Since 2011, Albumarte realizes ‘Anteprima’, a series of artist-in-residence itinerant programmes, video-screenings and talks, that has involved over time Italian Cultural Institutes, Foundations and international museum, curators and artists, including Flavio Favelli, Margherita Moscardini, Adrian Paci, Marinella Senatore, Elisabetta Benassi, Suat Öğüt, Ferhat Özgür, Neriman Polat, Anna Franceschini and Gianni Politi. On October 2013, the project Istanbul City Hills - On the Natural History of Dispersion and States of Aggregation created by Margherita Moscardini for the residency Anteprima# 2 in Istanbul was acquired by the MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome, entering the permanent collection of the Museum. On October 11th 2014, during AMACI Day, was then presented at MAXXI the book of the project, titled as the exhibition: a choral story of the artist's experience, of the people who helped her, the people she met, and of a group of Turkish intellectuals. The book was published in English by Libria Edizioni. From October 2015 to March 2016, Moscardini's work was exhibited in the display of the Museum collection. In May 2015, the book-catalog "Flavio Favelli Grape Juice" (Maretti Editore) was published. The book recounts the experience of the artist's during the residency Anteprima# 3 in Istanbul with AlbumArte, and contains contributions by Cristina Cobianchi, Flavio Favelli, Cristiana Perrella, and Vittorio Urbani. The book was presented at the MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome on June 18th, 2015. The resulting work of the residency entered the collection of Yapı Kredi Cultural Activities Arts and Publishing, one of the most authoritative in Turkey.
Christine Rebet | Meltingsun
The curator can be located elsewhere, thanks to the artist’s specific skills and the modalities that are used for transmitting images. From this idea was born "Duplex", an experimental marathon of studio visits hors les murs made by artists outside the walls of their own studios. This experiment was carried out for the first time by the two curators Francesco Urbano and Francesco Ragazzi (who together go under the name ofFrancesco Urbano Ragazzi) in February and March 2014, during their period of residence in Paris as a part of the Cité Internationale des Arts program, supported by the Mairie de Paris (Paris City Hall). In September 2014, the project continued in Rome, where it was produced by AlbumArte and co-curated by its Artistic Director Maria Rosa Sossai as a part of the cultural exchange programme Tandem Paris-Rome, promoted by the Institut Français in Rome. Rebet developed the discourse began in Paris with the two curators regarding the idea of the “spatialization” of the drawing. In fact this French artist’s work mainly concerns the drawing as a means for reading and interpreting the repressed traumatic forms of history, which are then transformed into installations, sculptures, animations and performances. The culmination of the research process and the creative exchange was the final exhibition Meltingsun at AlbumArte (October 7th – December 7th , 2014) a blazing but artificial sun that came to life in a series of drawings, and evolved into a monumental and sculptural object.
Meltingsun, exhibition view (2014) by Christine RebetAlbumArte
The exhibition presents the artist studio conceived as an anomalous production line consisting of sketches, casts, metal machines, and three-dimensional volumes.
In which the traces of a rather unlikely collection of jewels can be seen. These body decorations proliferate and re-emerge, stripped of their original sensational shine and yet somehow transfigured.
As with the prototypes and models of a fashion collection, the titles of Rebet’s works resonate in the spaces of AlbumArte with attractively gracious irony, evoking fantasies that are by turns exotic, colonial, industrial and military, while artfully combining fashion with the imitation of nature.
Flavio Favelli, Gianni Politi | Residenze #1
"Residenza #1" inaugurated the cycle “Residenze”. The project aims to reflect around the theme of artist residency, artworks exclusively produced during international artist-in-residence programs conducted abroad and which will be exposed in Italy for the first time. The exhibition "Residenze #1" (Ooctober 11th - Nnovembre 26th, 2016) showed the works that Flavio Favelli and Gianni Politi realized during their artist residencies abroad, both organized by AlbumArte respectively in Istanbul and Prague respectively. The show aimed at, highlighting how the practice of residency may deeply influence how the artist works – specifically, the way of working of a young artist and of a more experienced one – resulting in the creation of artworks which are quite distant from the artist’s style.The two residencies, realized by AlbumArte in 2014 with the patronage of the Italian Embassy in Turkey, the Italian Institutes of Culture in Istanbul and Prague, the Yapı Kredi Cultural Activities Arts and Publishing and the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Turkey, ended with two personal exhibitions: Flavio Favelli ‘s Grape Juice, curated by Vittorio Urbani, at the Galata Rum Okulu (the Galata Greek School) in Istanbul and "Gianni Politi giovane pittore romano", curated by Paola Ugolini, at the Italian Institute of Culture of Prague. "Residenze #1", with the next exhibitions of this project, was part of the Fuori Quadriennale programme - 16th Art Quadriennale Altri tempi, altri miti (Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, October 13th, 2016 – January 8th, 2017).
