Panorama Monopoli, the widespread exhibition with 60 artists from the 15th century to the present day in twenty locations in the Apulian city

From Thursday, Sept. 1 to Sunday, Sept. 4, 2022, the second edition of the widespread exhibition Panorama, curated by Vincenzo de Bellis, associate director and curator for visual arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, recently appointed director of fairs and exhibition platforms at Art Basel, and promoted by Italics, the consortium in Italy that brings together more than sixty of the most influential galleries of ancient, modern and contemporary art active throughout the peninsula, will be held in Monopoli, Bari.

After last year’s first edition, which was held on the island of Procida, this year Panorama offers a new itinerary between art, architecture, antiquity and the contemporary, full of events open to the public, performances and special projects.

The exhibition itinerary winds its way through the ancient historic center of the Adriatic town, in twenty exhibition spaces among palaces, churches, squares, and votive shrines in which seventy works from the 15th century to the present day are housed, which include seven performance works by sixty international artists from different eras, generations and nationalities: Mario Airò (Pavia, Italy, 1961), Francesco Arena (Torre Santa Susanna, Brindisi, Italy, 1978), Stefano Arienti (Asola, Mantova, Italy, 1961), Gianfranco Baruchello (Livorno, Italy, 1924), Luca Bertolo (Milan, Italy, 1968), Paolo Bini (Battipaglia, Salerno, Italy, 1984), Alighiero Boetti (Turin, Italy, 1940 - Rome, Italy, 1994), Pier Paolo Calzolari (Bologna, Italy, 1943), Duilio Cambellotti (Rome, Italy, 1876 - 1960), Mariana Castillo Deball (Città Mexico, Mexico, 1975), Adelaide Cioni (Bologna, Italy, 1976), Pietro Consagra (Mazara del Vallo, Trapani, 1920 - Milan, Italy, 2005), Maria Adele Del Vecchio (Caserta, Italy, 1976), Gaia Di Lorenzo (Rome, Italy, 1991), Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg (Lysekil, Sweden, 1978 / Rättvik, Sweden, 1978), Mimosa Echard (Alès, France, 1986), Sam Falls (San Diego, CA, USA, 1984), Matteo Fato (Pescara, Italy, 1979), Cesare Fracanzano (Bisceglie, Barletta-Andria-Trani, Italy, 1605 - Barletta, Barletta-Andria-Trani, Italy, 1651), Massimo Grimaldi (Taranto, Italy, 1974), Edi Hila (Shkodra, Albania, 1944), Judith Hopf (Karlsruhe, Germany, 1969), Adelita Husni-Bey (Milan, Italy, 1985), Alfredo Jaar (Santiago, Chile, 1956), Ann Veronica Janssens (Folkestone, UK, 1956), Runo Lagomarsino (Lund, Sweden, 1977), Giovanni Lanfranco (Parma, Italy, 1582 - Rome, Italy, 1647), Francesco Laurana and Nicola Samorì (Vrana, Croatia, 1430 - Avignon, France, 1502 / Forli, Italy, 1977), Jieun Lim (Seoul, South Korea, 1983), Lorenzo Lippi (Florence, Italy, 1606 - 1665), Carlo Manieri (Taranto, Italy, 1633 - Rome, Italy, 1702), Franca Maranò (Bari, Italy, 1920 - 2015), Richard Marquis & Johanna Nitzke Marquis (Bumble Bee, AZ, USA, 1945 / Northern Wisconsin, WI, USA, 1947), Mario Merz (Milan, Italy, 1925 - 2003), Marisa Merz (Turin, Italy, 1926 - 2019), Luzie Meyer (Tübingen, Germany, 1990), Diego Miguel Mirabella (Enna, Italy, 1988), François Morellet (Cholet, France, 1926 - 2016), Valerio Nicolai (Gorizia, Italy, 1988), Alessandro Piangiamore (Enna, Italy, 1976), Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, Italy, 1933), Gianni Politi (Rome, Italy, 1986), Nathlie Provosty (Cincinnati, OH, USA, 1981), Giangiacomo Rossetti (Milan, Italy, 1989), Medardo Rosso (Turin, Italy, 1858 - Milan, Italy, 1928), Mimmo Rotella (Catanzaro, Italy, 1918 - Milan, Italy, 2006), Antonio Sanfilippo (Partanna, Trapani, Italy, 1923 - Rome, Italy, 1980), Alberto Savinio (Athens, Greece, 1891 - Rome, Italy, 1952), Aviva Silverman (New York, NY, USA, 1986), Carl-August-Wilhelm Sommer (Coburg, Germany, 1839 - 1921), Eugenio Tibaldi (Alba, Cuneo, Italy, 1977), Patrick Tuttofuoco (Milan, Italy, 1974), Massimo Vitali (Como, Italy, 1944), Luca Vitone (Genoa, Italy, 1964), Stanley Whitney (Philadelphia, PA, USA, 1946), Antonio Zanchi (Padua, Italy, 1631 - Venice, Italy, 1722).

