Contemporaneamente, Domodossola - Domus

Contemporaneamente, Domodossola

Sometimes initiatives that promote art originate from outside the circuits of big cities and famous galleries. There was a time when to become acquainted with contemporary art one had to go to Naples and frequent Lucio Amelio’s gallery, where one ran the risk of running into Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg or Joseph Beuys, who was first brought to Italy by Amelio.

Sometimes initiatives that promote art originate from outside the circuits of big cities and famous galleries. There was a time when to become acquainted with contemporary art one had to go to Naples and frequent Lucio Amelio’s gallery, where one ran the risk of running into Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg or Joseph Beuys, who was first brought to Italy by Amelio.

The collector and artist friends of this unforgotten Neapolitan gallery manager are brought together in “Contemporaneamente”, an unusual exhibition conceived by a painter (Marcovinicio) and a critic (Michele Bonuomo). The show runs from the first week of May in Domodossola and has been organised by the cultural associations Ingremiomatris, Ecole des Italiens and Museo Immaginario, together with the Assessorato alla Cultura of the Domodossola City Council.

Housed in Palazzo Silva, a renaissance building constructed on 14th-century ruins, the exhibition offers an “undesigned setting” that attributes a “natural” position to each work in this antique context. The existing surroundings of the aristocratic palace, now property of the Domodossola City Council, have not been altered in any way (furniture, accessories, pictures and everything that makes up the original interior). In this “room of wonders”, Keith Haring’s figures “dialogue” with samurai armour, a drawing by Jean Michel Basquiat with a ceramic basin, a vase by Mimmo Paladino with antique furnishings, a drawing by Alighiero Boetti with stone engravings.

“The idea of keeping past and present, local visions and international languages on the same temporal plane,” writes Michele Bonuomo in the catalogue (coordinated by Massimo Fiumanò), “removes chronological limits and transforms fragments of the past into ready-mades of the present... The exhibition sets up a game of mirrors that uninterruptedly multiplies the images and in these dynamic reflections the works take on unexpected sensations and meanings.” The common thread between the exhibited works is, however, the figure of Lucio Amelio, whose collection supplied many of the pieces on show.

The collectors who have lent almost 40 pieces have given credit to the enthusiasm of the curators, in particular to Michele Bonuomo, who was a friend and advisor of Amelio, but also to Marcovinicio, whose intuition lies behind “Ecole des Italiens”, a happening that has been going on for the last three years in a bar in the main square of Domodossola: every couple of weeks, on Tuesdays, Caffè Bertani accommodates an artwork for just two hours (a painting, photograph, drawing, etc.), lent free of charge for passers-by to view or for whoever arranges to meet there to discuss art.

Maria Cristina Tommasini


http://www.ingremiomatris.com

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