Starting October 2016 the Palazzo delle Esposizioni once again is hosting the Rome Quadriennale. The 16th edition of this important national rendez-vous devoted to Italian art is the result of an agreement between the Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma and the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, which are jointly responsible for the exhibition's promotion and organization. Eight years on since the last edition in 2008, this year's show has been designed in a totally innovative manner, yet with the determination to maintain its institutional identity untarnished – the identity of an exhibition tasked with exploring the most significant trends in the panorama of the contemporary visual arts in Italy.
The 16a Quadriennale d'Arte will be the product of a multiple vision entrusted to ten different curators selected through a "call for project", each one of whom has developed an individual project of his or her own: Simone Ciglia and Luigia Lonardelli (who submitted a joint project signed by both), Michele D’Aurizio, Luigi Fassi, Simone Frangi, Luca Lo Pinto, Matteo Lucchetti, Marta Papini, Cristiana Perrella, Domenico Quaranta and Denis Viva.
The projects as a whole envisage the presence of approximately 100 artists participating with works of a whole range of different kinds, accompanied by a full calendar of events.
In addition to this chorus of different voices and takes on the Italian art scene that has emerged since the year 2000, the novel aspect of this 16a Quadriennale d'Arte lies in its conception and development as a kind of work in progress in the course of which different players will be called on to work together and to take each other's measure.
Work in progress
To select the curators, the organisers ran a "call for project" to which they invited 69 candidates aged between thirty and forty after examining those who work in the country, yet without debarring Italians working abroad.
The call was designed to allow for the selection of a maximum of ten projects because the area on the first floor of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni used for the exhibition can be divided into ten rooms.
Of the 69 curators contacted, 38 submitted their candidature.
The projects received were assessed by a multidisciplinary Committee of experts comprising Marco Belpoliti (a writer and professor of literary criticism with the Università di Bergamo), Nicola Di Battista (an architect and editor-in-chief of Domus magazine), Maria Grazia Messina (an art historian and professor of contemporary art history at the Università di Firenze), Giuseppe Penone (an internationally renowned artist in his own right and a lecturer for many years at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris), Angela Vettese (an art historian and professor of the theory and criticism of contemporary art at the Università IUAV di Venezia) and, representing the organisers, Franco Bernabè (president of the Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma) and Mario De Simoni (director general of the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo).
The outcome of the examining Committee's assessment was the selection of the ten exhibition projects that will go to make up the 16a Quadriennale d'Arte: Simone Ciglia and Luigia Lonardelli (who submitted a joint project signed by both), Michele D’Aurizio, Luigi Fassi, Simone Frangi, Luca Lo Pinto, Matteo Lucchetti, Marta Papini, Cristiana Perrella, Domenico Quaranta and Denis Viva.
A Curators' Table has been set up for debating with the curators at a series of meetings designed to get the shape of the 16a Quadriennale d'Arte into focus, defining both its title and the concepts required to make it intelligible.
This dialogue is possible not only because of the single topic of the exhibition, namely the art that has emerged in Italy since the year 2000, but also because the curators are all members of more or less the same generation. The debate also derives its legitimacy from the fact that each project, while independent and original, responds of necessity to shared issues.
The contents of the projects and the names of the artists invited, along with the results of the Curators' table, will be published before the end of April.
Curator Profiles
Simone Ciglia (Pescara, 1982), a Ph.D. in contemporary art history with the “Sapienza” Università di Roma, concerns himself primarily with art and art criticism in the second half of the 20th century. He has curated several exhibitions and written for catalogues and for specialist magazines. He is an editor for Zanichelli, cooperating on that publisher's art history manual for schools. He has written several entries for the IX Appendice dell’Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani. He has been an assistant researcher for the MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo di Roma. He is a correspondent for a number of magazines including “Flash Art”. And he is currently a teaching assistant in "Contemporary Art History" with the “Sapienza” Università di Roma and the Università di Roma Tre.
