Cassina Projects begins the new year with After Reminiscence, a group show curated by Federico Montagna which opens on Thursday 25th January. The exhibition puts together new works by eight emerging Italian artists: Camilla Alberti (*1995), Leonardo Devito (*1997), Carla Giaccio Darias (*1998), Aronne Pleuteri (*2001), Matilde Sambo (*1993), Norberto Spina (*1995), VEGA (Francesca Pionati *1990 and Tommaso Arnaldi *1993), and Martina Zanin (*1994).
In contrast to the narrow conception of continuous renewal which is tied to the very idea of contemporary art, talking about reminiscence today actually means addressing a discourse articulated on broad levels of reading.
In our country, remembrance, the concept of archive and memory, seem to be entrenched in a certain art-historical tradition that concerns not only more recent historical avant-gardes - in which innovation was the result of a nomadic and anachronistic citationism - but also the emerging contemporary scene where nostalgia for a kind of methodologies and teachings is still firmly established within academic and institutional processes. In fact, younger artists more often than not give away the imprint of a professor or master, both in the conceptual approach to their practice, and in the technical execution of the work.
Dealing with this legacy is definitely a privilege, yet a challenge at the same time. What does it mean to be a contemporary artist today? What’s the impact of such a hefty tradition and cumbersome academic models? What can be born anew? Most importantly, in the hectic age we are navigating, is there anything that de facto qualifies as new?
The idea of reminiscence, therefore, is projected on the one hand toward the concept of a collective memory, an inexhaustible source from which artists draw to expand their vision, and on the other it is a paradigm behind each individual critical thinking, expressive language and autobiographical trajectory. The work of art becomes instrument of redefinition. It doesn’t exhaust in itself and it isn’t entirely encapsulated within its time but it exists in a condition of continuous referral to something else, freeing angles through which it is possible to decode our world.
The exhibition shed lights on a generation of Italian artists whose works manifest how these two aspects coexist and influence each other in the development of unique and distinctive researches. Hence, the concept of reminiscence remains just a memory, a starting point from which to extend the gaze, look beyond and discover what’s next or, perhaps, what’s already, here and now.
(Text by Federico Montagna)
