06 Nov Artissima 2024 Receipts: of Flesh and Feet

Source Credit:  Content and images from Ocula Magazine.  Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/artissima-2024-receipts-flesh-feet-and-photography/

Directed by Luigi Fassi, the event gathered 189 galleries in Turin this year, up slightly from 181 in 2023.

Italian art fair Artissima concluded its 31st edition on Sunday night. The atmosphere was optimistic and convivial, in defiance of economic and political uncertainty. Sales this year were good, boosted by Fondazione Arte CRT, which acquired artworks worth €400,500 for distribution among the city’s main museums.

The fair’s theme this year was The Era of Daydreaming, a flow of thoughts and emotions connecting artists from different places and periods. Many works felt light both in material and form—like those in Disegni section, dedicated to drawings—but their subject matter had weight. In this sense, daydreaming can be seen as a tool for seeing things a different way and urging us to action.

Maurizio Camerani, Zona (1998). Monitors, audio-video programme, enamelled iron, steel cables. 210 x 210 x 70 cm. Courtesy the artist and Umberto Benappi.

Local gallery Umberto Benappi showed the work of Maurizio Camerani, an Italian video art pioneer who investigates the space between sign and sense. Zona (Area) (1998) is an assemblage of large enamelled iron boxes suspended from the ceiling that hides video projections in its inner faces. The footage of feet lightly stepping is dreamlike in its contrast with the heaviness of the structure. Among the other works the gallery showed were pieces by Wolfram Ullrich and Regine Schumann Gosla that sold for €10,000 and €11,000 respectively.

A standout work shown by Richard Saltoun Gallery (London, New York, Rome) was Giuseppe Penone‘s photo montage Svolgere la propria pelle (To Unroll One’s Skin) (1970), which intimately observes the body, dissecting it in extreme close ups. The gallery sold works by five artists (Bice Lazzari, Atelier dell’Errore, Greta Schoedl, Sandro Chia, and Antonietta Rafael Mafai) for prices from €2,500 to €40,000.

Giuseppe Penone, Svolgere la Propria Pelle [To Unravel One’s Own Skin] (1970/71) (detail). Seven zinc-plate photo-collages, each mounted on panels. Published by Galleria Multipli, Turin, Italy. Each panel: 69.5 x 107 cm. Courtesy the artist and Richard Saltoun Gallery London, Rome, New York.

Local photography gallery Guido Costa Projects presented a piece by Boris Mikhailov that also features a group of images, this time detailing the everyday lives of Ukrainians in the city of Kharkov. Here the desire to daydream is cruelly intruded upon by the realities of the Russian invasion.

Mor Charpentier (Paris, Bogotá) also addressed war with works by Rossella Biscotti, whose concrete and fabric sculptures were inspired by Cologne, which was bombed in 262 separate air raids during World War II. The impact of history on a place and its people is one of the artist’s core concerns. Biscotti’s presentation won the Tosetti Value Prize for outstanding photographic work that challenges our present.

Alexander Apóstol, Regimen (2018). Courtesy the artist and Mon Charpentier.

Another stunning piece at Mor Charpentier’s stand was Regimen: Dramatic Persona (2018) by Alexander Apóstol, a collective portrait of Venezuelan society after the Revolucion Bolivariana. It’s a series of black and white portraits of trans people shot during the 2017 riots demanding civil rights that depicts them as the people in power.

Liliana Maresca, Untitled. Imagen pública—Altas esferas (1993). Selenium gelatin silver print on Ilford fibre paper 33.5 x 22 cm. Courtesy Liliana Maresca Estate, Marcos López & Rolf Art, Buenos Aires. Photo: Marcos López.

In Back to the Future, the section dedicated to solo presentations by rediscovered artists, Rolf Art (Buenos Aires) presented works by Liliana Maresca (1951–1994). The Argentinian artist used her body as a means of expression and rebellion, photographing herself in front of printed posters of political figures and events to confront subjects including economic depression, the Aids epidemic, and the consequences of political corruption.

The artist was never fully recognized for her talent during her lifetime, but it seems things are beginning to change in the last few years. Three private European collections bought her pictures during the fair for €6,000 each.

Larry Stanton, Self-portrait (Undated). Mixed media on paper. 44 x 43 cm. Courtesy the Estate of Larry Stanton and APALAZZOGALLERY.

Apalazzogallery (Brescia) showcased works by Larry Stanton, an American artist who died aged 37 from Aids. His early death adds heaviness to his portraits of young men. The gallery also presented works by other artists including Nicolas Roggy, whose abstract wall piece sold to a private Italian collector for €10,000.

Ivana Bašić, Pneumatic Positions II: Blossoming (2023). Courtesy the artist and Albion Jeune.

In the New Entries section for emerging galleries, Albion Jeune (London) presents the work of Ivana Bašić, a Serbian artist whose paintings and sculptures of posthuman bodies, made using materials such as wax, glass, steel, alabaster, and oil paint, seem both organic and inorganic.

Radenko Milak, Descending a Staircase / Moma NY (2024). Watercolour on paper. 200 x 140 cm. Courtesy the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery.

In the Monologue/Dialogue section, reserved for emerging or experimental galleries presenting booths with works by just one or two artists, a highlight was Radenko Milak at Ani Molnár Gallery. Born in former Yugoslavia, his black and white paintings of our dystopian surroundings bridges the past and the present, drawing attention to the evolution of technology, surveillance, propaganda, and the military industrial complex.

At this year’s Artissima, daydreaming created space for fantasy without losing touch with reality. —[O]

Source Credit:  Content and images from Ocula Magazine.  Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/artissima-2024-receipts-flesh-feet-and-photography/