big game at turin totoetotikui
I aiora We are living a certain era of aesthetics as a new Europe unfolds before our eyes. Art and design now go hand in hand with the world of publicity. Many cities are now looking to art. Bilbo and the Guggenheim Museum and Donostia and the Kursaal are just two examples of this new tendency. Turin is amongst those worthy of mention thanks to its policy of backing young artists and creating space for them. At last someone in Old Europe has decided to make room for the young once and for all. They’ve discovered that we young people are not only capable of attracting money, but we are also able to breath new life into a city and spread its good name and fame both far and wide.
Turin is truly a beautiful city and if you stroll through its streets, you’ll see powerful old squares turned into stages with the locals decked out in quality costumes as if they were making some kind of super production. What you’d get if you mixed Quo Vadis and Pretty Woman.
Bienala, however, is not the result of some competition, it’s a celebration-exposition that has been carefully worked on. Quite a lot of artists with both public and private funding and under the watchful eye of artistic director Michelangelo Pistoletto have managed to create some really good infrastructure. You can see sculpture (both in and outdoors), painting, engineering, design, happenings, performance, dance, music, etc... in the city centre all month.
There are two Basque artists to be found on the list: Ainara Etxeberria Zubiaurre and Jose Garcia Carrera. Ainara’s contribution is a white panel with all the messages sent to her mobile phone in a year stuck on in different colours. It’s titled “Self-Portrait”.
Jose Garcia displayed his “Transtoday” project. This Asturian who studies at the Leioa Art College used three students of Aikido(David, Kikutxo and Juanpa), two skate boarders(Quique and Cesar) and three musicians(Borja, Jose and Kepa) for his piece. It took place in the open air in a street and brought together improvised music, aikido and a demonstration of skate boarding. The idea was to create an energetic and happening spectacle.
You can see work by artists from all over world interested in getting a foot in the door of the art market. They have used modern and traditional methods in their work. The use of screens deserves a mention. This common place auxiliary of a lot of displays really helps you to distinguish the work on show. This is important in an open air display of these characteristics where it can be quite difficult to sort out what is actually what. Noise is one of the stars of the show.
Just what we use art for is important to young artists. Some use art as an objective in itself (those that refer to art itself) and others use art as a means of expressing what they think and feel. A lot of local artists have made use of the occasion to highlight social and political protests. A painting of Carlo Giulianni, killed during protests in Genoa, and a banner condemning the Berlusconi Regime (legal action was seemingly threatened) are just two examples of this. This begs the question: Is the art market just using the aesthetics of dissidence to sell more?
I’d like to mention that concerns the above question. In the Piazza Castello there is a spectacular 10x20m pink panel. This beautiful, sweet and at the same time powerful pink panel covers the front of a castle. Well, one morning we awoke to find it covered in graffiti and posters. It’s beauty had been sullied, a heavenly body dragged roughly down to earth. We thought it was actually part of the display. Even though this type of behaviour is now accepted, this wasn’t the reason at all: it was, in fact, an act of protest against a high speed train, and a very artistic one too in my opinion.
Can we tell who uses who without turning this into some kind of game? The slogan chosen by Bienala answers the question nicely: “We need to talk. It’s a big social game”.
Turin is truly a beautiful city and if you stroll through its streets, you’ll see powerful old squares turned into stages with the locals decked out in quality costumes as if they were making some kind of super production. What you’d get if you mixed Quo Vadis and Pretty Woman.
Bienala, however, is not the result of some competition, it’s a celebration-exposition that has been carefully worked on. Quite a lot of artists with both public and private funding and under the watchful eye of artistic director Michelangelo Pistoletto have managed to create some really good infrastructure. You can see sculpture (both in and outdoors), painting, engineering, design, happenings, performance, dance, music, etc... in the city centre all month.
There are two Basque artists to be found on the list: Ainara Etxeberria Zubiaurre and Jose Garcia Carrera. Ainara’s contribution is a white panel with all the messages sent to her mobile phone in a year stuck on in different colours. It’s titled “Self-Portrait”.
Jose Garcia displayed his “Transtoday” project. This Asturian who studies at the Leioa Art College used three students of Aikido(David, Kikutxo and Juanpa), two skate boarders(Quique and Cesar) and three musicians(Borja, Jose and Kepa) for his piece. It took place in the open air in a street and brought together improvised music, aikido and a demonstration of skate boarding. The idea was to create an energetic and happening spectacle.
You can see work by artists from all over world interested in getting a foot in the door of the art market. They have used modern and traditional methods in their work. The use of screens deserves a mention. This common place auxiliary of a lot of displays really helps you to distinguish the work on show. This is important in an open air display of these characteristics where it can be quite difficult to sort out what is actually what. Noise is one of the stars of the show.
Just what we use art for is important to young artists. Some use art as an objective in itself (those that refer to art itself) and others use art as a means of expressing what they think and feel. A lot of local artists have made use of the occasion to highlight social and political protests. A painting of Carlo Giulianni, killed during protests in Genoa, and a banner condemning the Berlusconi Regime (legal action was seemingly threatened) are just two examples of this. This begs the question: Is the art market just using the aesthetics of dissidence to sell more?
I’d like to mention that concerns the above question. In the Piazza Castello there is a spectacular 10x20m pink panel. This beautiful, sweet and at the same time powerful pink panel covers the front of a castle. Well, one morning we awoke to find it covered in graffiti and posters. It’s beauty had been sullied, a heavenly body dragged roughly down to earth. We thought it was actually part of the display. Even though this type of behaviour is now accepted, this wasn’t the reason at all: it was, in fact, an act of protest against a high speed train, and a very artistic one too in my opinion.
Can we tell who uses who without turning this into some kind of game? The slogan chosen by Bienala answers the question nicely: “We need to talk. It’s a big social game”.