Residenze #1, exhibition view (2016) by Flavio Favelli and Gianni PolitiAlbumArte
Being open to new and different experiences, travelling to discover new forms and new modes of practice, have always been part of the lives of artists.
Residenze #1, exhibition view (2016) by Flavio Favelli and Gianni PolitiAlbumArte
Althought not keen on leaving his creative boundaries, nor particularly fond of Istanbul, for six weeks Favelli was artist-in-residence at the Italian Embassy.
The enlarged details of Turkish banknotes becomes the poignant symbol of a society divided between the recent international success and the political and social difficulties.
Left: Esistono due sole cose importanti per me (soulmate). Right: Elite mechanism (Roma in Prague) (2016) by Gianni PolitiAlbumArte
During a month-long residency at the Italian Institute of Culture of Prague, Politi has produced works inspired by the seventeenth-century architectural monumentality of the charming baroque city.
From the dense and thick painting, delicate golden brushstrokes emerge, highlighting parts of the surface depending on the trajectory of the light and giving the canvas more three-dimensional appearance.
Sabrina Casadei | Residenze #2 A Thousand Miles Away
Residenze #2 A thousand Miles Away (Dicember 7th, 2016- January 31st, 2017), curated by Paola Ugolini, presented the paintings realized by Sabrina , Casadei (Rome, 1985) in the early 2016, during her stay at the Nordic Artists’s Centre Dale, one of the most important artist-in-residence program in Europe, founded by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and located in Dale, a village in the Fjaler municipality, along the west coast of Norway.While Favelli and Politi’s exhibition Residenze #1 put an accent on the influence of the residency practice on the way of working of the two artists – who have indeed produced pieces that are very different from the rest of their work - Residenze #2 offers a completely different subject for reflection; in the landscapes and paintings of her host country, Norway, the young artist have found a clear and definite confirmation of the reasons for her way of working.
Dalsoyna # 2 (2016) by Sabrina CasadeiAlbumArte
At Dale, in Norway, Casadei has found landscapes and colors she had always kept in her unconscious without ever seeing them, thus finally recognizing what she has always been painting.
The colors of her works and the movement of her brush strokes found their perfect location in the Norwegian Fjords landscape.
Residenze #2 A Thousand Miles Away, exhibition view (2016) by Sabrina CasadeiAlbumArte
Juan Zamora | Residenze #3 ORA (bajo al cielo de la boca)
Spanish artist Juan Zamora (Madrid, 1982) opens his first solo exhibition in Italy, at AlbumArte (Rome). Zamora has been artist-in-residence at the Real Academia de España en Roma in 2016. He won the prestigious Prize Fundación Princesa de Girona (FPdGi) de Artes y Letras in 2017 and he has also been selected for an artist residency at Residency Unlimited (New York) for 2018. His exhibition in Rome was curated by Paola Ugolini and it was the third appointment of the AlbumArte | Residenze project. The central body of the exhibition (November 24th, 2017 – January 20th, 2018) is a series of work developed between 2014 and 2016 during the artist’s residency at the Nirox Foundation of Johannesburg (South Africa), located in a place called ‘The Cradle of Humankind’, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, where some of the oldest hominid fossils were found and the first form of language was born. After a show at the Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación in Altamira in 2016, some works have been adapted as site-specific and others created specifically for the spaces of AlbumArte. These include a series of drawings – some of which were unpublished – sculptures and video-installations, that create a mystical relation between the origin of humans’ oral language and the natural settings of its birth. The exhibition project ORA (bajo al cielo de la boca) has been developed thanks to the support of Nirox Foundation of Johannesburg, in collaboration with The Spanish Embassy of Pretoria.
Cielo de la boca, River, Cave, Cielo (2017) by Juan ZamoraAlbumArte
Zamora’s works contain a constant dialogue between visual poetry and scientific investigation. He covers more complex issues which are intimately linked to Human origin and essence, as well as to nature and its transformations.
Standing up between the sun and a megalith (2017) by Juan ZamoraAlbumArte
Text: Cristina Cobianchi, Alice Leone and excerpts from curatorial texts
Translation: Carolina Gatti, Fabiola Fiocco
Photo: Mokhtar Azizi (Flavio Favelli, The Black Tulip, 2014), Sebastiano Luciano
Video: Matteo Pisapia
Coordination: Fabiola Fiocco, Alice Leone
Project management: Cristina Cobianchi
We sincerely thank all the people who contributed to the realization of this path and those who collaborated in the realization of our artist residency projects abroad: artists, curators, press offices, Italian and foreign institutions, coordinators, executive secretariats, communication offices, foundations, graphic designers, publishers, catalog authors, and sponsors.
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