The Italian Pavilion present a exhibiont themed “Italy Code” in the 56th International Art Exhibition. Memory, identity values, historical heritage and openness to the future are some of the cornerstones identified by Trione to build a complex exhibition, featuring fifteen artists, between recent past and close contemporaneity.

Curator Vincenzo Trione makes clear the ambitious choice to retrace a language that unites the history of our country with the collective one. The names of the protagonists evoke the strong desire to innovate the language of art in the context of an always lively comparison with history.

From Arte Povera to the last generations, passing from the Transavanguardia to the great post-war artistic personalities. Italy presents itself at the Venice Biennale with a group of artists united by thinking of their works as a place in which the desire to innovate languages ​​and problematic dialogue with salient moments of art history find themselves coexisting. All for an exhibition that, as explained by Vincenzo Trione, curator of the Italian pavilion at the Biennale , has the objective “of outlining the contours of what, beyond many oscillations, remains the foundation of our” genetic code ” stylistic ».

The exhibition shows a layered combination of different media (painting, sculpture, photography, video and performance) that will crowd the Pavilion hosted by the Tese delle Vergini at the Arsenale, with stimulating reflections on the future value of Memory.

Concept
Italy Code: in search of the Italian artistic DNA. In the era of globalization, does it still make sense to speak of a national art? Probably not. The boundaries have become evanescent in the last twenty years and the artist is increasingly “citizen of the world”. However, this does not mean that the globalization of languages ​​and research in the artistic field does not know national variations that allow to identify a characteristic “line” within a given territory.

Although following different paths, many Italian artists of our time have proposed an original variation of the concept of avant-garde: for them, being avant-garde means reinventing the media, and, together, to attend in a problematic way existing iconographic and cultural materials.

Harmony with the most daring results of international artistic research, adhere to the new as a value to be idolized, nor do they pursue provocations. What unites them is the need to escape the dictatorship of the present, which is similar to a blackboard on which an invisible hand constantly erases ever-changing events. They cultivate in a more or less intentional way precise descendants: their gestures contain secret references to the history of art (from archeology to twentieth-century experimentalism). They choose, therefore, to stroll through the rooms of a past that insinuates itself into current affairs. Like an archive of fragments.

The Exhibition
The 2015 Italian Pavilion has the title “Italian Code”. Its curator, Vincenzo Trione, professor of Art and new media and History of contemporary art at the IULM University of Milan, intended, with this theme, to highlight some constants of contemporary Italian art, and in particular defines “Genetic code” the tendency of artists not to interrupt, in their research, even if at the cutting edge, the dialogue with iconographic and cultural materials already existing and present in memory, such as references to historical and artistic tradition. For this purpose, it has chosen 15 protagonists from the different Italian regions who, in their heterogeneity, reveal a constant approach to the identified topic.

The artists were invited to create symbolic works, which arose from poetic posters, and to accompany them with Archives of memory inspired by Aby Warburg’s “Mnemosyne Atlas” (art historian and critic who, in the late 1920s, created an atlas illustrated with images taken from books, magazines and other sources of the time; a sort of encyclopedia of the memory of European culture ordered in chapters). The space of the pavilion, curated by Giovanni Francesco Frascino , was therefore conceived to guarantee autonomy to each of the interventions and divided into rooms, each of which houses a work and an archive of memory.

Artists on display : Alis / Filliol, Andrea Aquilanti, Francesco Barocco, Vanessa Beecroft, Antonio Biasucci, Giuseppe Caccavale, Paolo Gioli, Jannis Kounellis, Nino Longobardi, Marzia Improve, Luca Monterastrelli. Mimmo Paladino, Claudio Parmiggiani, Nicola Samorì, Aldo Tambellini

Alongside the invited artists are some “homages” by Peter Greenaway, William Kentridge and Jean-Marie Straub. The pavilion also presents a reflection by Umberto Eco on the concept of memory, created through a video installation by Davide Ferrario.

Venice Biennale 2015
The 2015 Art Biennale closes a sort of trilogy that began with the exhibition curated by Bice Curiger in 2011, Illuminations, and continued with the Encyclopedic Palace of Massimiliano Gioni (2013). With All The World’s Futures, La Biennale continues its research on useful references for making aesthetic judgments on contemporary art, a “critical” issue after the end of the avant-garde and “non-art” art.

Through the exhibition curated by Okwui Enwezor, La Biennale returns to observe the relationship between art and the development of human, social and political reality, in the pressing of external forces and phenomena: the ways in which, that is, the tensions of the external world solicit the sensitivities, the vital and expressive energies of the artists, their desires, the motions of the soul (their inner song ).

La Biennale di Venezia was founded in 1895. Paolo Baratta has been its President since 2008, and before that from 1998 to 2001. La Biennale, who stands at the forefront of research and promotion of new contemporary art trends, organizes exhibitions, festivals and researches in all its specific sectors: Arts (1895), Architecture (1980), Cinema (1932), Dance (1999), Music (1930), and Theatre (1934). Its activities are documented at the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts (ASAC) that recently has been completely renovated.

The relationship with the local community has been strengthened through Educational activities and guided visits, with the participation of a growing number of schools from the Veneto region and beyond. This spreads the creativity on the new generation (3,000 teachers and 30,000 pupils involved in 2014). These activities have been supported by the Venice Chamber of Commerce. A cooperation with Universities and research institutes making special tours and stays at the exhibitions has also been established. In the three years from 2012-2014, 227 universities (79 Italian and 148 international) have joined the Biennale Sessions project.

In all sectors there have been more research and production opportunities addressed to the younger generation of artists, directly in contact with renowned teachers; this has become more systematic and continuous through the international project Biennale College, now running in the Dance, Theatre, Music, and Cinema sections.