ROME.- The 2018 MAXXI BVLGARI Prize, the museum’s project supporting and promoting young art, is gathering pace. This year, thanks to its important partnership with Bvlgari, it has been revised and enriched as it opens to the international artistic scene.
From 1 June to 28 October 2018, the works from this edition’s shortlisted artists - Talia Chetrit (1982), Invernomuto (Simone Bertuzzi, 1983 and Simone Trabucchi, 1982) and Diego Marcon (1985), will be shown in an exhibition at
MAXXI curated by Giulia Ferracci.
Chosen by an international jury composed of David Elliott Independent Curator, Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director at MOT in Tokyo, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director at the Serpentine Galleries in London, Hou Hanru, Artistic Director at MAXXI and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of MAXXI Arte, the shortlisted artists were selected for their “awareness of the historical moment in which we are living and their capacity for expanding the confines of the artistic idiom”. Their works will now be featured in an exhibition from which the jury will choose a winner, and whose work will be acquired by the museum.
The press will be offered a preview of the exhibition, which will be inaugurated on Wednesday, 30 May by Giovanna Melandri, President of the Fondazione MAXXI, Jean Christophe Babin, CEO of the Gruppo Bvlgari, the judges Yuko Hasegawa, Hou Hanru and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, in the presence of the three artists.
The exhibition will be open to the public from 1 June 2018. To help promote the prize around the world, it will have an Honour Committee that includes Giovanna Melandri and Jean Christophe Babin, along with the Oscar winning director Giuseppe Tornatore.
MAXXI, the first Italian national museum dedicated to contemporary creativity, and Bvlgari, an emblem of creativity and excellence for over 130 years, worked together for the first time in 2014, on the occasion of the exhibition Bellissima. The Italy of High Fashion 1945-1968, for which the maison was the main partner.
With the MAXXI BVLGARI Prize, this partnership – based on shared values such as excellence, innovation, passion, creativity and experimentation and on an awareness of the importance of support for culture and the strategic role of the public-private alliance – is being consolidated.
As Giovanna Melandri and Jean Cristophe Babin agree, “supporting young talents means investing in the creativity of our time and our future”.
Giovanna Melandri says, “I am particularly happy about this exhibition for various reasons. The Prize represents the founding nucleus of MAXXI’s permanent public collection, the ‘beating heart’ of the museum. Thanks to the prize, works by Vanessa Beecroft, Lara Favaretto, Nico Vascellari, Francesco Vezzoli and many others have been added to the collection. Today, thanks to the prestigious partnership with Bvlgari, the prize is even bigger and more important for us. Together with Bvlgari, an emblem of Italian creativity and quality, we have launched a six-year collaboration: a strategic alliance between public and private subjects in the name of culture and young art. I have frequently defined MAXXI as a ‘laboratory of the future’ and this exhibition reflects this idea in full. I would like to congratulate the three young finalists, who each reread, interpret and help us understand through their artistic research what are very complex times.”
Jean Christophe Babin, comments, “We have finally reached the exhibition of the first edition of the MAXXI BVLGARI PRIZE: the highly original and individual creativity of all the artists stimulates a profound reflection on the reality in which we live. The same drive for experimentation has always permeated the Bvlgari DNA. We are proud that the Maison is supporting the development of contemporary art while at the same time enriching the permanent collection of the MAXXI Museum, a point of reference at international level and for the cultural life of the Eternal City. This prize represents an important commitment as supporting young artists means investing in a future of ideas, talent and passion.”
THE EXHIBITION
Housed in the museum’s Gallery 4, the exhibition is mounted so that it is fluid and immersive, leading to the discovery of the finalists' unpublished or recently produced works and presenting the multiple sources of their inspiration.
The exhibition opens with Invernomuto (Simone Bertuzzi, Piacenza, 1983 and Simone Trabucchi, Piacenza, 1982, living in Milan) selected for their “research into global, social and political issues filtered through an imagery influenced by both pop and sub-cultures which makes their work personal and sincere”.
The duo is presenting a new work at MAXXI, a complex installation composed of a film, a sound installation, a sculpture and a perfume, in that blend of diverse idioms that characterises their artistic research. An environment shrouded in half-light has as its focal point a large shaped screen on which is projected a short film, Calendola: SUROS, in a continuous loop. Images with an antique flavour, such as an elephant that appears to evoke the legend of Hannibal, alternate on the screen with other images taken on the beach at Sabaudia, where a group of three zombie-like figures are walking. These surreal images act as a backdrop to an audio track with high and low frequency sounds and a fragrance of an eastern flavour diffused in the air. The installation is completed with the sculpture ZOa, realised by applying plastic material to an original 1990 work by Mimmo Rotella entitled, Replicante. The installation, juxtaposing historical and contemporary elements, evokes a reflection on the diverse speeds of history and the colonial heritage of the western world.
The exhibition continues with Diego Marcon (Busto Arsizio, 1985, lives in Milan) chosen “for having taken an original and poetic approach to audio-visual experimentation and the use of cinematic genres and for his critical rereading of historical sites”. Diego Marcon is presenting a new work, Ludwig, a video projected on the entire wall that employs the CGI (computer-generated imagery) technology used in computer graphics for the rendering of digital special effects in film, television, advertising, video game simulations and all graphics applications. Ludwig presents us with the image of a child lighting a match in a suspended space that we then discover to be that of a ship at the mercy of a storm. As the match burns, the child sings a song with verses written by the artist that touch on themes related to the desperation and fatigue of existence. The match goes out, the music stops and then everything starts again in a loop. The music was composed by Federico Chiari and the work was performer by the Coro di Voci Bianche, Accademia Teatro alla Scala in Milan. This work, like others in his oeuvre, explores experimentation into the image and the evocative power of that which is not immediately visible.
The exhibition closes with Talia Chetrit (Washington D.C. 1982, lives in New York), chosen for “her ability to reinvent the use of photography, mixing past and present languages in her interpretation of relationships between the body, the gaze and identity”. Talia Chetrit is presenting the project Amateur, a body of over 20 photographs from her recent artistic output, together with images from her personal archive and a video. Exploring themes such as the spontaneity of the subject in front of the camera and the confine between the public and private spheres, Chetrit is frequently the protagonist in her own photos, as are her partner, her friends and her relations in a story that explores the mysteries of the confines of the body, intimacy, adolescence and sexuality. An image of her parents on the beach alternates with very intimate portraits and self-portraits, at times extremely explicit and erotic, shots in which she uses her own body to undermine the conventions of the self-portrait and its mechanisms of control. Chetrit make use of complex theatricality to describe the relationship between the subject and the viewer, as well as to explore the boundaries of vulnerability and exposure.
The MAXXI BVLGARI Prize is an important project that supports and promotes young artists. It represents the continuation and the evolution of the Premio MAXXI which has provided the founding nucleus of the museum’s collection and has served as a launchpad for many young artists, such as Yuri Ancarani, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Vanessa Beecroft, Lara Favaretto, Nico Vascellari, Francesco Vezzoli, among many others. Thanks to the extraordinary partnership with Bvlgari, the prize is today being renewed; it is growing and expanding its horizons with the objective of promoting, not only Italian artists, but also those of different nationalities who have over the last two years produced a new project in Italy within the public or private spheres.
