Museum-hotel Atelier sul Mare

In Sicily, following the Tyrrhenian coast that connects Palermo to Messina, you would certainly not expect to see, on a pebbled beach, a blue sculpture like an enormous window framing the horizon (Monument for a dead poet by Tano Festa). You cannot avoid asking yourself 'what is it?' Modern art certainly wants to stimulate curiosity and the minds in search of a 'meaning'. In this sense, the Atelier sul Mare is not a relaxing hotel! Pictures, sculptures, installations and decorated ceramics are everywhere, even in the bedrooms, in an original match between an art gallery and a public structure that has few equals in the world.

Opened in 1991, thanks to the initiative of Antonio Presti, an eccentric Sicilian philanthropist, author of the open air museum Fiumara d'Arte (of which the sculpture on the beach of Villa Margi by Tano Festa is part), this museum-hotel of contemporary art "comes alive" in the presence of those living there. It is a unique experience, one which provides an opportunity to live art in a form which is different from simple visual enjoyment and to be an integral part of it.

Atelier sul mare is set on the beach of Castel di Tusa, a small maritime village. It proposes itself as an exclusive contemporary art centre where the guest-visitor will have a direct relationship and contact with art. Antonio Presti has fully revolutionized the traditional function of a hotel room, thereby bestowing it a brand new dimension: "the dream of art".

The room itself becomes a work of art, is re-shaped by artists in form, colors, materials. For the very first time, the artist puts his work of art at the guest's disposal ready for emotions and meditations: "the journey of spirit". Only after entering and living in a room, the work of art will be fulfilled. The guest presence and use of the room will be a vital, essential element. Here, contrarily to other hotels, the tour doesn't start from the lobby to the outside, but along the corridors, in the rooms, the halls. For once the gap between work of art and users is cancelled: here art is not just for admiration, the guest use it, sleep in it, "live" in it.

Antonio Presti declares: ”I imagine the hypothetical guest to enter the Atelier sul mare, stop at reception, climb to his room with key in hand and lock the door behind him. From that moment the space becomes "his own", a living museum to enjoy. Not a hotel exhibiting works of art, but a place where anyone can live in a museum, a museum on a human scale. This is a unique experience”.

Today, twenty-five of the forty rooms have been created by contemporary artists of international fame. Each artist directed by Antonio Presti, planed the space according to his own tendencies and ideas. Some artists worked designing a sensorial environment, for example in Maurizio Mochetti’s Energia (Energy, 1992), a room whose night furniture glows red;

Pepi Morgia’s La stanza della luce (The room of light, 2011), where at night bright writing appear;

Sislej Xhafa’s Hammam (2007), where two different rooms have the common space of a Turkish bath, sharing the experience of well-being;

La torre di Sigismondo (Sigismondo’s tower, 1993) by Raoul Ruiz, where the bed is located at the bottom of a tower with an opening roof, that by night lets the light of the stars enter;

Il nido (The nest, 1991) by Paolo Icaro, an enveloping bed in the centre of the room is the point of view of a perspective towards the sea.

Some other artist use his specific sign: Mario Ceroli’s La bocca della verità (The mouth of the truth, 1990), where the recognizable sign of the sculptor, through furniture that is real sculpture, reinterprets the famous Roman monument of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome;

or as Vincenzo Consolo, together with Ute Pyka and Umberto Leone, who in Lunaria – Contrada senza nome (Lunaria – a no name place, 2007), lean on the walls sheets of olive trunks that look almost like pages of a great book or huge wings of butterfly, while in the center of the room a round white bed looks like the moon falling from heaven to earth;

or Piero Dorazio and Graziano Maini’s La stanza della pittura (The painting room, 1996), filled with their graphic signs;

or Agostino Ferrari and Renato Curcio, in Sogni fra segni (Dreams among signs, 1994), where a giant parchment wraps the bed;

Mimmo Cuticchio, famous Sicilian puppeteer, who interprets his La stanza dell’opra (The room of the puppetry show, 2010) as a backstage of a theater of Sicilian puppets and the guests of the hotel, from the corridor outside the room can watch the staging;

Michele Canzoneri’s Linea d’ombra (Shadow line, 1992), proposes a boat-like environment, in which the light illuminates the bed that filters through the colored glasses created by the artist.

Other artists embrace a more ideological anc conceptual aspect of art: Tobia Ercolino’s Doppio sogno (Double dream, 2009), with metaphysical elements that confuse;

Antonio Presti, Agnese Purgatorio, Danielle Mitterand and Cristina Bertelli in Stanza dei Portatori d’acqua (Water carriers, 2006) create two sequential environments that suggest the theme of dryness, in which a puddle of water and a suffused candle light are the only furnishings;

on a similar poetic is based Hidetoshi Nagasawa’s Mistero per la luna (Mistery for the moon, 1991), where the golden foil covering the room reflects the light entering the window (with different effects by night or day), or the flickering lampa of a candle;

Fabrizio Plessi’s La stanza del mare negato (The room by the denied sea, 1992) offers a sea-sight only through some monitors, before the guest finds the real window, hidden behind one of the many false doors;

Terra e fuoco (Earth and fire, 1996) by Luigi Mainolfi is a room entirely covered by earthenware shards, while the bed is a copper table suspended in the center.

Mauro Stacciol in Trinacria (1993) designs an oppressive environment, with red and black triangle (the shape of Sicily, whichi also affects the bed;

in I’m boarding on a paper boat (1993), by Maria Lai, a split stone in the center of the room symbolizes the opposition between heaven and earth;

The room of the essential ritual by Annalisa Furnari (2002) is a sensorial journey toward the human rituals;

Storm by Paolo Conte (1997) where everything is translated in a romantic desire of freedom;

I’m the blue by Ottavio Cappellani and Antonio Presti (2014), a room dedicated to time and space.

Finally, the most conceptual and ideological room, is the one created by Antonio Presti himself, La stanza del profeta – Omaggio a Pasolini (The room of prophet-homage to Pasolini, 1995), a room which can be entered only by overturning a door and passing over the verses of the poet/writer/director Pier Paolo Pasolini, symbol of the Italian intellectual protest of the 60s and 70s. The room is covered with mud and straw, the guest enters between Arabic signs written to the walls, while the bedside is situated on the sand of the beach where the body of the murdered poet was found.