Also this year, Italics features two special projects: an exhibition celebrating the awarding of theItalics d’Oro for the career of Lisetta Carmi (Genoa, 1924 - Cisternino, 2022) and an invitation addressed to artist Francesco Arena to imagine signs that will accompany Panorama and its visitors even after the exhibition is over. TheItalics d’Oro will be awarded on September 1 in memory of Lisetta Carmi’s artistic and life experience and will be presented to Gianni Martini, as President of the Lisetta Carmi Estate and Archive. Lisetta Carmi’s work will then be the protagonist of an exhibition developed in collaboration with the international photography and art festival PhEST - See Beyond the Sea, which includes a selection of unpublished shots taken in 1960 between Puglia and Basilicata and will remain open to the public for the duration of the festival, from September 9 to November 1, 2022.

Panorama Monopoli intends to present itself as a grand choral narrative inspired by the Greek concept of xenia, to which each of the selected works contributes by offering multiple readings on universal themes that, from the 15th century to the present, have inspired the creativity of artists from different eras. For the Greeks, the term xenia summarized the sense ofhospitality and the relationship with the stranger, governed by basic behavioral norms, such as the custom of honoring the guest with a parting gift. The concept ties in with that of the foreigner and the history of Monopoli, which is common to that of many other cities on the Adriatic coast, crossroads of trade, interests, peoples and commerce. Egnatines (from the Messapian center of nearby Egnatia), Byzantines, Bretons, Arabs, Spaniards, and Venetians contributed in various ways to making the city’s culture a polychrome mosaic.

“If we translate these concepts to today,” explains curator Vincenzo de Bellis, “we notice how much the relationship with the other has changed. We repudiate the stranger, without realizing that in contemporary society we are all strangers to one another. Our age has completely distorted the meaning of closeness and distance, turned distance into a reason for fear and exclusion, or reduced it to zero in a proximity that is only virtual, experienced and mediated by a screen. Thus the news touches us but does not affect us, we do not feel it vividly, yet it is close, because everything today is close. In a 2022 disrupted by a global pandemic and a war, the one in Ukraine, that reminds us of the many other wars going on,” the editor continues, “now only more silent about the outbreak of yet another; in a year in which mass migrations between the various borders of the world have not stopped, and which because of our location, overlooking the Mediterranean, we see coming mostly from the East, the Middle East and North Africa, Panorama Monopoly cannot and will not be a political exhibition in the immediate sense of the term. Many of the artists in the exhibition do not speak of current affairs, and it could not be otherwise, collecting works ranging from the 15th century to the present. The selection emphasizes universal themes that open up a wide variety of readings, sometimes even unexpected ones, especially where works and artists from different eras and backgrounds are placed in dialogue throughout the exhibition.”

Panorama Monopoli is produced under the patronage of UNESCO, the Ministry of Culture, and the support of the Apulia Region - Department of Tourism, Economy of Culture and Territorial Enhancement, and the Municipality of Monopoli - Departments of Culture and Tourism.

The public program of Panorama Monopoli is produced in collaboration with Treccani Arte and takes the title La Puglia e le arti: it is structured as a calendar of three appointments involving as many guests originally from the Apulian territory: Massimo Bray, editorial director of the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana founded by Giovanni Treccani in dialogue with Vincenzo de Bellis; Eva Degl’Innocenti, director of the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto and the Municipal Museums of Bologna; and Sergio Rubini, actor, director and screenwriter. Every morning at 9 a.m., from Friday, Sept. 2 to Sunday, Sept. 4, special guests will lead the public from the Old Port of Monopoli along hidden corners of the area for a performative, educational and convivial experience.

For info: www.italics.art

Photo by Giampaolo Antonucci

Panorama Monopoli, the widespread exhibition with 60 artists from the 15th century to the present day in twenty locations in the Apulian city

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