tramebari.it www.spaziomurat.it Full price ticket € 3 Reduced price ticket € 2 (valid for visitors under 18 and over 65 years of age) Free guided tours every Wednesday and Saturday. Book your visit at visiteguidate@tramebari.it
