Relations of Care at Artissima 2023 aims to combine the concept of care through the concepts of listening and proximity: words that are part of the vision of Cripta747
From November 3 to 5, Artissima returns to the spaces of the Oval Lingotto Fiere in Turin, for its 30th anniversary. The fair, founded in 1994 and directed for the second consecutive year by Luigi Fassi, will host one hundred eighty-one galleries from thirty-three countries.
As Luigi Fassi himself explains «The 30th iteration of Artissima in Turin reflects the fair’s ability to develop a vision based on three decades of activity to continue to look into the future, relying on the power of the fair’s Italian and international network».
Relations of Care – responsibility towards nature at Artissima 2023
This 2023 edition is dedicated to the theme Relations of Care, a concept that stems from a recent publication by the Brazilian anthropologist and professor at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Renzo Taddei, who will also be a guest speaker during the days of the fair.
Taddei draws inspiration from the model of Amazonian communities to trace a new perspective on the relationship with reality and its crises, seeking care and a sense of responsibility towards nature and its species as the goal of knowledge.
As Fassi also states «Taking inspiration from the words of Renzo Taddei today we need to accelerate the growth of our imagination, to create more authentic forms of comprehension of reality. In this context, it is art that can play the role of interpreting the means of arriving at a dimension of care, to guide and enlighten our actions and awareness, assigning value to the multiplicity of everything that takes part in our world».
This theory is also the inspiration for the coordinated image of Artissima 2023 curated by the graphic design studio FIONDA, which aims at representing small ecosystems in which organisms, cooperating with each other, create new balances.
Artissima Turin, the 30th edition: participant galleries and art sections
Artissima this year presents seven sections, four of which are selected by a board of experts and three entrusted to curators from the international art scene.
The committee of experts identifies galleries for the Main Section, emerging galleries for the New Entries selection, monographic and dialogic exhibition projects for the Monologue/Dialogue part, and galleries specializing in artist editions , bookstores, project spaces and nonprofit areas for the Art Spaces & Editions section.
The fair is also the only one in Italy with a section entirely dedicated to Drawings, which this year is curated by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, curator of the Ramo Collection in Milan. This is flanked by Present Future, entirely focused on emerging artists, and curated by Saim Demircan and Maurin Dietrich, and Back to the Future by Defne Ayas and Francesco Manacorda for monographic projects.
Artissima Turin, the locations
Several special projects will also animate the venue of the Turin Oval, such as, Artissima Junior, which will entertain the youngest visitors, involving them in the creation of a collective artwork under the guidance of the artist Eugenio Tibaldi, or the Beyond Production Symposium, realized in collaboration with Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, which will be hosted in the spaces of the OGR Torino.
In addition, visitors can delve into the works and themes of the fair through the AudioGuide podcast and Artissima Digital content available on artissima.art and Artissima Voice Over.
The New Entries Bar for Identity project, curated by Cript747 is also part of this intense program of initiatives with the aim of not only highlighting emerging galleries, but also facilitating networking and the creation of synergies among fair participants.
The IDENTITY project – emerging galleries at Artissima international art fair
This year, to celebrate Artissima’s 30th anniversary, IDENTITY, a three-year project created with the support of Fondazione Compagnia San Paolo – the fair’s main sponsor – was launched with the purpose of enhancing the distinctive features that have brought Artissima to its current position in the field of contemporary art since 1994.
This year’s project involves the New Entries section to valorize emerging galleries participating in the fair for the first time through an economic fund, the IDENTITY Fund for New Entries, for three galleries in the section, and the creation of an area, the New Entries Bar by Cripta747, in which curators, galleries, artists and visitors can interact, creating synergies.
Cripta747 visual art organization curates the New Entries Bar art Artissima
Cripta747 is a not-for-profit visual art organization founded in 2008 in Turin by Elisa Troiano, director, Alexandro Tripodi and Renato Leotta, board members.
The name Cripta747 was inspired by its first venue initially located in a crypt right in the spaces of Galleria Umberto I in Porta Palazzo.
In 2013 the organization then moved inside Franco Noero Gallery, focusing on artistic research through residency and fellowship projects aimed at supporting international mobility along with the Studio program more focused on production.
As Alexandro Tripodi himself says «we were born in 2008 and started looking for a space where we could follow up on our projects and ideas. The city of Turin in 2008 was living the post-Olympics period, and this was the beginning of a change that the city was experiencing».
Elisa Troiano adds «after Covid, we felt like abandoning the study and the production because it no longer reflected either our needs or those of the area. Now in Turin there are many shared studies that did not exist at that time. So, we shifted our focus to research, abandoning production. By reducing our space, we have activated many more collaborations. One of the post-Covid reflections was to circulate existing productions from an ecological perspective: how much of what we do can be taken around or how much can be integrated by other specificities of this territory or by others who can co-design with us».
