Flashback Art Fair 2024: the 12th edition of the fair in Turin

The Flashback Art Fair in Turin is preparing its 12th edition, occupying the spaces of Flashback Habitat, a complex located at Corso Giovanni Lanza 75, again this year from Oct. 31 to Nov. 4. This space, which covers 20,000 square meters, has been carved out of a historic villa and the pavilions of a former brephanage. Here, the large park at the foot of Turin’s hill is transformed into an embrace that welcomes visitors of all kinds, from gallery owners to simple enthusiasts.

The vision of Alessandro Bulgini, together with Stefania Poddighe and Ginevra Pucci, took the form of a desire to create a place that functions as a home for contemporary cultures. In this context, Flashback Art Fair wants to propose itself not only as an art fair, but as an experience of encounter and dialogue, in which the past, present and future are intertwined through the works on display and the people who observe them.

This year’s theme: “Equilibrium?”

For 2024, the title of Flashback Art Fair is “Equilibrium?” The theme invites us to reflect on a concept commonly associated with stability and harmony, but which in this edition is put in a critical light. The fair thus asks whether a balance is always just and desirable, or whether it hides repression and inequality, social, economic, geopolitical. The 2024 edition explores this tension through important selected works accompanied by talks and encounters. Flashback Art Fair aims not to give answers, but to open a space for dialogue, making visible the fragility of the very concept of balance.

An icon of this exploration is the work Italians no longer have work by artist Sandro Mele, which represents the fragility of the concept of balance in contemporary life, and which was chosen as the guiding image. The work invites the audience to consider the daily challenges and tensions that everyone experiences in their existence.

The works in the exhibition

The galleries featured at Flashback Art Fair offer a journey through the history of humanity and art, with prominent exhibitors such as Benappi Fine Art, Galleria Canesso, De Jonckheere, Carlo Orsi and many others. These galleries bring works that unhinge the concept of time, making complex and universal stories visible. Prominent works include, from DYS44 Lampronti Gallery, a Study of a Male Head by Annibale Carracci that evokes a highly topical vision in the immediacy and palpability of the person’s face. The Ballerina (Harlequin) by Gino Severini (L’Incontro Gallery) embodies the perfect harmony between dynamism and formal rigor, a balance that recalls the feminine duality between grace and discipline, between expressiveness and geometric precision. On the other hand, melancholy pervades Francesco Hayez’s sensual odalisque (Bottegantica), whose poignant charm speaks of an idealized but captive feminine.

The feminine is also expressed by the cascade of bright red and flamboyant purple flowing through Wojciech Sadley’s (Malgorzata Ciacek Gallery) anti-textiles, where tangled threads weave a web of primal sensuality, evoking a supernatural anatomy. In “She,” Sadley explores a feminine suspended between dream and reality, between social expectations of control and containment and the instinctive, ancestral desire that inhabits every woman, every human being. The dreamlike but incredibly tangible visions of Paola Gandolfi and Stefano Di Stasio (Gian Enzo Sperone) emerge in the same way, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. The two artists’ paintings coexist, in balance, in a complementary magnetism of opposites: tension and stillness, stasis and dynamism, enigma and realism, fascinating and displacing the viewer. These are works in which time seems to stand still. Just as in the eternal landscape by the Flemish painter Otto Venius, who worked in the mid-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, two eternal truths of the Christian faith such as the incarnation of Christ and the revelation of the Holy Trinity are emphasized (Floris Van Wanroij).

In the self-portraits of the painter-clessidra Roman Opalka (Atipografia), infinity is quantified. The artist imprints and photographs time on canvas and film, making it matter to mold, dilating it to infinity, into the dimension of the invisible and elsewhere, as in the two rare Gio Ponti vases (Arcuti Fine Art), in which two boxers, fighting, are portrayed both at the moment of maximum energy and when they give up, exhausted, in a perfect balance between strength and vulnerability, life and death.

Even behind figures of power there is often an unsuspected and complex balance. In the case of Conrad Giaquinto’s St. Louis of the French and his visit to the Abbey of Citeaux (Antiques Par Force), the apparent coldness of the authoritarian ruler coexists with a desire to be a “reformer” king, committed against injustice and abuse, and in defense of the last, impartiality and social equity.

