PANORAMA an island-wide exhibition curated by Vincenzo de Bellis Procida
2–5 September 2021
www.italics.art
ITALICS, the first consortium in Italy to unite more than sixty of the country’s most influential galleries of contemporary, modern and ancient art, presents its first in-person project: Panorama, an island-wide exhibition on Procida (off the coast of Naples) from Thursday, 2 September to Sunday, 5 September 2021, curated by Vincenzo de Bellis, Associate Director and Curator of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It is the first in a series of exhibitions, each with the title Panorama, organised by ITALICS to tell the story of some of the most fascinating places in Italy, in an offline continuation of the extraordinary journey begun in October 2020 on the pages of the website italics.art. Whereas ITALICS is a digital project for networking and promoting Italy’s cultural and landscape heritage, Panorama is its live projection: an original exhibition series that brings together contemporary, modern and pre-modern art, creating art itineraries designed to reveal the most authentic and least-known aspects of Italy. The first exhibition in the Panorama series is taking place on the island of Procida, a picturesque location distinguished for its intellectual bent and natural surroundings, in the form of a long conversation between the curator Vincenzo de Bellis and Agostino Riitano, director of Procida: Italian Capital of Culture 2022. The exhibition brings together about forty-five works of art spanning sculpture, painting, video, performance and installations from a wide range of historical and production contexts. The itinerary stops at twenty sites island-wide, including public and private buildings, churches, historical palazzos and more, all pivoting around the fortified village of Terra Murata, dominated by Palazzo d’Avalos (1563), a former prison citadel. With this project, the island is getting ready to host a unique cultural initiative in view of 2022, when Procida will become the Italian Capital of Culture, and Panorama was inspired by one of the main suppositions of the project of the director of Procida 2022, Agostino Riitano: “The island is a place of exploration, experimentation and knowledge, a model for contemporary cultures. It preserves the meanings of existence and yet it is involved in processes of identity construction/deconstruction, abandonment/absence, loss and formation of bonds: the island is risk of separation and confinement, it is opportunity for new beginnings, discovery and regeneration, it is the supreme elsewhere, concealing treasures, or a place of escape, an expedient for the search for happiness.” As explained by the exhibition curator, Vincenzo de Bellis: “Its experiential nature, far removed from the wandering about that is now increasingly constrained by rules requiring separation from works in museums, offers a new opportunity for engaging with the works directly and at close range. All too often in the recent past, we have seen how attempts to reconcile the aesthetic and social aspects of art have sometimes been detrimental to the one and even more often the other. Panorama seeks to restore balance to this dynamic, rendering the aesthetic value of art inclusive, sustainable and in a relationship of reciprocal exchange with the area.” Through constant dialogue and comparison of notes, Vincenzo de Bellis and Agostino Riitano highlight a few of the key features of the project: the relationship between work of art and a highly distinctive space like that of the island, social potential, understood as an attempt to update communication and the use of art and, lastly, dialogue with institutions. Spreading the project throughout the island, Panorama presents not just Procida’s works of art but also its houses, churches, streets, terraces, piazzas and even residents. Panorama fully embraces the founding principle of ITALICS, which is expressed in the subtitle Art and Landscape: the opportunity to interpret the landscape and its layered history, built up over centuries of human activity, through art and the relationships that it can create between visitors and the area, beyond all temporal or media classification. With Panorama, ITALICS is renewing its commitment to promote the beauty of Italy in all its profound complexity, through the eyes of Italian gallerists. Panorama is made possible by Intesa Sanpaolo, ITALICS’ project Partner, with additional support from the Region of Campania and the Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee – museo Madre, and the sponsorship of the Municipality of Procida. The exhibition is part of the program ‘Towards Procida 2022′.
