Young art, new media and a changing artistic ecosystem will be at the center of the international dialogue promoted by Visiting Curator at ArtVerona 2023
The fair comes back with a new Visiting Curator project – a dialogue between national and international art
Verona’s annual appointment with contemporary art ArtVerona is ready to kick off its eighteenth edition. In program for 13 to 15 October 2023 at Veronafiere, ArtVerona will feature for the second year the Visiting Curator project. This consists in an attempt to build a bridge between Italian contemporary art and the international art scene by inviting directors and curators of international museums and institutions to discover the local artists and galleries at the fair.
For two days the foreign curators have the possibility to wander through the booths, first guided by the fair’s staff, then on their own. Thus, they are free to explore the artworks they like the most, get to know the artists and discuss any shared future projects.
Visiting Curator is curated by Italian art critic and independent curator Maria Chiara Valacchi and is intended as a «resource and support for young Italian artists, to help them get their art known abroad and do networking on an international level. But it is also an extra opportunity for the galleries that exhibit at ArtVerona to dialogue with curators they may not have the chance to reach otherwise».
ArtVerona, a circular artistic system: a platform for exchange among artists, galleries, collectors, and museums
Visiting Curator summarizes the fair’s philosophy of sharing art and building synergies between people, organizations, and countries through contemporary art. This concept has always been executive director Stefano Raimondi’sleading inspiration and is also Maria Chiara Valacchi’s mission: «Visiting Curator was born from a discussion with Stefano Raimondi. The fair is not just a commercial resource for collectors, but also a platform to enrich and support young Italian art. Thus, we decided to invite every year a group of international curators to be with us for two days. They can visit the booths, get to know the Italian participants, and are also actively involved in the fair as judges for our awards».
ArtVerona poses itself as a circular artistic system. Through investments and ongoing activities, it aims at involving new resources and types of audience and becoming a physical platform for exchange among artists, galleries, collectors, entrepreneurs, and museums. This year the fair adopts a new graphic format, which derives inspiration from cartography. It imagines new worlds and redesigns places of the spirit in abstract shapes and bright colors in order to encourage sharing cultural spaces. Visitors are invited to explore, discover, travel.
The launch of Visiting Curator in 2022: a search for art institutions
Project Visiting Curator was first launched in 2022, when Stefano Raimondi and Maria Chiara Valacchi opted for «more of an institutional choice. We invited curators from international museums and foundations, professionals with a particular knowledge of institutions, who could be interested in Italian creativity and give it an institutional visibility». Guests of the 2022 edition were Chrissie Iles, Nadim Samman, Michal Novotný and Christian Malycha.
ArtVerona, an international art fair for contemporary art: the involved curators
Chrissie Iles is a British-American curator, critic, and art historian. She is the Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and is specialized in time-based media.
Nadim Samman is a curator, art historian and writer now based in Germany. He is currently Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.
Michal Novotný is a Czech art curator, critic and writer. He is the Director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art at National Gallery Prague and teaches painting at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. He is renowned for his research on the question of central-eastern Europe identity.
Christian Malycha is a German art historian, curator, and member of the executive board of Kerber Artbook Publishers. He is curatorial director of the Friedrichs Foundation (Bonn, Weidingen) and the head of the André Butzer Archive (Altadena, Rangsdorf).
Visiting Curator at ArtVerona 2023 – An emerging art fair
For the 2023 edition of Visiting Curator Maria Chiara Valacchi and her team searched again for known names of the international art curatorial panorama but decided to focus especially on young art and creativity: «We chose a series of curators involved in fields of study and research related to young contemporary creativity». This year guests are Oriol Fontdevila, Matt Williams, and Pau Waelder.
Oriol Fontdevila is a Catalan curator, writer, and researcher, who focuses on art practices and education. He was curator of Catalonia’s presentation in the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and has been a guest professor at various master’s degrees and study programs. He is currently assistant professor in EINA Art and Design University in Barcelona.
