Noto. Teatro Tina di Lorenzo

17 July – 7 september  2020

Best of sicilian contemporary art has met at the theater. STEFANO CUMIA, FRANCESCO DE GRANDI, EMANUELE GIUFFRIDA, GIOVANNI IUDICE, FRANCESCO LAURETTA, LOREDANA LONGO, IGNAZIO MORTELLARO, FILIPPO LA VACCARA, WILLIAM MARC ZANGHI. They are the nine artists who agreed to the invitation of Davide Bramante and Aldo Premoli, respectively front man and curator of this exhibition. Nine artists welcomed in a magnificent space such as the Tina di Lorenzo Theater, built from the second half of the 19th century.The theater had never accepted exhibitions before: it did so exceptionally this summer 2020 in the face of a program interrupted due to the cursed virus.This is therefore an extraordinary opportunity also for this extraordinary group of artists – only partially resident on the island – but all very Sicilian. The curator of the exhibition also asked for a sound intervention by the sound engineer MICHELE SPADARO, the youngest of them. Synaesthesia is one of the favorite aspects in the dialogue between the arts and with a theater originally created to host lyrical music, it fits perfectly. However the other artists here are exclusively visual artists, all colleagues and friends of Bramante, who is not new to such initiatives: without fear of denial they are the best of this generation of NEW SICILIANS. “I have always surrounded myself – instinctively, without any planning – as artists who have my same dreams, the same desires and in the end also the same origin. Artists who have tasted the same scents of our land. It was easy and, after all, nice to meet someone like me again outside the island. One step a day, but every day it went on. I met them in galleries and art fairs or art speech conference from all over the world … we started in a thousand, but now we are many less … “ Bramante describes in this why the profile of a generation. Some of them “left” the island: this is the case of Lauretta (Venice, then Turin and then Florence), Cumia and La Vaccara (Milan); Loredana Longo divides herself between Milan and Catania; Bramante himself who returned from Turin to Syracuse; De Grandi travels a lot but lives in Palermo, exactly like Zanghi and Mortellaro: Iudice and Giuffrida have chosen to gravitate respectively to Gela and Ragusa … even Spadaro, the sound designer has moved to London to return as soon as possible to Aci Castello. What do they exhibit in this exhibition? Bramante an artist who chose the photography as an expressive medium summarizes the collected works: “There is still a lot of painting in Sicily, a media to which the funeral was held several times, but which on the contrary is alive and well. After Lucio Fontana – who had programmatically “pierced the ball” – infinite pages were written about the death of the painting … and instead no, an infinite series of games developed around that ball, perhaps bigger, maybe smaller, oval or long… “ Which does not mean that Bramante hinself, or Mortellaro, or Loredana Longo should be considered out of context here. In reverse. They use media other than painting but do not oppose it to painting. As instead it had happened in the Arte Povera of Sixties and the Seveties with its strong ideological components; neither do they draw back in the face of his return pervaded by strong decorative components typical of the Eighties; just like none of them, a painter or anything else, seems interested in ostentation, cynicism, the sneer of the Nineties. In none of the artists exhibited here do you feel conservatism and restoration.It does not matter to this generation to conform to the cliché imposed by the fashion of the moment. Contemporary art – when it is truly art and does not wink at the most sinister trade – on the contrary goes beyond fashions. It is not an antidote to the troubles of the world, it is not a drug and almost always produces no consolation. This generation of artists is also mainly interested in doing, much less, commenting or celebrating. The path, however, is common and has at the basis a desire that is not too hidden: to be able to “live” with one’s own art. This is not always taken for granted, indeed always difficult if you want to remain coherent with your work, if you are not inclined to compromise and ruffianism with which the so-called “art world” is full. Here these NEW SICILIANS are certainly (also) united by this. “Fortunately, artists don’t need big availability of material things to be happy. However, they always need to wake up and start planning every day. In front of a canvas, a heap of clay, a sheet or any other material they could have at their disposal” emphasizes Bramante. In this they are special and also a little crazy. Imagine what it means to go in search of a new project every day to be able to breathe? So-called “middle generations” exist in the history of art and culture in general. They are the ones that struggle the most, sometimes they are crushed by traumatic events (economic crises, political conflicts, changes in geographical horizons) and yet they manage to create surprising works, which they have the courage to often question their previous research … Allow me a final quote. James Baldwin in The Next Time the Fire writes: “It is up to free men to learn the nature of change, and to be able and willing to change. I am not talking about the change that takes place on the surface, but about what happens in the deep. Change in the sense of renewal, therefore, which however becomes impossible if constant things are believed that are not: security, for example, or money or power. To believe it is to cling to chimeras, from which one can only be deceived, so that any hope – and any possibility – of freedom disappears. “ If the artists, the real ones, don’t do it, who could do it? Aldo Premoli