Michele D'Aurizio (Chieti, 1985) is editor-in-chief of the international edition of “Flash Art”. He is also the co-founder of the Gasconade project space in Milan. He has curated exhibitions for the Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris; Boatos Fine Arts in São Paulo; Ellis King in Dublin; Flash Art NY Desk in New York; Fluxia in Milan and Grand Century in New York. In 2012 he was curator-in-residence with the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere in Rome and he co-curated the 2010–11 programme for the “Kaleidoscope” project space in Milan with Eva Fabbris. He has been an Associate Editor with “Kaleidoscope” and an editorial assistant with "Mousse”. His texts have been published in “Abitare”, “Flash Art”, “Kaleidoscope”, “Mousse” and “Spike”. He was awarded an MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti – NABA in Milan. He lives in Milan.
Luigi Fassi (Turin, 1977) is Visual Arts Curator with the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria. From 2009 to 2012 he was the art director of the ar/ge kuns Galerie Museum in Bolzano. Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum ISP in New York in 2008–9, he has organised exhibitions for several institutions at the international level, including the Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden; the Kunsthalle Helsinki in Finland; the Pori Art Museum in Finland; the ISCP in New York, USA; the Prague Biennale in Prague in the Czech Republic; the GAM in Turin; the Museo Marino Marini in Florence and the Fondazione Morra Greco in Naples. His articles and texts have been published in “Artforum”, “Camera Austria”, “Mousse”, “Flash Art”, “Art Asia Pacific”, “Site” and “Klat”. He is the author of Clement Greenberg. L’avventura del modernismo (Johan & Levi, 2011) and of Time Out of Joint: Recall and Evocation in Recent Art (Yale University Press, 2009). Since 2010 he has been the curator of Present Future at Artissima in Turin. In 2016 he became a fellow of the Artist Research Trip Program in New York.
Simone Frangi (Como, 1982) has a Franco-Italian Ph.D in the "Aesthetics and Theory of Art" and is a qualified researcher in Philosophy and the Aesthetics and Theory of Art with the Centre National des Universités (Paris, France). A curator and cultural researcher, he is the art director of Viafarini – a not-for-profit organisation for the promotion of artistic research in Milan. Since 2013 he has been the co-curator of Live Works - Performance Act Award (Centrale Fies, Trento, Italy) and since 2014 he has been the co-director of the nomad research programme entitled A Natural Oasis? A Transnational Research Program of the Little Constellation - Network of Contemporary Art focused on Geo-cultural Micro-areas and Small States of Europe. Since 2013 he has held the chair of the Theory and Topicality of Contemporary Art with the École Supérieure d'Art et Design in Grenoble. In 2015 he was one of the five curators of the tenth edition of the Fondazione Furla Award for Contemporary Art. His recent curatorial projects have included: Stage as a Social Platform (Teatro Continuo di Burri, Milan 2016); Pierre Michelon. Une histoire des décolonisations, telles qu’elles n'ont pas pu être, telles qu’elles ne sont pas encore (Centre d'Art Bastille, Grenoble 2016); Posthypnotic (Museion, Bolzano, 2015); Documetarism (Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella 2015); Kapwani Kiwanga (Viafarini, Milan 015); Notes on Orientalism. Video Practices at the Age of Radical Difference (Viafarini, 2015); Performance Labour (Zhdk, Zurich 2014); Géographies Nomades (ENSBA, Paris 2012) and Room, Freedom (Rosascape, Paris 2012).
Luigia Lonardelli (Bari, 1982) graduated in Florence in 2004 after tracking the indexing of the workshop of artist Mario Mariotti acquired by the Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci di Prato. The following year she achieved a master's degree in management for curators at the Faculty of Architecture at Valle Giulia in Roma. She gained a diploma in 2009 at the Scuola di Specializzazione di Siena with a study on the colour photography of Ugo Mulas. In 2012 she defended her doctoral thesis on the activity of the Incontri Internazionali d'Arte association in the 1970s, which is currently awaiting publication. In 2005 she began working with the Direzione per l’Arte Contemporanea, devoting her energy to promoting Italian art and tracking the preparatory work for the opening of the MAXXI where she now has been working since 2010, devoting her energies to research. She has been working with the museum's curatorial department since 2011, curating several exhibitions including those devoted to the work of Marisa Merz in 2012 and of Alighiero Boetti in 2013.
