Artissima

Carla Accardi was born in Trapani on 9 October 1924. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo.
In 1946, she moved to Rome with Antonio Sanfilippo where she met Pietro Consagra and Giulio Turcato.
In 1947 she completed her first abstract painting, entitled Scomposizione. In March of the same year she launched the Forma Group (“Forma 1” would be the name of the first and only issue of the magazine-manifesto) with Attardi, Consagra, Dorazio, Guerrini, Perilli, Sanfilippo, and Turcato. In 1948 she took part for the first time in the 24^th Venice Biennale, as well as in the exhibition “Abstract Art in Italy” at the Galleria di Roma. In 1954 she met Michel Tapié, whose support marketed a watershed moment for the artist. The French critic placed her among the protagonists of his theory of art autre, alongside Burri, Capogrossi and Fontana.
The 1960s were a time of major stylistic changes. Much more vivid and varied tones of color reappeared, while the sign underwent a change in structure. The first chromatic works were shown at the Parma Gallery in New York and at the New Vision Center Gallery in London with a presentation by Lionello Venturi, in 1961.
In 1964 she was invited with a personal room to the 32^nd Venice Biennale.
These years saw the first works created on sicofoil, a transparent plastic material used for the first time for art. Works from this period include Tenda (1965), Ambiente Arancio (1967) and Triplice tenda (1969-71). The following decade was dedicated to continuous experimentation with sicofoil. Colors became less strong, with pastels sometimes dominating. By the mid-1970s the sicofoil was completely transparent, in twisting braids that emphasized the support and made the frame the protagonist (in a studied “ostension of the support and the frame” she would say, which certainly has a flavor touching on the conceptual).
In 1976 was presented Triplice tenda at the 37^th Venice Biennale in the “Arte Ambiente” section. In the 1980s, Accardi returned to canvas, which she left raw: it would be animated with colored signs, which had become very large, inside of which there might be just one color. In 1983 she exhibited at the Pinacoteca Comunale
in Ravenna and at the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan; while in 1988 she was once again invited with a personal room to the 43^rd Venice Biennale, where she presented large-scale works. The next year she was represented by two historical works at the “Italian Art in the 20th Century” show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In 1994 a far-ranging retrospective open at the Castello di Rivoli; in the same year she took part in the exhibition “The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Among the many solo shows and retrospectives, two big anthological exhibitions opened in Paris Parigi, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2002) and in Rome, at the MA-CRO (2004).
In 2011 the show “Carla Accardi. Segno e trasparenza” opened at the Fondazione Puglisi di Catania; for this occasion important historical works were exhibited on the two great floors of Palazzo Valle. In the meantime two volumes of the monumental catalogue of her works were released, curated by Germano Celant, published by Charta and Silvana respectively. Carla Accardi passed away in Rome on 23 February 2014, but interest in her work has continued to grow, as evidenced by the 2020 solo show Contesti, at the Museo del Novecento in Milan, the group show at the MAXXI Senzamargine Passaggi nell’Arte Italiana a cavallo del Millennio from October 2020 to January 2022, and by her inclusion in the 59^th Venice Biennale scheduled for April 2022.

Matthias Bitzer was born in 1975 in Stuttgart, he lives and works in Berlin (D).
He graduated from Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, Germany in 2004.
His artistic practice combines drawing, sculpture and painting creating experience spaces with strong references to history and intellectuals and a deep reflection on their identity, in which the viewer can immerse himself. The development of his work shows itself in the increasing complexity of the installations, maintaining their focus on the construction of memory and the reconstruction of reality. His research involves literary personalities, writers and their characters who have frequently slipped into outsider positions. Fascinated by the relation between the invisible and the real, Bitzer layers symbolic fragments and fractured forms on top of one another as citations. In a new inspection of classical modern art from today’s perspective, the artist combines portraits and geometric constructions in his drawings, paintings and sculptures. Through the analysis of this multiplicity of figures, Matthias Bitzer’s work investigates different looks on reality and through his more and more complex abstract patterns he gives the viewer a visual translation to this fragmentary dimension, to these different points of view, to possible gazes. Through paintings, sculptures and mural drawings, all strictly connected to each other, he thinks the exhibition space as an autonomous body, where you can “consider the works as a kind of symbolist translation or a decoding of reality that tries to make visible something that was invisible before” as the artist says.
His works are part of Public collections at LACMA, Los Angeles, USA, MARTa Herford, Herford, Germany, Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany, Geraer Sammlung, Gera, Germany, CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain, and Rosenblum Collection & Friends, Paris, France.

