At the MAC in Lissone a major anthological exhibition of Giuseppe Stampone

The MAC Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone is hosting, from Oct. 13, 2022 to Jan. 29, 2023, the exhibition Personale Connettivo, an extensive anthological exhibition by Giuseppe Stampone (Cluses, 1974) curated by Francesca Guerisoli. The exhibition is on the first and second floors of the museum with the aim of highlighting the artist’s ability to combine Renaissance drawing with participatory practices and the use of new media in networking. The exhibition itinerary - including drawings (maps and plates), installations, site-specifics, videos and documentation of artistic-didactic projects - highlights the methods the artist has been using in his research since the 1990s.

Giuseppe Stampone is one of the most representative Italian artists in contemporary artistic research. Stampone uses as his preferred medium the popular Bic pen, which last year dedicated to him a new color, “Stampone blue. ”Over the years he has devoted himself both to studio production and to the conception of participatory projects involving specific communities, often using drawing as a relational device in these cases as well. His projects consist of articulated and composite works that decline into interventions in social space and particular educational models based on the idea of networks. With Global Education, Stampone has developed an operational approach that is still applied today all over the world. For 30 years he has been collaborating with international realities by carrying out artistic projects that are in effect educational methods based on creativity.

The second floor of the MAC houses Global Education’s major participatory projects: its well-known abecedaria and maps and Watercolors for Not Wasting Life, part of the We Are the Planet! Global Education (2004 - ongoing) is articulated in several works, including the series of abecedaria made with Bic pen, several editions of which are on display in the exhibition. Over the years, Global Education has been realized in museums and institutions including Palazzo Reale in Milan, MACRO and MAXXI in Rome, GAMEC in Bergamo, the National Institute for Graphics in Rome, and cities such as Teramo, Vicenza, Rome, Avila, Nova Gorica, Strovolos, Osijek, and Czestochowa. Global Education is configured as a path open to diverse possibilities, contingency and external influences. The abecedariums and maps of Global Education are presented as spaces for reflection and educational proposals that generate from the analysis of the places where the artist works, with the intention of composing alternatives to the conventional educational model by redesigning the contexts by releasing them from commonplaces in order to bring cultural and social identity to light.

Stampone’s abecedari are proposed as a new literacy that is based on the short-circuit between image and word, in an ironic and sarcastic key. “My will,” the artist emphasizes, “is to re-create a new literacy not given and created by a few for the many (the Western dictatorship of Gutenberg’s typeface) but re-created through the active participation of people; in other words, a shared alphabet. The method consists of this. I go to a country (China, the United States, etc.), live in that place for a month, and take notes on the stories of that place. Then I go back to the studio and develop all the letters that come from that experience. Once I have all the letters with drawings I go back to that place and have the local people choose what to write under each letter. When all the letters are complete I make the geopolitical maps where I go and ’geo-reference’ each letter in the abecedary. In this sense the workshop is for me an indispensable and integral phase of a total project dedicated to training, education, and teaching about the present of art and life.”

Watercolors for not wasting life (2006 - 2012) is a project based on artistic interventions involving new generations addressing contemporary global issues such as environmental defense and investigation of social conflicts, the purpose of which is to create awareness about the proper use of water resources. The project was first carried out in 2006 in the province of Teramo and involved 80 schools in 40 municipalities and 10,000 students. It was later organized in Umbria, with the participation of local elementary school, until building partnerships geared toward expansion in Europe (Poland and Croatia) and African contexts.

Watercolors for Not Wasting Life is part of We Are the Planet!, a large project that pioneered an innovative model of artistic-educational activities aimed at environmental education and sustainable development. The project, funded as part of the EU EuropeAid program, in collaboration with the Verona-based NGO ProgettoMondo MLAL, worked to design and develop art activities in countries such as Burkina Faso and Benin. The goal of We Are the Planet! was to strengthen communal awareness and mobilize new generations regarding the UN’ s 7th Millennium Development Goal: sustainable economy, the right to clean water, the protection of biodiversity and the fight against deforestation. The project is structured as an integrated communication process, based on different artistic-educational interventions, involving students aged 6 to 18 and citizens of different countries.

On the second floor, MAC presents the more intimate and formal dimension of Giuseppe Stampone’s artistic research. This section of the exhibition displays drawings, plates and maps representative of the artist’s work related to the object and the work in the classical sense of the term. Part of the works are presented in the form of a wall installation while the artist’s drawings converge in the center of the exhibition space. All works in the exhibition are created in Bic pen on paper or board. There is a selection of works for which the artist calls herself an “intelligent photocopier,” in that they are actualized reinterpretations of Renaissance masterpieces, such as Maria Crispal in the studio (2017), which quotes Antonello da Messina’s St. Jerome in the studio, and Confine (2018), which takes up Giorgione’s Tempest. These include a self-portrait of the artist done in the manner of Diego Velasquez. Also on view are graphite landscapes on board defined in minute detail, such as Passeggiata a Manzano (2020), Mare in collina in Umbria (2022), Abbazia di Cassino (2020), and Il gioco del silenzio (2021), one of the artist’s most disturbing works.

Stampone’s presence does not end only in the MAC exhibition space: in fact, on the occasion of the exhibition, the artist will create a new edition of Global Education in Lissone. The educational program involving the students of the Meroni Institute will lead to a new abecedario made by the children during the workshop and will be set up as part of the exhibition.

Giuseppe Stampone

Born in 1974 in Cluses, France. He lives and works between Teramo, Brussels and Rome. He is a professor of “Techniques and Technologies of Visual Arts” at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino. Since 2013 he has been an associate member of the American Academy in Rome; in the same year he was invited to hold an artistic residency at the Young Eun Museum of Contemporary Art (YMCA) in Gwangju, South Korea. Since 2017 he has been an associate member of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in New York. In 2020 he was the first Italian winner of the residency at Villa Romana in Florence funded by Deutsche Bank. In 2021, he participated in the London Design Biennale and the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale with the South Korean pavilion. In 2022, still ongoing, his participation in the 59th Venice International Art Exhibition with the Cuba Pavilion and exhibition at the Kunstverein Braunschweig in Berlin. His works have been exhibited in several international art festivals, museums and foundations including: Villa Romana, Florence (2021); Ciak Museum, Foligno (2018); Seoul Architecture Biennial (2017); Ostend Triennial (2017); Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum, Boston (2016); 56th Venice International Art Biennale (2015); GAMeC, Bergamo (2014); Calcografia Nazionale, Rome (2014); Palazzo Reale, Milan (2014); Museo Archeologico, Ascoli (2013); Liverpool Biennial (2010); Kochi-Muziris Biennial, Kerala, India (2012); 11th Havana Biennial (2012); 14th and 15th Quadriennale d’Arte, Rome (2004-2008); Kunsthalle Art Museum, Gwangju, South Korea; Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center, Havana; MAXXI, Rome; MACRO, Rome; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Pinacoteca Civica, Teramo.

At the MAC in Lissone a major anthological exhibition of Giuseppe Stampone

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