Ennesima
An Exhibition of Seven Exhibitions on Italian Art
Curated by Vincenzo de Bellis
Artistic direction: Edoardo Bonaspetti, Curator of Triennale Arte
26 November 2015 – 6 March 2016
Opening Reception: 25 November
From 26 November 2015 to 6 March 2016, Triennale di Milano presents Ennesima. An Exhibition of Seven Exhibitions on Italian Art, curated by Vincenzo de Bellis. Not “one” exhibition of Italian art but, literally, an ‘exhibition of exhibitions’ that, via seven paths, tries to explore the last fifty years of contemporary art in Italy, collecting more than one hundred and twenty works and over seventy artists, from the early Sixties through to the present day, in a display extending over the whole first floor of the Milan Triennale.
The title is inspired by a work by Giulio Paolini, Ennesima (appunti per la descrizione di sette tele datate 1973), the first version of which, dated 1973, is divided into seven paintings. This gives the number of exhibition projects included in de Bellis’s exhibition for La Triennale: seven independent exhibitions, in the form of notes or suggestions that explore different aspects, links, coincidences and discrepancies, as well as the exhibition grammar in the recent history of Italian art. Seven working hypotheses through which we can read, reinterpret and tell Italian art also through the analysis of some of the possible exhibition formats: from the solo exhibition to the site-specific installation, through to the thematic group show andchronological group show, the group exhibition on specific movement and the medium-based group exhibition and on to the archive exhibition. Not just a single project that attempts at all costs to find thematic or stylistic, chronological or generational connections, but rather a platform that tries to suggest the coexistence of all these and other possible formats, creating a cross-section of the past fifty years of art in Italy.
The path of Ennesima starts therefore with the thematic group exhibition entitled For writing an image, focussed on the analysis of the centrality of iconography in the Italian artistic production from the Sixties through to the present day, to continue with the group exhibition on an artistic movement entitled The image of writing: Group 70, visual poetry and verbal-visual research and dedicated to Visual Poetry, and then with Alessandro Pessoli: Sandrinus, the whole before the parts, the artist’s first solo exhibition in an Italian public institution. Central hub of the path is the medium-based exhibition about The performance from suspended time: the tableau vivant between reality and representation, hinging on performance, with the objective of presenting an analysis of its development by focussing on the tableau vivant sub-genre, followed by The choral archives: Lazzaro Palazzi’s experience, from self-managed space to Avanblob, the exhibition of documents that, twenty-five years later, pays homage to the activities of the group of Luciano Fabro’s former students proposing a first attempt at historization. 2015: present time, indefinite mode, a generation-based exhibition ends the path, revolving around a selection of artists born between the mid-Seventies and Eighties. The whole project is finally studded with site-specific interventions at crucial points of the exhibition path, gathered under the title of Here, now and elsewhere: Site-specific and surroundings, that fit transversely in respect of the other six exhibitions.
Seven attempts, therefore, seven suggestions, seven possible analyses and interpretations of contemporary Italian art: Ennesima favours not a unique vision, but multiple perspectives that, as such, in their partiality, can be considered as a sample of different approaches to contemporary art. The spaces of the first floor of the Triennale will therefore be divided according to a precise path, on which visitors will be taken to discover the seven exhibitions that will then be perceived as autonomous and self-sufficient, but also as part of a wider vision that includes them all.
Starting from its “plural” nature, born from the study and analysis of great recent and less recent exhibitions which it wants to pay tribute to in various ways – from citation to reaction -, the project reveals itself as a meta-exhibition: an exhibition reflecting on itself, on exhibition practice and the mechanisms that govern its operation and that reveals, in its own system, both the grammar that has led to certain choices and, at the same time, their full subjectivity, outlining therefore a composite fresco of the Italian contemporary system in its different specific features.
Artists:
Vincenzo Accame, Vincenzo Agnetti, Alessandro Agudio, Mario Airò, Yuri Ancarani, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Francesco Arena, Stefano Arienti, Massimo Bartolini, Gianfranco Baruchello, Vanessa Beecroft, Alighiero Boetti, Monica Bonvicini, Lupo Borgonovo, Ugo Carrega, Elisabetta Catalano, Maurizio Cattelan, Giuseppe Chiari, Francesco Clemente, Roberto Cuoghi, Danilo Correale, Gino De Dominicis, Patrizio Di Massimo, Luciano Fabro, Lara Favaretto, Vincenzo Ferrari, Linda Fregni Nagler, Giuseppe Gabellone, Alberto Garutti, Francesco Gennari, Paolo Gioli, Massimo Grimaldi, Adelita Husni-Bey, Emilio Isgrò, Jannis Kounellis, Ketty La Rocca, Gruppo di via Lazzaro Palazzi (Mario Airò, Enzo Buonaguro, Matteo Donati, Stefano Dugnani, Giuseppina Mele, Chiyoko Miura, Liliana Moro, Andrea Rabbiosi, Bernhard Rüdiger, Antonello Ruggieri, Adriano Trovato, Francesco Voltolina), Marcello Maloberti, Lucia Marcucci, Nicola Martini, Fabio Mauri, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Eugenio Miccini, Luca Monterastelli, Liliana Moro, Maurizio Nannucci, Alek O., Martino Oberto, Luigi Ontani, Luciano Ori, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, DiegoPerrone, Alessandro Pessoli, Lamberto Pignotti, Vettor Pisani, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Paola Pivi, LuigiPresicce, Carol Rama, Pietro Roccasalva, Andrea Romano, Gianni Emilio Simonetti, Rudolf Stingel, Santo Tolone, Franco Vaccari, Francesco Vezzoli, Luca Vitone.
Ennesima will be accompanied by a publication in seven books and a catalogue-guide curated by Vincenzo de Bellis and published by Mousse Publishing, that will mirror the division of the exhibition in seven parts and will be enriched with unpublished contributions, essays and critical writings, commissioned for the occasion, from Italian curators and critics of the latest generations, that have stood out during the last few years at both national and international levels: Cristina Baldacci, LorenzoBenedetti, Barbara Casavecchia, Laura Cherubini, Vincenzo de Bellis, Eva Fabbris, Luigi Fassi, Francesco Garutti, Massimiliano Gioni, Andrea Lissoni, Luca Lo Pinto, Francesco Manacorda, SimoneMenegoi, Paola Nicolin, Allegra Pesenti, Andrea Pinotti, Alessandro Rabottini, Letizia Ragaglia, NicolaRicciardi, Alberto Salvadori, Marco Scotini, Andrea Viliani, Elena Volpato, Giorgio Zanchetti.
Ennesima
An Exhibition of Seven Exhibitions on Italian Art
Curated by Vincenzo de Bellis
Artistic direction: Edoardo Bonaspetti, Curator of Triennale Arte
26 November 2015 – 6 March 2016
Press conference: 25 November, 11.30 a.m
Opening: 25 November, 7 p.m.
Vettor Pisani, L’eroe da camera. Tutte le parole dal silenzio di Duchamp al rumore di Beuys, 1972
Persona vivente, cavo d’acciaio, carrucola, catena, collare di cuoio, orologio / Living person, steel cable, pulley, chain, leather collar, clock
Dimensioni variabili / Variable dimensions
Collezione Mimma Pisani
Courtesy Archivio Elisabetta Catalano, Roma
Photo: Elisabetta Catalano