Daniel de Paula was born in Boston, USA, 1987, and he lives and works between São Paulo (Brazil) and Amsterdam (Netherlands).
The multiple propositions of Daniel de Paula intend to reflect on the production of space as a reproduction of power dynamics, thus revealing critical investigations of the political, social, economic, historical and bureaucratic structures that shape places and relationships. Through a posture that is not imprisoned in the field of visual-arts, notions of geography, geology, architecture and urbanism, something that reveals his interesting understanding the complex social form hidden within the materiality, intersect his practice and production. Through strategies such as extensive negotiations with and between public and private agencies, appropriation, displacement and decon-textualization of everyday objects, in addition to interactions with agents that constitute the exhibition space and its surroundings, de Paula’s works try to propose re-significan-ces of rigid and conditioned space systems. Such procedures end up emphasizing the indivisibility between the physicality of his works and the contexts from which they arise, reiterating the criticism to the violent socio-political vectors that inscribe meaning into our lives.
Recent solo exhibitions include ‘and materiality becomes nothing but a mere representation of a structure of dominance’, Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam (2020), ‘the control of things over subjects is the control of subjects over themselves’, Galeria Francesca Minini, Milan (2019), ‘the conductive form of dominant flows’, Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo (2017); ‘testemunho’, Galeria Leme, São Paulo (2015) and ‘objetos de mobilidade, ações de permanência’, White Cube Gallery, São Paulo (2014).His works have also been included in recent institutional exhibitions such as ‘Brasile. Il coltello nella carne’, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2018), ‘Matriz do Tempo Real’, MAC, São Paulo (2018); ‘Avenida Paulista’, MASP, São Paulo (2017); ‘Metró-pole: Experiência Paulistana’, Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo (2017); ‘ARTE PARA TODOS! Liberação e Consumo’, Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto (2016), ‘Nós entre os Extremos’, Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2015); ‘Da próxima vez eu fazia tudo diferente’, PIVÔ, São Paulo (2012).

Sheila Hicks graduated with a BFA and MFA from Yale University. She was one of just three women to receive a bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of Art in 1957. In May 2019 the artist received an honorary degree from Yale University. She lives and works in Paris, France. Hicks participated in the 57th Venice Biennale, curated by Christine Macel (2017); the 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016); Glasgow International (2016); Weaving & We, Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art (2016); Whitney Biennial (2014); and São Paulo Biennial (2012).

The artist was awarded the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Medal in 2010 and was granted an Honorary Doctorate from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 2014.

Recent solo presentations include the major retrospective Sheila Hicks, a little bit of a lot of things, LOK, Kunstmuseum of St. Gallen (2023), SHEILA HICKS: OFF GRID, The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield (2022), Thread, trees, river, MAK Museum of Applied Arts, Wien (2020); Campo Abierto (Open Field), The Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2019); Seize, Weave Space, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2019); Reencuentro, Museo Chileno de arte Precolombino, Santiago (2019); Lignes de Vie, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018); Free Threads, Textile and its Pre-Columbian Roots, 1954-2017, Museo Amparo, Puebla (2017); Sheila Hicks: Apprentissages, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Musée Carnavalet and Nanterre-Amandiers, Paris (2016); Sheila Hicks: Material Voices, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (2016); Sheila Hicks | Why Not, TextielMuseum, Tilburg (2016); Foray into Chromatic Zones, Hayward Gallery, London (2015); Sheila Hicks – Hors Normes, Sculptures Textiles, Passage de Retz, Paris, France (2010); Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor, Bard Graduate Centre for Studies in Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York (2006).