Angels and demons, on the other hand, are the protagonists of synaesthetic research in the work Devil or Falling Rebel Angel, by a Neapolitan sculptor of the 1660s/80s in polychrome wood (Botticelli Antiquities). Magnetic glass eyes convey all the power of evil, pain, but also the awe of human atrocities.

Moments of reflection and conviviality

In the spaces of Vivarium, Flashback Habitat’s art park, a new work by Alessandro Bulgini, “Light of the Apocalypse,” is presented. This sculpture, carved from a centuries-old tree that died due to climate change, becomes a symbol of a tension between rebirth and destruction. Painted red, the tree invites viewers to confront the contradictions of our time.

The Circolino Bar/Bistro represents a place of conviviality where art meets life, with exhibitions by contemporary artists and evening events. During Contemporary Art Week, the Circolino will also host the Flashback lab educational project, dedicated to children, and Flashback talks, opportunities to explore the theme of balance.

Participating galleries

1. Aleandri Arte Moderna, Rome (Italy), 2. Antiques Par Force, Rome (Italy), 3. Arcuti Fine Art, Rome, Turin (Italy), 4. Atipografia, Arzignano (Italy), 5. Galleria Aversa, Turin (Italy), 6. Benappi Fine Art, London (UK), 7. Galleria Umberto Benappi, Turin (Italy), 8. Galleria Berardi, Rome (Italy), 9. Galleria Riccardo Boni, Rome (Italy), 10. Bottegantica, Milan (Italy), 11. Botticelli Antichità, Florence (Italy), 12. Studio d’Arte Campaiola, Rome (Italy), 13. Galleria Canesso, Paris (France), Milan (Italy), 14. Mirco Cattai Fine Art & Antique Rugs, Milan (Italy), 15. Contemporary Cluster, Rome (Italy), 16. De Jonckheere, Geneva (Switzerland), 17. Del Ponte Gallery, Turin (Italy), 18. Floris Van Wanroij Fine Art, Dommelen (Netherlands), 19. Giamblanco Gallery, Turin (Italy), 20. Flavio Gianassi - FG Fine Art, London (United Kingdom), 21. Galleria dello Scudo, Verona (Italy), 22. Galleria Gracis, Milan (Italy), 23. Galleria In Arco, Turin (Italy), 24. Galleria d’Arte l’Incontro, Chiari (Italy), 25. Andrea Ingenito Arte Contemporanea, Naples, Milan (Italy), 26. DYS44 Lampronti Gallery, London (UK), 27. Lara and Rino Costa, Valenza (Italy), 28. Luma Contemporary Art, Rome (Italy), 29. Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery, Warsaw (Poland), 30. Mancaspazio, Nuoro (Italy), 31. Lorenzo and Paola Monticone Gioielli d’Epoca, Turin (Italy), 32. NP - ArtLab, Padua, Milan (Italy), 33. Open Art Gallery, Prato (Italy), 34. Carlo Orsi Gallery, Milan (Italy), 35. Photo & Contemporary, Turin (Italy), 36. Flavio Pozzallo, Oulx (Italy), Galleria Russo, Rome (Italy), 37. Gian Enzo Sperone, Sent (Switzerland), 38. Tower Gallery, Todi (Italy).

Information

Preview: Wednesday, Oct. 30 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Vernissage: Wednesday, Oct. 30 from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Open to the public: Thursday, Oct. 31 to Sunday, Nov. 3 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Admission: Full price ticket: €15; Reduced price ticket: €10 (reductions provided by law, for Abbonamento Musei and Torino+Piemonte Card holders and for Flashback Habitat Amic* card holders). Thursday, Oct. 31 free admission with Abbonamento Musei, Torino+Piemonte Card, Flashback Habitat Amic* card holders. For information: www.flashback.to.it, info@flashback.to.it, +39 393 6455301

Flashback Art Fair 2024: the 12th edition of the fair in Turin

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