IMAGERY
FIGURABILIA, the first edition of the small iconic art festival, will take place on 24|25|26 January 2020 in Bologna
The artists involved are:
ANTONELLA CINELLI, ROBERTA DALLARA, ERICA FUSCHINI, CRISTINA IOTTI, ILARIA MARGUTTI, ROBERTA SERENARI, VANIA ELETTRA TAM, ROBERTA UBALDI.
At the center of this first edition will be the female figure, interpreted by 8 Italian artists who will exhibit and illustrate the role and symbolic meaning of women through figurative art.
Also on the program are workshops, literary meetings and discussions between artists, intellectuals and the public.
The creator and artistic director of the festival is Antonella Cinelli.
Special guest is the art critic Carlo Micheli.
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> Inauguration Friday 24 January 2020
5.30pm Spazio Menomale via de’ Pepoli 1/2 – Bologna
ore 19.30 Odeon Gallery via Mascarella 3 – Bologna
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>> opening hours <<
Menomale Space: Fri 5.30pm | 10.00pm – Sat 4.00pm | 24.00 – Sun 15.00 | 8.00pm
Odeon Gallery: every day from 3.30pm to 11pm
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A selection of works will remain on display until 21 February 2020 at the Odeon Gallery
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>> Figurebilia program, talk, meetings and presentations <<
> Friday 24 January 2020
*Space Luckily:
– 5.30 pm – Inauguration of FIGURABILIA
Greetings from the president of the school and culture commission of the municipality of Bologna FEDERICA MAZZON
– Following CARLO MICHELI talks with the artists (and with the public)
– 9.00 pm – “Illustration, photography and painting in dialogue with the written page Meetings with the author in collaboration with Edizioni Pendragon” presents:
“Bertoldo and Bertoldino” with Giuseppe Palumbo and Franco Bacchelli. A new illustrated edition of Giulio Cesare Croce's classic
*Odeon Gallery:
– 7.30 pm – FIGURABLE inauguration
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> Saturday 25 January
Space Luckily:
– 5.00 pm – “Illustration, photography and painting in dialogue with the written page Meetings with the author in collaboration with Edizioni Pendragon” presents:
“The animated flowers” with Antonio Castronuovo and Nicola Muschitiello. Anthropomorphic flowers or women with graceful and delicate features dressed as flowers represent the sum of the creative talent of Grandville, the famous illustrator and caricaturist of the second French romanticism.
– 6.30 pm – Ilaria Margutti Presents the Casermarcheologica project “Architecture that generates community” Space for contemporary art.
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> Sunday 26 January
*Space Luckily:
– 4.00 pm – “Illustration, photography and painting in dialogue with the written page Meetings with the author in collaboration with Edizioni Pendragon” presents:
“Portraits of invisible people” with Rosy Sinicropi and Diego Pagani. We talk a lot about bees, but little about their keepers. Stories of thirteen beekeepers told through photographs and texts.
– 5.30 pm – “Illustration, photography and painting in dialogue with the written page Meetings with the author in collaboration with Edizioni Pendragon” presents:
“The little book of clouds” with Eléonore Grassi and Federica Rapini. Original and difficult to classify into a specific literary genre, this publication full of surprises tells of the world of wonders that lie just above us.
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INFO:
IMAGERY
Small festival of iconic art
24|25|26 January 2020
LUCKY SPACE via de' Pepoli 1/2 Bologna
ODEON GALLERY via Mascarella 3 Bologna
Project conception and artistic direction: Antonella Cinelli
With the participation of the art critic: Carlo Micheli
The theme of this first edition is THE FEMALE IN ART
The artists involved are:
ANTONELLA CINELLI, ROBERTA DALLARA, ERICA FUSCHINI, CRISTINA IOTTI, ILARIA MARGUTTI, ROBERTA SERENARI, VANIA ELETTRA TAM, ROBERTA UBALDI.