Hicks has created monumental site-specific works for the Ford Foundation Headquarters and Federal Courthouse in New York; The Duke Endowment in Charlotte, North Carolina; King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Hicks has also produced installations for the Grande Rotonde at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2014-15) and as part of the outdoor exhibition Voyage d’hiver in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles (2017).

Hicks’ work is featured in a number of prominent collections including Tate Gallery, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Gallery, Washington D.C; Art Institute of Chicago; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; The Jewish Museum, New York; and the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska.

Flavio Favelli was born in Florence in 1967, in 1993 he graduated at the University of Bologna with a degree in Oriental Studies, only afterwards beginning his career as an artist. He currently lives and works in Bologna (IT).
His works have been exhibited in prestigious international institutions, including: Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (2022); GAM, Turin (2022); Fondazione Adolfo Pini, Milan (2021); Il bello inverso, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice (2019); Albergo Diurno Venezia, Milan (2017); UNIVERS, A METAPHYSIC STORE, Venice (2017); Art Basel Hong Kong – the Encounters section curated by Yuko Hasegawa (2013); MAXXI, Rome (2015, 2012, 2010); Museo del Novecento, Milan (2012), MACRO, Rome (2012; 2011); RISO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Palermo (2011), American Academy in Rome (2011, 2010); Tate Modern, London (2010), MCA, Chicago (2009), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2008; 2007, 2002); Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2008), Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul (2008), Benaki Museum, Athens (2008), La Maison Rouge (2007), MAMBO, Bologna (2007), Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes, (2007); Creative Art Center, Beijing (2006); Musèe d’Art Moderne de Saint- Etienne, Saint- Etienne (2005), Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles (2004), Museion – Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bolzano (2003).
In 2012 the artist represented Italy at the 11th Biennale de La Habana and he has twice taken part – in 2003 and in 2013 – in the Venice Biennale. Flavio Favelli was chosen for the residence at the Italian Cultural Institute of Istanbul and in 2014 he had a solo show in the historic complex of the Galata Rum Okulu school.

Flavio Favelli creates works using old objects of décor or everyday use, such as lighting fixtures, picture frames, Fanta or Coca Cola bottles, trinkets that evoke the bourgeois aesthetic of the family environments he grew up in, or the Eastern cultures he studied at university. His works are collages, sculptures or installations in which these recycled materials are brought together, giving life to layers of meaning that isolate the object from its mere material reality, elevating it to an artistic dimension. This transition does not occur through the distortion of the object itself but rather through an amplification of its functional features, of its value as an object of use, as an object of décor, as an icon of the everyday life of the past, unwittingly existing in the present. The marked autobiographical component in these works (which also lies behind the artist’s rare performances), functions as a common filter for interpreting the various lines of inquiry that Flavio Favelli develops in all of his works, and, through a reflection on memory and the development of a “poetics of the object” centered around the exotic-everyday dichotomy, he threads together his own personal story with broader social history and political ideas.
Flavio Favelli’s works a marked sense of Italianness. In his art he develops and reworks the contradictions that came about with the rise of conceptual art (and pop-art) internationally, placing these theoretical frameworks inside the forms and achievements of the Italian conceptual tradition. The result are works with a hybrid soul, which make it difficult to know where to place him on the Italian art scene, and at the same time emphasizing the strong personal element that underlies the language used in each individual work.