Luca Lo Pinto (Rome, 1981) lives and works in Vienna and Rome. He is currently a curator with the Kunsthalle in Vienna. He is the founder and chief editor of the "NERO" magazine and publishing house. The exhibitions that he has curated include: Charlemagne Palestine (Kunsthalle Vienna and Witte de With); Individual Stories (Kunsthalle Vienna); Function Follows Vision, Vision Follows Reality (Kunsthalle Vienna); Le Regole del gioco (Fondazione Achille Castiglioni); Pierre Bismuth (Kunsthalle Vienna); Trapped in the Closet (Carnegie Library/FRAC Champagne Ardenne); Antigrazioso (Palais de Toyko Paris); Luigi Ontani-AnderSennoSogno (H.C. Andersen Museum) and D’après Giorgio (Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico). His articles and entries have appeared in numerous catalogues and international magazines. He has edited books by artists such as Olaf Nicolai, Luigi Ontani, Emilio Prini, Alexandre Singh and Mario Garcia Torres. In 2012 he edited the publication Documenta 1955–2012. The Endless Story of Two Lovers. In 2014 he devised an editorial project conceived as a time capsule, entitled 2014.
Matteo Lucchetti (Sarzana, 1984) is an art historian, a freelance curator and a critic. His chief curatorial projects include: Don't Embarrass the Bureau! (Lunds Konsthall, Lund, 2014); Enacting Populism in Its Mediæscape (Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2012) and Practicing Memory (Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, 2010). He has been resident curator with Para Site in Hong Kong, the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris and AIR in Antwerp. He co-directs the research project entitled Visible (Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna) and the two-yearly prize for socially committed artistic practice in a global context associated with it (2013, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; 2015, Tate Liverpool; 2017, Queens Museum, New York). He is a visiting professor at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, at the Sint Lucas Academie in Antwerp, at the HISK in Ghent and at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. He has curated and taken part in several public talks in a number of institutions including the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva; the Steirischer Herbst in Graz; the Centre for Historical Reenactments in Johannesburg; and Creative Time in New York. He lives in Brussels, where he co-directed the “Art as Something Else” programme for the Galerie de l’ERG in 2015, with screenings, talks and exhibitions with, among others, Giuseppe Campuzano, Chto Delat?, Marinella Senatore and Jonas Staal. Lucchetti has written for “Mousse Magazine”, “Manifesta Journal”, “Multitude”, “Art Agenda”, “This is Tomorrow”, “No Order. Art in a Post-Fordist Society”, “Janus”, “Arte e Critica”, “Flash Art” and “Undo.net”.
Marta Papini (1985, Reggio Emilia) lives and works in Italy. In 2010 she obtained her specialisation with a research thesis on the relationship between art/public/museum, which she delivered at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Since November 2014 she has been Head of Research and Public Programs at the Centro Pecci, for which her various initiatives have included the design and organisation – alongside the organising committee – of the first Forum of Italian Contemporary Art. Her more recent projects include: Shit and Die, which she organised in conjunction with Maurizio Cattelan and Myriam Ben Salah (Palazzo Cavour, Turin, 2014); UN HOMME JUSTE EST QUAND MÊME UN HOMME MORT (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013) and THESE PEANUTS ARE BULLETS (Family Business, New York, 2012). She was the project manager of “TOILETPAPER magazine” (2012-2014); she devoted her energies to the editorial coordination of Shit and Die (Damiani editore, 2014); 1968, (Deste Foundation, 2014); Postmonument (Silvana editoriale, 2010) and she has worked for several magazines including “Purple Magazine”, “L’Officiel Italia” and “L’Uomo Vogue”.