Matt Williams is a British curator and researcher, who has worked both independently and with public institutions in the UK and abroad. He is currently Curator of Public Programme at Camden Arts Centre in London and curatorial advisor to Thirty Three Thirty Three, a non-profit organization seeking to engage globally with the rapidly changing cultural, social and material conditions of contemporary sound-based practices. He is also co-founder of Novel, an itinerant curatorial and publishing platform that works as a commissioning agency for artists writing, both texts and poetry.
Pau Waelder and the advent of the digital art
Pau Waelder is a Catalan curator, writer and researcher specialized in digital media. He is currently senior curator at Niio, an art streaming service that turns screens into digital art canvases. He teaches in postgraduate courses in schools and universities and is also editor and advisor at DAM Digital Art Museum, an online resource for the history and practice of digital art. DAM includes artworks, biographies, and texts of digital artists from the 1960s to the 2020s, as well as chronologies of events and technology milestones of the last six decades.
In his research Waelder explores the different aspects of the interaction between art, technology, and society, alongside the relationship between digital art and the art market: «Digital art is a current issue at the moment, since many young artists are approaching this new artistic language. By involving a curator specialized in digital media we want to help artists and galleries at ArtVerona explore this new type of art. It makes use of impalpable supports, but it does exist, and entire museums are being dedicated to it».
Display Prize: the involvement of curators in the fair – getting to know Italian artists at ArtVerona
The international curators that take part in the Visiting Curator project are not only invited to visiting the fair, but also to play an active role in it: «We are not satisfied with curators who just want to take a look at the booths, we search for people who are interested in really getting to know Italian contemporary artists. Professionals who believe in our project and are ready to embrace it».
This year the visiting curators are actively involved as judges in the Display Prize, one of the fair’s awards. The prize highlights three galleries which not only present works and artists of high quality but are also capable of designing innovative set-ups for their own exhibition spaces in the Exhibition Centre. Two galleries are chosen from the two pavilions of the main sector and one from the special sections. The winners will have a discount on the inscription fee to the fair.
The transformations of the contemporary world: experimental art at ArtVerona 2023
Visiting Curator’s international guests are invited to dive into the ecosystem of the fair. This year the international curators are welcomed in an artistic ecosystem that portrays a renovated present. The contemporary world is undergoing a series of transformations under many aspects, which are involving the daily, individual, and collective living. ArtVerona inquiries how such transformations affect the art world, focusing on the Italian system and trying to put it in dialogue with the international art panorama.
The 2023 fair includes a main sector plus three special sections: Innova, Introduction and Curated by.
Innova is dedicated to emerging and experimental galleries, which exhibit the research on contemporary languages in the form of either a solo or a small group show.
Introduction is curated by Hannah Eckstein, director of the Grässlin Collection in St. Georgen and artistic director of the Kunstverein Friedrichshafen. It features six young foreign galleries picked by renown art galleries that have witnessed their birth and supported their professional growth, thereby demonstrating the intergenerational transmission of knowledge in the art system.
Curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, in Curated by galleries work together with external curators to create their stand. This allows visitors to understand how the relationship between the professional curator, the gallery and the artist is developed.
Visiting Curator at ArtVerona 2023
Visiting Curator is a project curated by Maria Chiara Valacchi for ArtVerona, the annual contemporary art fair directed by Stefano Raimondi for Veronafiere. Launched in 2022, Visiting Curator invites every year a group of international curators to visit the exhibition and be involved in the fair awards as judges. Its aim is to support young Italian contemporary artists and galleries by help them becoming part of an international network.
For the 2023 edition of ArtVerona – in program for 13-15 October – Oriol Fontdevila, Matt Williams and Pau Waelder have been chosen as international guests. All characterized by a research interest in young creativity, they will be part of the jury of the Display Prize, an award for the most innovative exhibition spaces at the fair.