In collaboration with Edizioni Pendragon
Coordination assistant: Roberta Dallara
Graphic project: Vania Elettra Tam
Inauguration Friday 24 January 2020
5.30pm Space Menomale
ore 19.30 Odeon Gallery
opening hours Spazio Menomale: Fri 5.30pm | 10.00pm – Sat 4.00pm | 24.00 – Sun 15.00 | 8.00pm
Odeon Gallery opening hours: every day from 3.30pm to 11pm
Press Office: Fluid Communication
Barbara Mazzocco – barbara.mazzocco@fluidacomunicazione.it
M. +39 347 950 7832 – www.fluidacomunicazione.it
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8 WOMEN 8 by Carlo Micheli:
FIGURABILIA must be experienced with the same feverish expectation as when as children we awaited the circus, perhaps one of those smaller, self-managed circuses, where the trapeze artist also takes care of the lights, but where by choice high-level attractions were found, eager to change some rules of the show, where eight artists perform high-school numbers, engaging with the public and the experts to understand, to be understood, to understand each other. FIGURABILIA is a pebble thrown into the pond, but you have enormous expectations, because you will involve the "top floor of the head" and art needs this more, today more than ever. And my role? Launching this Festival in the spirit and role of the presenter of a circus show, who is responsible for filling the pauses between one number and another, but who is in fact happy to cut it short, aware that the public is who came to witness the virtuosity of the magnificent eight…
ANTONELLA CINELLI is the creator and curator of FIGURABILIA, “dea ex machina” of the festival. His painting, which can be defined as "documentation" portraiture, is technically evolving towards greater speed of execution, towards less defined but more meaningful images in which, thanks to the large formats, the subject is placed under a special magnifying glass which, instead of physical peculiarities, accentuates their interiority and moral qualities.
ROBERTA DALLARA focuses her attention on fragments of uninhabited interiors, however pervaded by the palpable, perceptible presence of herself. Minimal clues scattered throughout the narrative process: a t-shirt hung out to dry on the balcony, lace on the seat of the chair, suggest the author's subtle game. Precisely the proclaimed absence of the female figure evokes her presence, thus breaking down the specious wall erected between realism and abstraction.
ERIVA FUSCHINI in her "pictorial introspections" offers portraits of the homeless, reminding us that the term does not indicate a particular human category, but an existential condition: there are those who are victims of their own excesses, those who have suffered relentless pain, but also who observes us with commiseration... The artist's inquiring and (artaudian-style) cruel gaze goes well with the drawing of the leopard which, not coincidentally, Erica titled "me".
CRISTINA IOTTI conducts her research on the level of apparent simplicity, masterfully creating true icons of femininity, focused on external attributes (lace, flowers, embroidered dresses, hands with long, well-groomed nails). But these are details, parts of the body, while her face never appears, so that the unrecognizable figure becomes the archetype of a timeless femininity, all delicacy, elegance, lightness.
ILARIA MARGUTTI has chosen to sew her passion onto the canvas, embroidering an interiority that is revealed stitch after stitch, giving body to the sign, sometimes to the dream. This "philography" is in fact a particular realizing, all-encompassing liturgy, which encloses the artist in a sort of timeless cocoon, where the repetitiveness of the gesture lulls her thoughts, exposing her personality. A blood-colored thread to ensure escape from the labyrinth of contemporary banality.
ROBERTA SERENARI, equipped with an uncommon technique, has the great merit of having made her art flow towards dreamlike and surreal dynamics. Her girls are restless and disturbing like childhood and fairy tales should be, Anchovies who challenge the gazes of adults without affectation. Immersed in rooms full of abandoned toys, they tear apart the furnishings and customs of the past. Rebellious and disenchanted, they know how to abandon themselves to dreams and creativity.
VANIA ELETTRA TAM projects an ironic gaze onto reality, delving into the depths of the unconscious to highlight the paradoxical situations we no longer even notice. Her paintings, apparently easy to read, hide a conceptual work that ranges from advertising to puzzles, from news to art history. This transversal research gives her works an unmistakable stylistic signature, characterized by various interpretations, summarized in the play on words CONTAMinATION.
ROBERTA UBALDI uses rust as a support and material for her artistic work. But the rust also represents that thin diaphragm of place, time and space from which the pictorial interventions seem to free themselves, re-emerging from oblivion... or from which they are sucked in to disappear into a parallel dimension. The drama of the representations seems to clash with the warm and persuasive colours, but a winning balance is born from this Heraclitean contrast.