Cristiana Perrella (Rome, 1965), a curator and critic, directed the Contemporary Arts Programme at The British School at Rome from 1998 to 2008. From 2007 to 2009 she devised and set up the activity of an agency for the development of youth art (SACS-Sportello per l'Arte Contemporanea in Sicilia) for RISO - Museo d'arte Contemporanea della Sicilia, also curating that activity for the first two years and again in 2012–13. She has been curating the artistic side of the activities of the Fondazione Golinelli in Bologna since 2010. In her capacity as an independent curator she has cooperated with Italian and international museums including the MAXXI, for which she curated one of the museum's inaugural exhibitions in 2010, subsequently cooperating on another three exhibition projects. From 2004 to 2010 she taught the "Phenomenology of Contemporary Art" at the Faculty of Letters at the Università di Chieti. She currently lectures at the IED in Rome. She has published numerous texts and monographs, including most recently a monograph devoted to Francesco Vezzoli, published by Rizzoli International in February 2016.
Domenico Quaranta (Brescia, 1978) is a contemporary art curator and critic. He focuses in his work on the way in which art responds to the changes introduced by the new communication media and means of production in culture and in society. He is one of the authors of Nel Mass Effect (MIT Press, 2015). His essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in books, magazines, newspapers and online portals including Flash Art e Artpulse. He has published Media, New Media, Postmedia (2010) and In My Computer (2011) and cooperated with M. Bittanti on editing the book GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames (Milan 2006). He has curated and co-curated several exhibitions both in Italy and abroad, including: Connessioni leggendarie. Net.art 1995–2005 (Milan 2005); Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age (Brussels 2008); RE:akt! (Bucharest, Lijubliana, Rijeka, Maribor, 2009–10); Playlist (Gijon and Brussels 2009–10); Collect the WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age (Brescia 2011; Basel and New York, 2012); Unoriginal Genius (London 2014) and Mankind / Machinekind (Vienna 2015). He lectures at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara and is the art director of the Link Art Center in Brescia.
Denis Viva (Cividale del Friuli, 1979) teaches contemporary art history at the Università degli Studi di Trento and is a T.D. researcher with the Università degli Studi di Udine. He began to supplement his work as an art historian with experience as a curator in 2008. He was the art director of Palinsesti (San Vito al Tagliamento, 2008–12), he coordinated the "young galleries" section in the Premio Terna award for 2012 and he has curated temporary exhibitions at the Mart in Rovereto (2012–14). He currently curates projects on art and architecture, Ibidem, for the Fondazione Ado Furlan, and on Far Eastern art, Paradoxa, at the Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea di Udine. His contributions of a historical nature are compounded by his scientific and scholarly work for some of the most important museums in Italy (the GAM in Turin, the Museo del Novecento in Milan, the Museo del '900 in Florence). His special interest in Italian art is borne out by the project www.capti.it (for the digitalisation of Italian art periodicals, thanks to an FIRB ministerial contract) and by the scholarly review www.palinsesti.net.
The Quadriennale di Roma
La Quadriennale di Roma is the national institution tasked with promoting contemporary Italian art. Its name is associated with the Esposizione Quadriennale d'Arte, a retrospective that records the different trends in the visual arts of the moment on a four-yearly basis. The Quadriennale conducts ongoing activities in its Villa Carpegna headquarters, organising exhibitions and encounters, offering research and documentation services and producing publications.
The Archivio Biblioteca della Quadriennale (ArBiQ) preserves and enhances an extremely important collection of documents and materials on art in the 20th and 21st centuries, ensuring continuity and stringency in the institution's cultural activities.
The archive and library may be consulted on line in full: the archive collections in their substance, the library catalogue as part of the Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale.
La Quadriennale di Roma today is a foundation managed jointly by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, the Comune di Roma and the Regione Lazio. It was established as an exhibition to be held at regular intervals in 1927 and became an entity in its own right in 1937.