MiArt 2012, 17th edition. From the 13th to the 15th of April, Milan, the capital of the Italian art market, is the site of a crucial period of meetings and cultural exchanges for the annual appointment with MiArt, which once again this year presents a selection of the most preeminent galleries of the art world which consider Milan as the strategic exhibition hub for their clientele. MiArt’s artistic director Frank Boehm underlines the continuity of the two worlds, the contemporary and the modern, which are purposefully brought together within the same time frame in a single, completely renovated exhibition venue. A choice which in the intentions of the new director, who is also the artistic director of the event, is expressly designed to highlight the mutual contaminations so as to provide the best possible presentation of the period on show which runs from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.
Galleries and art dealers are the leading figures in this exhibition as they present Italian and international collectors, curators, museum directors and art enthusiasts with the kinds of choices they have made in these unquestionably difficult times, which are consequently all focused on guaranteeing the ultimate in terms of quality in order to satisfy the tastes and expectations of collectors. This is the goal sought by all the works on show at the MiArt, representative of artists from all over the world and promoted and supported by the efforts of the galleries, which pin their hopes on the excellence and the variety of the works on show in the various sections of artistic production which include painting, sculpture, installations, photographs, drawings, video art, performance art and special site specific projects.
The result of the exhibition projects presented directly by the art dealers will be further enhanced by the new section structure outlined below:
- Established, which will include all the galleries with a long-standing experience in both modern and contemporary art;
- Emergent, which will feature the galleries with the most cutting edge artists;
- Solo/Double, which is designed to show monographic exhibitions or comparisons between two artists of the past or very recent;
- Special Project which pays tribute to curation projects.
MiArt 2012 also embraces other arts such as fashion, design and architecture, all fields in which Milan excels and to which the fair program dedicates a share of its schedule events.
The many voice conversation program led by Milovan Farronato, though restricted in terms of time, covers all artistic disciplines and periods and will provide a moment of reflection and dialogue on contemporary issues as seen through the medium of these artistic endeavours which are becoming increasingly cross-fertilizing and abound in shared references.
The “modernist text” and its re-interpretations, is the exhibition curated by Giorgio Verzotti and hosted within the context of the fair event. A number of artists from the younger generations look at the research activities that held sway between the middle of the sixties and the middle of the subsequent decade. Practices and objectives of those periods which seem to deserve to be reviewed today, almost as if their conceptual and operative validity were now being put to the test. On the other hand a number of the major figures of that experimental era are now being presented even by the more recently established galleries, as if to mark a need for confrontation with a recent past and its effects on contemporary artistic production. So works of the past are shown beside those produced very recently by young artists. A lowest common denominator, not a condition but rather an indication: abstraction based on rationalist tenets, expressed not just in painting but also in sculpture, installations and video.
A great deal of space in this edition is given over to young artists and recently established galleries.
Young artists will benefit from the “Premio Rotary Club Milano Brera per l’arte contemporanea e i giovani artisti” (Rotary Club Milano Brera prize for contemporary art and young artists), which involves the purchase of works by artists under the age of 35 which will subsequently be donated, along with the collection that will have been built up by then, to the Milan Contemporary Art Museum which is currently being set up. The theme chosen this year is painting. The jury members are Chiara Bertòla, Laura Cherubini and Christian Marinotti.
MiArt 2012 will be held at fieramilanocity, pavilion 3, from the 13th to the 15th of April with the opening ceremony taking place on Thursday the 12th.
To celebrate 25 years of Images programming, we’re looking back to the last weekend of June 1988. For four nights, the festival took over the Factory theatre and presented four programs with 51 films and videos by artists from across Canada. To help explore the origins of the Images Festival, we’ve invited founding board members and programmers to select and talk about the work from the first festival that had the most impact for them. Cameron Bailey chose Last Days of Contrition by Ricard Kerr, Annette Mangaard picked Orientation Express by Frances Leeming and Ross Turnbull selected Sirensong by Jan Peacock.
http://DeHoeksteen.Live.nU 