The instability of fortune: six young international artists on display in Fano

From August 5 to 18, 2021, the Rocca Malatestiana in Fano (PU) will host the exhibition Fortuna instabile quasi possibile, which presents the works of six Italian and international authors: Lidia Bianchi, Silvia Bigi, Oscar Contreras Rojas, Jingge Dong, Rachele Maistrello, and Sophie Westerlind.

The exhibition, curated by Luca Zuccala and Andrea Tinterri, which takes place in the less accessible places of the 15th-century structure, from the cells and chapels of the central courtyard to the prison gallery, offers the works created during the Lido La Fortuna artists’ residency, curated by Luca Zuccala, coordinated by Caterina Angelucci, with the support of Giulia Giommi, promoted by theLido Contemporaneo Cultural Association, in collaboration with the Municipality of Fano - Department of Culture and Cultural Heritage - and RTI Fano Rocca Malatestiana, which took place, last May, in the Fano hinterland, at the Symposium in Cartoceto (PU).

The exhibition-in whose title echoes the “unstable, almost impossible balances” of the work of Eliseo Mattiacci, a sculptor born and raised in this area, turning its meaning upside down and imparting a vision of hope-is configured as an act of giving back to the territory and the community and focuses on the themes that were addressed during the residency period, such as the concept of the Renaissance window, architectural measure, the Renaissance as a laboratory, the search for theelsewhere, the landscape as a work of art, the painted earth, connotative of the hillside of the Fano hinterland, the uniqueness of the local language, the theme of return, the reflection on community, dialogue and fruitful contamination between artists, languages, artistic practices, hybridization and interdisciplinarity of research, residency as resistance from the spectacularization of the art system and the schizophrenia of the market, silence as a state, the fertile relationship between center and periphery.

Lidia Bianchi (1992) explores the Fano landscape by eluding the spectacularization of beauty, photographing almost monochrome theatrical backdrops(Walls of Elderflower) that allow her to defuse the horizon and elaborate a new narrative. In Sonotornate le lucciole, Paolo, the narrative is centered on the public/private dualism - history/biography, recalling family reminiscences and Pierpaolo Pasolini ’s famous corsair writing denouncing the disappearance of fireflies from the Italian landscape.

Silvia Bigi (1985) triggers, with her photographs, an unprecedented relationship between sleep and algorithm, a nocturnal, tight, gray-scale dialogue.

Oscar Contreras Rojas (1986)focuses on a painting of soft earth tones, from which figures with uncertain features emerge, physiognomies that are erased. Evocations of historical memories that characterize the area, episodes of Fano history, memories of Carthaginian elephants, bronze finds, modern fishermen.

Jingge Dong (1989) works on evocation. His pictorial research does not restore the real, rather he alters its connotations by presenting a chaotic landscape, internalized, torn apart and glued back together in his own image and likeness.

For more than a year, photographer Rachele Maistrello (1986) has been engaging marine biologists, sound engineers and professional freedivers to gather data and evidence from which to draw inspiration for a series of works on the relationship of man with the marine world. The human-sea relationship in the Blue diamond work-project is made up of attraction to the unknown, searches for recurring patterns of unknown meaning, and a desire to overcome one’s own limitations and nature.

Sophie Westerlind (1985) looks at painting with a Nordic sensibility and adapts her poetics to the Fano landscape. During the residency she kept a kind of logbook, a notebook in which she drew and jotted down what she came across. At the same time she paints outdoors, a fast painting, in which imprecision is part of the work, of atmospheric conditions. Hills, trees, portraits, a timeless, ecstatic everydayness.

After the Fano event, the exhibition will move to Pergola (PU) at Casa Sponge, from August 20 to September 5, 2021, and then, from October 7 to 17, 2021, to Milan at the Artcurial auction house.

As Luca Zuccala says, "A multitude of stimuli has seen the artists perpetually on the move and at work in the territory: from the millenary stones of medieval villages to the harmonies of Renaissance perspectives; from theAdriatic to theApennines, passing through the Metauro River, the ancient Via Flaminia and the Furlo Gorge. From visiting precious local treasures, the Bronzes of Cartoceto in the town of Pergola, to studying the centuries-old history of Fano’s seafaring industry; from the morphology of the coast of Fiorenzuola di Focara to the silences of theHermitage of Monte Giove and the Monastery of Fonte Avellana, to name but a few. Epicenter of the ’journey’ is the city of Fano, with its dense historical, social and cultural stratification."

“Through the contribution,” Luca Zuccala continues, “of a heterogeneous range of professionals - historians, archaeologists, botanists, university professors, art and literature historians, marine biologists and contemporary art curators - it was possible to make available to the artists a multifaceted and transversal background of knowledge and investigation of the peculiarities of the place. A territory ’that speaks’ that of the Fano brand, in which the landscape is cultural stratification, iconographic memory. It is in this context that the process of appropriation/restitution takes shape that the artists have enacted using different languages, apparently antithetical, that problematize the landscape and its history.”

Lido La Fortuna is a three-year project, with the epicenter in the city of Fano, coordinated by Caterina Angelucci -with the support of Giulia Giommi- and curated by Luca Zuccala, which aims to promote and support the work of Italian and international artists under 35 on the territory of Fano, in a confrontation with the identity and intrinsic peculiarities of the place and with the whole community. It will be a dialogue whose first objective is to enrich a unique land, such as the Fanese hinterland, by highlighting the scope and value of the multiple languages of contemporary art.

The project has seen the involvement of personalities belonging to important cultural and social realities of the area, who have helped provide the artists with the tools of cultural-historical investigation, for a vast and in-depth knowledge of the area. This took place through round tables, comparisons, contributions and multiple insights. The figures who participated in the Residency are Emilie Volka (Director Artcurial Italia), Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari (Full Professor of History of Modern Art, University of Urbino Carlo Bo), Roberto Danovaro (President Zoological Station Anton Dorhn, Naples and Director of the Department of Life Sciences and theEnvironment, Università Politecnica delle Marche), Corrado Piccinetti (Scientific Manager Fisheries Sector at the Laboratory of Marine Biology and Fisheries, Fano), Alessio Canalini(CO-Founder&Ceo - The Sea Opportunities, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice), Marina dei Cesari (Fano Yacht Club), Andrea Angelucci (Professor and President Circolo Culturale A. Bianchini, Fano), Giorgio Cassoni (Liceo Artistico A. Apolloni, Fano), Lucio Pompili (Chef Symposium), Andrea Tinterri, (critic and curator), Giuditta Giardini (art law expert and journalist), Giovanni Gaggia(artist and artistic director of Casa Sponge, Pergola), Massimo Puliani (professor and artistic director Fano Rocca Maletestiana).

For all information you can visit the official Lido Contemporaneo website.

Pictured: Oscar Contreras Rojas, The Sirens, 2020, oil on canvas, 130x170 cm.

The instability of fortune: six young international artists on display in Fano

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