Cripta747, a residency program
Alexandro continues, «The transition was quite natural. The first exhibitions were always in close relationship with the artist – we would invite an artist to Turin with the perspective of a relationship of proximity. Then, we would do research and productions together to present them to the public».
«What has changed between the exhibition programming and the studio and residency part is the absence of a final exhibition in favor of an open studio, so also a time to engage the public in an easier way, to get them into the artist’s research, to see what the materials are, the basis of the research and so on. This also allowed to create a small community of people around Cripta – active as artists, curators, researchers as well as audience».
Among the objectives of the residency program is to strengthen the relationship with the artist by going to lengthen the moment from the conception to the production of the work, as well as the desire to concretely support artists working on the Italian territory.
Elisa adds «this then leads to the creation of a network. Now we are still collaborating with Mattia Cappelletti who is the curator who won the residency in 2021 with whom we are creating a program of musical performances that arise precisely from his research and his course of study; we are also continuing to work with Adele Dipasquale, from last year’s residency, with whom we produced a video following a long workshop in collaboration with a local primary school, and we are working with Eleonora Luccarini who is in residency right now and who will open a studio at the same time as Artissima».
Cripta747 at Artissima – supporting the contemporary art scene: The New Entries Bar for networking
Cripta747 has been commissioned to curate for Artissima 2023 the special project of the New Entries section as part of IDENTITY, a three-year program that, starting this year, aims to enhance the strategies that have allowed the fair to consolidate its position in the contemporary art scene.
As already anticipated, IDENTITY this year focuses on the seventeen emerging galleries chosen by the selection committee for the New Entries section. This is to emphasize Artissima’s commitment to scouting and providing support to young realities. In fact, the galleries admitted participating in this category can have a maximum of five years of activity.
The New Entries Bar project was born out of IDENTITY’s encounter with both the theme of the Relations of Care fair and the philosophy of Cripta747: a real bar in a public space, where – just like in a square – artists, gallerists and visitors, professionals and non-professionals, can interact with dialogue, creating new synergies and relationships, just as Taddei theorizes in his Relations of Care.
The project, as Cripta747 states «Takes its cue from Ray Oldenburg’s theories on the third place: as opposed to the first place (the home) and the second place (the workplace), the third place is the public space, a neutral area where people can meet, congregate, and interact, simply for the pleasure of doing so».
«So, we thought, what better way to showcase these artists and this community than to bring them into the public square and put the dialogue and discussion in a situation that is relaxed compared to what might be considered a classic workspace and exhibition space?» Elisa adds.
Seventeen artworks that ‘populate a square’: the selection by Cripta747
In addition to an exhibition of one work by each artist selected by Cripta747 for each gallery in the section (for a total of seventeen works), The New Entries Bar will also include a program of talks, screenings, performances, and lectures each day from 5 to 7 p.m. made with the contribution of the artists themselves.
As Elisa explains, «the idea is to get beyond the work. In some cases, artists have site projects or parts of research that are not always shown or do not always enter the work as the final object. For example, we were talking with Nicola Degiorgis, who has a publishing house, which helps to pursue his research and work, or with James Fuller, who is a sculptor, but will actually present a reading: the meaning is to bring to the public aspects that are related to the research behind the work».
Also, during the days of the fair, the approach to the seventeen works in the New Entries Bar will be facilitated by the distribution of a magazine. As Alexandro says «The magazine takes the idea of the journal in a playful way and then suggests cues for the reader to look at to reread the works; thus, it compares different points of view that take their cues from current events, research, or social surveys. The desire is to create another key to interpretation. Playing with this idea of square, we felt that the language of the newspaper was the most suitable to explain the seventeen works that populate the exhibition».
Cripta747 and The Relations of Care – Artissima 30th anniversary: listening to artists and communities
The project of The New Entries Bar assimilates in its concept and design the theme of Relations of Care to which the 30th edition of Artissima is dedicated, aiming to combine the concept of care through the words listening and proximity, words that are also part of the vision and modus operandi of Cripta747.
As Elisa Troiano herself says «At the basis of the relationships of care is the question of listening to the project, to the city and to the community of artists acting in this territory – a listening that perhaps can change the direction of the project. We try to maintain the relationship with artists for as long as possible – also to reduce the frenzy of production of works typical of the market – and to shorten the distance with the public. This is what we mean with the concepts of ‘listening’ and ‘proximity’».
CRIPTA747
Cripta747 is a nonprofit visual art organization founded in 2008 in Turin by Elisa Troiano, director, Alexandro Tripodi and Renato Leotta, board members.