Jacopo Benassi (b. 1970), photographer and artist, lives and works in La Spezia. Over the years, he has developed a personal style in which depth of field is eliminated and the light of the flash becomes a signature, a stylistic limit that he self-imposes to achieve photos that are raw and without any mediation. The subjects photographed are highly disparate ranging from the underground and international music scene – starting from his experience at the B-Tomic club, which he manages with some friends – to portraits of models, actresses, artists, designers published in the most important magazines, as well as investigations of the body, including self-portraits, documentation of sexual encounters, and ancient statuary. Benassi is also occasionally a performer and musician. His experimentation with performance is always linked to music and is mediated by the photographic image, the subject and object of his research. Recent solo shows: Matrice (2022) at Fondazione Carispezia, La Spezia, PAST (2021) at the Francesca Minini Gallery in Milan, Vuoto (2020) at the Pecci Centre in Prato, CRACK (2019) double exhibition at CAMERA – Italian Centre for Photography in Turin and at the European Photography Festival in Reggio Emilia, and Bologna Portraits (2019) at Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna. He has exhibited for FotoGrafia – International Festival of Rome (2009), Vade retro. Art and homosexuality from von Gloeden to Pierre et Gilles (2007) at Palazzina Reale in Florence, Aphotography (2005) at the Changing Role Gallery in Napoli, Artissima (2006-2007) in Turin. He has worked with directors and writers such as Paolo Sorrentino, Daniele Ciprì, Asia Argento, and Maurizio Maggiani, and with creative director Federico Pepe (for COCO, a music and videoart project, and for publications by Le Dictateur). In 2011 he opened Talkinass – Paper and Records and produced magazines and live CDs of artists on the underground scene. An active self-publisher, he has created limited-edition publications and a magazine produced in real time at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He has participated in events such as No Soul for Sale (2010) at the Tate Modern in London, curated by Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni. Recently, he has concentrated on creating performative and photographic displays based on Live Shooting, resulting in the solo show Hunt me down (2021) and collaborations with some protagonists of the Italian performance, visual, and music scene: Lady Maru for Brutal Casual (2020), Kinkaleri for No Title Yet (2017) and ONCE MORE (2020), Sissi for Rollers (2019). In 2009, the 1861 United Agency published The Ecology of Image, a large monograph of Benassi’s works. He also published the photographic books FAGS (NERO, 2020), Dying in Venice (Bruno, 2015), Bologna Portraits (Damiani, 2019), Mis Q Lee (Quinlan, 2018), and Gli aspetti irrilevanti (Mondadori, 2016) with Paolo Sorrentino. He released the LPs ONCE MORE with Kinkaleri (Xing, 2021) and Benassi plays Benassi (2019), a sonic and photographic self-documentation of his body, with remix by Khan of Finland and Jochen Arbeit. He has worked with numerous magazines in Italy and abroad, such as: Rolling Stone, GQ, Wired italia, Wired U.S.A, Riders, 11 Freunde, Crush Fanzine, Dapper Dan, Vice, Almaviva/Le Figaro, Gioia, and Purple.fr.

Alice Ronchi was born in 1989, Ponte dell’Olio.
She grained her BA at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA), Milan, IT (2012) and her MA at the departement of Material utopias at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, NL (2015).
She attendend a Residency VSC / Vermont Studio Center, Vermont (USA) in 2017.
In Alice Ronchi’s sculptures and installations, everyday objects meet the world of invention and fantasy. The search for “wonder” is a constant theme in the art of Alice Ronchi, populated by familiar yet enigmatic figures, product of the re-elaboration in an abstract key of everyday objects. Halfway between playful and minimalist, Alice Ronchi’s work is always a perfect synthesis of formal simplicity and geometrical precision. Through the use of different media, ranging from sculpture to photography, from performance to video, Alice Ronchi questions the world with a curious gaze and returns it to us as if it were a magic place, with the ability that artists have always had of looking at the world with different eyes.

She exhibited at Gasconade space, Milan, Peep-Hole, Milan (both 2013); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; La Triennale Museum, Milano (both 2014), Galleria civica di Trento, Trento, Fons Welters Gallery, Amsterdam (both 2015); Macro Museum, Rome and Stadgalerie, Kiel (both 2016), MamBo, Bologna (2018), MAXXI, Rome (2019), GAM, Turin (2020).
Currently she is teaching at NABA University in Milan: Sculpture – International English course.