INFO ITALICS Art and Landscape www.italics.art @italics.art Press Contacts PCM Studio di Paola C. Manfredi Via Carlo Farini, 70 – 20159 Milan | www.paolamanfredi.com Federica Farci, +39 342 0515 787 | federica@paolamanfredi.com italics@paolamanfredi.com ITALICS Art and Landscape ITALICS is a consortium of more than sixty of Italy’s most influential galleries of contemporary, modern and pre-modern art. The project was created with the aim of presenting Italy through the eyes of gallerists and promoting the melding of history, art, culture and landscape that distinguishes it and makes it unique in all the world. ITALICS opens up the cultural production of its galleries, rooted in entrepreneurship and vast professional expertise, to a national and international audience of collectors and specialists. At the same time, ITALICS also addresses a more general public, offering the Italian landscape and its endless layers of art and culture, built up over time and across space, through special programmes both in-person and online at italics.art. The idea for the project first came to Lorenzo Fiaschi (Galleria Continua) and Pepi Marchetti Franchi (Gagosian) on 25 April 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdown: developing a new form of cultural experience for art lovers that is truly in step with the digital age we are living in today. A work group was set up around this idea that included Alfonso Artiaco, Ludovica Barbieri (Massimo De Carlo), Massimo Di Carlo (Galleria dello Scudo), Francesca Kaufmann (kaufmann repetto), Massimo Minini, Franco Noero and Carlo Orsi. Driven by the desire to create an Italian network rooted in collaboration and shared experience, the nine gallerists invited another fiftyfour to take part in the project, chosen from among Italy’s leading galleries of contemporary, modern and pre-modern art, together forming a consortium of sixty-three professionals: A arte Invernizzi, Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art, Apalazzogallery, Alfonso Artiaco, Bacarelli, Bottegantica, Botticelli Antichità, Tommaso Calabro Galleria d’Arte, Cantore Galleria Antiquaria, Cardi Gallery, Alessandro Cesati, Galleria Continua, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Thomas Dane Gallery, Massimo De Carlo, Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, Alessandra Di Castro, Galleria Umberto Di Marino, ErmesErmes, Fanta-MLN, Galleria Fonti, Frutta, Gagosian, Galleria d’Arte Maggiore GAM, Galleria dello Scudo, Giacometti Old Master Paintings, kaufmann repetto, Laveronica Arte Contemporanea, Magazzino, Gió Marconi, Mazzoleni, Francesca Minini, Galleria Massimo Minini, Victoria Miro Venice, ML Fine Art, Monitor, Maurizio Nobile, Galleria Franco Noero, Norma Mangione Gallery, Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, Galleria Carlo Orsi, P420, Walter Padovani, Giorgio Persano, Pinksummer, Porcini, Galleria Lia Rumma, Salamon&C., Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Schiavo Zoppelli Gallery, Società di Belle Arti, SpazioA, Studio Sales di Norberto Ruggeri, Studio Trisorio, T293, Caterina Tognon Arte Contemporanea, Tornabuoni Arte, Tucci Russo Studio per l’Arte Contemporanea, Federico Vavassori, Veda, Galleria Carlo Virgilio & C., Vistamare|Vistamarestudio, Zero… The ITALICS digital platform – italics.art – gathers together the cultural experiences of its gallerists in every corner of Italy, promoting the country’s extraordinary artistic heritage through those who have, in recent decades, placed their expertise in the service of art and all of its richness and diversity. For now, the platform is made up of three tools: a website (www.italics.art) in Italian, English and Chinese, a periodic newsletter, “ITALICS Club News”, now in its sixteenth edition, and an Instagram page (@Italics.art) kept constantly up to date with ideas for where to go and what to see to discover art in all of its variety and links to history and place throughout all of Italy. The editorial content written by our gallerists expressly for ITALICS is filled with recommendations ranging from what to see to the best places to stay, eat and shop: ITALICS asks these businesses to contribute to the support of our platform, creating an ever-larger network of art, people, places and businesses. Panorama on the island of Procida is the first multi-site exhibition organised by ITALICS Art and Landscape: a collective project and formal commitment that will expand its themes in the months to come with a programme and collaborations aimed to reinforce the centrality and role of Italian art galleries in a flourishing local and international cultural system.