A new chapter in art history: the Italian Art Depot Present. Interview with Vittoria Martini

The 24th edition of Artissima, thecontemporary art fair to be held again this year in Turin (November 3 to 5), will see among its new special projects the Deposito d’Arte Italiana Presente, an exhibition project curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Vittoria Martini. Referring back to the experience of the same name held between 1967 and 1968 (at that time it was a place for the production and exhibition of works by emerging artists, desired by Gian Enzo Sperone), the new Deposito is intended to be a “dynamic space of exhibition and in-depth study from which to begin a narrative of Italian art of the last twenty years in order to photograph it today while imagining future developments.” A photography that starts in 1994 and goes up to today. We talked about it with one of the two curators, Vittoria Martini.

The Present Art Depot from 1967-1968. Ph. Credit: Paola Bressan

The Deposit of Present Italian Art presents itself as “a dynamic space of exhibition and investigation from which to begin a narrative of Italian art of the last twenty years in order to photograph it today while imagining future developments.” How do you intend to develop this narrative?
The narrative begins in 1994, the year Artissima was born. That is 23 years, enough time to start putting into perspective and thinking about the fair as an institution with its own history, its own archive. Starting in 1994 is significant for many reasons. First of all, for Turin: Artissima was born because there is a solid system that can support it and the city confirms itself as the Italian capital of contemporary art, following the tradition that begins with the foundation of GAM-Galleria Civica darte moderna in 1959. The year 1994 is then significant because it allows for a clear break with that period marked by what Francesco Bonami in one of his famous passages defined as the perfect parents: l’Arte Povera and the Transavanguardia. This caesura is essential to begin a new chapter so that we do not always have to go back to the roots, to 68 and the Years of Lead, but begin with the terrorist attacks of the early 1990s. The scenario is a different one, a new chapter begins. So from 1994, using as I said Artissima as an archive, we did a work of analyzing all the catalogs to look for the names of recurring artists. After this initial mapping, we analyzed the catalogs of generational exhibitions from 1990 to the present, and then we looked at the awards and recognitions. What emerges is a panorama made up of names and big absentees, see the whole Orestes story that was central to the 1990s, for example, because what we are telling here is a story related to the market. The fact that the exhibition is within a fair is not a secondary fact, but it is a central element that guided our choices about the exhibition format and the selection of artists. Thus, in a chronological path, we mapped the names of recurring artists from those born in the 1960s to the present. In addition to the traditional collaboration with institutions, this year we asked for collaboration from the galleries present at the fair. This is to emphasize the centrality of the work of the galleries, essential engines of the system that invest in talent and make themselves archives of artists perhaps not yet historicized and temporarily left out of the market. The history of Italian galleries deeply influences and marks the history of artistic production in Italy.

What is the relationship with Gian Enzo Sperone’s historic “Deposito d’Arte Presente” and why did you think of “reactualizing” that experience?
Our project is not a philological reconstruction of the 1967 Deposito darte presente. We have taken up that format using it as a conceptual framework for a project that reflects its mode of operation, an innovative format because it concentrates all the stakeholders in one place creating synergy between artists, gallerists and collectors. The same thing that happens in a fair. The Deposito darte presente wanted to take art outside the designated circuits, to identify a new type of space that was no longer the gallery-boutique or the white cube in which to admire works destined for bourgeois drawing rooms, but a more brutal, more real space that would better suit the new artistic research and prepare the public for the new aesthetics of Arte Povera. Lintention was to give life to a space that was at the same time a center of production, presentation and market, capable of attracting gallery owners and, above all, a new young collectorism. The Deposito dArte Presente is taken as a model-form and conceptual framework for an innovative setting that absorbs its mode of operation: the depot as a workshop, a layered space, rich in potential because it concentrates artists, gallery owners and collectors in one place, creating synergy. In the year that marks the fiftieth anniversary of the birth and theorization of Arte Povera, the Deposito dArte Presente seemed the best model for remembering and celebrating that date, but also the ideal archetype of Turin’s characters par excellence: great experimentalism, the attitude to research and innovation, and international aspiration.

What are the artists we will see in the Depot?
The Depot will not have a linear path. In the research, a chronological path has been rigorously maintained, but in the installation this rigor will emerge only upon careful analysis. The narrative will begin with Maurizio Cattelan (1960), the first artist to appear among the Italian presences at Artissima in 1994 and immediately in national and international exhibitions and collections, and will end with the youngest Italian artist awarded at Artissima (Present Future 2013), Giulia Cenci, born in 1988. Between Cattelan and Cenci there are a hundred artists who have marked and are marking the Italian contemporary art. The works were selected differently for the already historicized artists and for the younger ones. For the artists of the 60s and 70s we asked or looked for significant or iconic works for the artistic practice developed later, for the artists of the 80s, on the other hand, we worked for the search of works exemplifying a practice ce is developing now. In general, all the works in the Depot were carefully selected in dialogue with the artists and galleries, even for artists presented by institutions in the Piedmont region. The direct relationship with the artists is at the heart of this project.

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