BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER – PRIMO PIANO LIVINGALLERY – LECCE
Primo Piano LivinGallery
BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
From May 3th to 29th 2014
Opening Saturday, May 3rd 19:00h
What is beauty today? Do we still need it? Does it still represent a value, an objective or a useful tool for both individuals and contemporary artistic production? BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER is a contemporary art exhibition curated by Dores Sacquegna for the gallery space Primo Piano LivinGallery in Lecce. The exhibition will be accompanied by an interview and performance of art by French artist ARNAUD CANIZARES (was born in Toulouse in 1986, he lives and works in Toulouse and Berlin), he is co-founder of AWA a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) for educational images in Berlin, Germany, brought together around this vision of international professionals to spread the ideal of beauty and life education.
The exhibition will show approximately 40 artworks by artists from Italy, France, Venezuela, Mexico, Usa. We would like to present some examples for the radical diversity of approaches by Cosimo BELLANOVA, Arnaud CANIZARES, Oronzo DE STRADIS, Astolfo FUNES, Maria Luisa IMPERIALI, Kamalky LAUREANO Massimiliano MANIERI, Gabriela MORAWETZ, Alessandro PASSARO, Teresa OLABUENAGA, Stuart Ross SNIDER.
In contemporary art, beauty continues to be intellectually suspect, a sort of taboo to both curators and artists. Our world today is, in fact, heir to a long line of philosophical and artistic thought that has forcefully undermined the traditional concept of “beauty in a work of art” and almost totally discredited the “idea of beauty”, deemed a value unsuitable for expressing the feelings of modern man. The classic concept of beauty as harmony and equilibrium had already been criticized in nineteenth-century aesthetic philosophy, and was more definitively rejected in the 20th century with the dismissal of traditional aesthetic canons by the historical avant-garde movements. Moreover, art from the 1960s to the present has gone so far as to question the boundary line between art and reality, irreversibly undermining the idea of beauty as a property of art. A long tradition of philosophy and art history has repeatedly tried to define this term. In different epochs, the aesthetic canon has been explained in ever-varying manner, revealing its close ties to specific cultural contexts, in constant evolution. Reflection on aesthetics evokes aspects of the political, social and moral spheres of society at a determined historical period. Many artists seem to feel a sort of Sehnsucht for beauty, a kind of nostalgia, the yearning for a true aesthetic, transformational, experience felt as a moment of astonishing connection between the individual and the essence of things. Hence the concept fluctuates between two antipodes. On the one hand there is extreme skepticism over the revelation of beauty; and on the other, the endless quest for an ulterior meaning, for beauty felt as a link to the deepest existential sphere of man and his relationship with the world. But how can we describe this experience? And what constitutes and defines its quality and intensity?
Faces hybrids emerging from a light almost in Caravaggio oil painting of Mexican artist KAMALKY LAUREANO; perfection, representation, transfiguration of the Greek myth of Ares and Artemis in the photographs of COSIMO BELLANOVA, sublime incarnation of the eternal return to the womb with sculpture -installation by MARIA LUISA IMPERIALI. Sensuality, chroma, purity, matter in the paintings of the Venezuelan ASTOLFO FUNES, and ALESSANDRO PASSARO. Fetish and sublimation with works by MASSIMILIANO MANIERI, who bares his body showing the peculiar aspect of an aesthetic that goes beyond the technicist conception of beauty and its aspiration to define objective canons. Phenomenalogy of the sublime in the works by ARNAUD CANIZARES, who borrows the securities and the construction of the works of the great Renaissance masters to produce new visions of the contemporary aesthetic, revealing a conception of beauty connected to the deeper existential dimension of man and his relation with the world. From Burke to Kant ‘s conception of the beauty and the sublime stands and opposes broadening the meanings and proper in the “Critique of Pure Reason “by Kant, the concept of the sublime is the expression of annihilating power of nature , facing the which man becomes aware of the limit sublime dynamic), while the contemplation of nature and property out of time refers to the mathematical sublime. Both concepts are manifested in the video “Morocho” by GABRIELA MORAWETZ, sculpture by STUART ROSS SNIDER, and work on mixed media by TERESA OLABUENAGA, and finally painting the brilliant young italian artist ORONZO DE STRADIS. This exhibition does not claim to treat the subject of beauty exhaustively, but to furnish an occasion for reflection through the vision and the works of artists, differing in their modes of expression, approaches and thematics. It is in fact “an idea”, not “the idea” of beauty.
ARNAUD CANIZARES (Toulouse, 1986), French artist, photographer and graphic designer. He lives and works in Berlin.After a scientific baccalauréat with honors he leaved his hometown and began to travel for knowledge and art. He lived and studied in La Souterraine, in Orléans, where he graduated with honors in June 2008, obtaining a National Diploma in Art Practice (DNAP) and in Milan where he supported a thesis named “The Misery of the World, Art and Utopia”, with the art philosopher and art critic Federico Ferrari as tutor, graduating in Painting with the maximal quote in November 2011, before going to Berlin. He actually studies there to become a teacher of art. Arnaud Canizarès scours two paths, one is a formalistic and poetical research, the other is about the social progress that art can bring.
LAST EXHIBITIONS:
2012: Biennale Mulhouse 012 – From June 9 to 12, 2012 – opening ART BASEL
2011: From May 25 to 10 April 2011 he has a bi-personal show “DUEL IV-We Must Change The World” in Formentini Gallery in Milan.
He exhibates in a group show “At first it wasn’t an island” in Assab One in Milan from June 21 to April 15, 2011. In June 2011 in Milan he builds a group of nine international artists to work for an healthier world with art. They bring the project “Make your space” and launch it at the contemporary art center Fabrica del Vapore in Milan on July 28.
CANIZARES is co-founder of AWA a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) for educational images in Berlin, Germany, brought together around this vision of international professionals to spread the ideal of beauty and life education .
WHERE
Primo Piano LivinGallery
Viale G. Marconi 4 – Lecce, Italy 73100
Tel/fax: +39 0832.30 40 14 – www.primopianogallery.com – primopianopressrelease@gmail.com
DAYS AND HOURS
Monday to Friday: 10-13h/16-19:30h
Saturday: 16:30h – 20:30h
Posizionare il cursore sulle immagini per leggere le didascalie; cliccare sulle immagini per ingrandirle.
Position the cursor on the images to view captions, click on images to enlarge them.
Related Posts
The Author
No Comment