Art Cologne, Cologne
October 28 – November 1, 2005
Hall 10.2 Stand B022
After two shows celebrating the 35th anniversary of the gallery in the first half of 2005 Studio la Città is proposing for this season the work of a number of new artists. ARTCOLOGNE will be the first international rendez-vous where we will display, for the first time, the works of Gabriele Basilico, Eelco Brand, Arthur Duff, Michael Subotzky, Pablo Zuleta-Zahr, Marco Zanta. Obviously this will also be the occasion to see the new works of established artists of the gallery such as Pierpaolo Calzolari, Luigi Carboni, Herbert Hamak, Jacob Hashimoto, David Lindberg, Mirco Marchelli, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Ettore Spalletti. The ambition is to demonstrate how, even if using such different media and forms of expression, even if they come from different backgrounds and are of different generations, all these have a relation with one another based on a deep interior approach as well as quality.
Art Basel, Basel – Professional day
17 June 2005
Halle 2.1 – Booth W5
Of all the many consequences of 11 September 2001, one regards the complete change in direction of cinema fiction. If, before the attack on the Twin Towers, action, catastrophic and colossal films were involved above all with the realism of their special effects (and in fact many people, on seeing the attack by the first plane on TV, thought this was a film they were being shown) today the most advanced effects are employed above all for animation films using today’s amazing digital techniques. The sector that was once called cartoon films and was devoted to a fantastic world quite divorced from reality, is now the new centre of radical experiment. Such films as Shreck 2, Polar Express, Gli Incredibili and Shark Tale, some of the greatest successes of the most recent film seasons, manage to unite a satisfactory story with an illusive use of images that is as magical as it is close to the truth. We recognise in these works the characteristics and voices of real actors, but their digital ‘plastification’ produces in the viewer a kind of tranquillising detachment from traditional fiction. So it is not by chance that various young international artists have chosen digital animation as the instrument for creating a parallel world where marvellous special effects allow them to venture even further into the realms of phantasmagoria and the improbable. In the important exhibition Animation, shown at the PSI in New York and the Kunstwerke in Berlin in 2002 and 2003, Klaus Biesenbach gathered together the work of contemporary artists for whom animation was both the means and the subject, and he focussed above all on the implications of living in an age in which visual experience conforms to new technology, and where the reality of fiction cinema and that of animation are ever more intermingled. This new project for the Professional Day, curated by Luca Beatrice, takes into account the rapid developments constantly brought about when technology is applied to creativity: he has chosen four young international artists attracted by a more human and realistic use of digital technology, as has already happened with film, and who manage to evoke an emotion in their tiny animated tales.
Art Basel, Basel
June 15 – June 20, 2005
Halle 2.1 – Booth W5
For the forthcoming edition of Art Basel 2005 Studio la Città will be presenting works by artists already seen in the past as well as some completely new proposals. After the events held to mark its thirty five years of activity, the gallery wishes to underline with its presence at Art Basel the sense of continuity and growth that characterises the choice of its artists. Particular attention will be paid to those artists who, rather than involving themselves solely in an investigation of the languages of art, actively try to enter into the viewer’s space, even at an emotional level, and to create an intensely personal but welcoming world. For the gallery this means being present in the fair with a small sequence of spaces, each with its own ‘personality’. Ettore Spalletti, for example, will create an site specific enviroment with seven works pictures; Michelangelo Pistoletto will have an area with his latest mirroring tables, works which not only visually but almost physically involve the spectator; Herbert Hamak will exhibit a new diptych that demonstrates how light, when wedded to various degrees of transparency, can transform both form and colour; Jacob Hashimoto will be presenting a ‘wall’ of dazzling patches that play with our sense of threedimensions, almost in a joyful and pleasurable comment on the shallow surfaces of Cubist paintings; and the latest works by Hiroyuki Masuyama allow us to understand the space-time relation both intuitively and aesthetically. The new proposals will be works by Arthur Duff, Eelco Brand, and Pablo Zuleta. Arthur Duff has prepared a site-specific installation in which intertwined and knotted cords form irregular weaves that play with our perception. Eelco Brand will be present with DVDs and photos in which he reconstructs nature through artifice, though guided more by intuition than by rational analysis. At first sight the photos by Pablo Zuleta seem abstract pictures, each characterised by fascias of a single colour: a closer look, however, reveals that these colours are nothing other than the clothes of the young people the artist has picked out from crowded scenes in an investigation that is almost as much social as it is aesthetic. With these artists Studio la Città also wishes to accentuate that, even though in its thirty-sixth year, a sense of continuity must not have the upper hand over the pure gratification of a flow of proposals.
ARCO, Madrid
February 10 – February 14, 2005
Hall 7 – Stand 7B021
At its best, an installation in a fair gives a taste, not just of the gallery’s forthcoming exhibitions, but also allows an annual view of the artists’ growth. Studio la Città has always kept this philosophy in mind and at this edition of Arco 2005 re-presents artists already seen in other fairs as well as newer names. Particular attention will be given this year to the work of a selection of Italian artists. We will be showing a very carefully selected pair of ceramics as well as an unusual pink oval by Lucio Fontana, a new work by Ettore Spalletti, Perpaolo Calzolari, an Achrome by Piero Manzoni and we will present works made by younger artists such as Davide Bramante, Luigi Carboni, Mirco Marchelli, Franco Passalacqua and for the first time a Video work of Jacopo Rovida. Studio la Città hopes that the perceptive visitor to Arco, will find the same sense of development and growth in the gallery’s choice of artists: Stuart Arends, Lawrence Carroll, Herbert Hamak, Jacob Hashimoto, Haubitz+Zoche, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Ross Rudel…
Arte Fiera, Bologna
Janaury 27 – January 31, 2005
Hall 18 – Stand A70
Every year since 1975 Studio la Città has taken part in Arte Fiera, the international art fair in Bologna. For the past few years the gallery has decided to occupy larger spaces in order to show large-scale works and to be able to host artists who wish to create installations, thus guaranteeing a far wider and complete presentation of the gallery’s choices and giving a deeper view of the work of each artist. This year there will be exhibited recent works by some of the artists shown in the gallery in recent years: Stuart Arends, Luigi Carboni, Lawrence Carroll, Max Cole, Haubitz + Zoche, Herbert Hamak, Emil Lukas, Julia Mangold, Mirco Marchelli, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Franco Passalacqua, Ross Rudel, Jonathan Seliger, David Simpson, and Phil Sims. Furthermore we will be presenting a new large-scale work by Jacob Hashimoto and, for the first time, an installation by David Lindberg.
As is by now the gallery’s tradition, we will be exhibiting works by such historic artists as Lucio Fontana, Ettore Spalletti and Pierpaolo Calzolari.