ARTISSIMA 2017: 24th EDITION

Artissima 2017 opens on Thursday 2 November, welcoming the public from Friday 3 to Sunday 5 November at the OVAL Pavilion in Torino. The 24th edition of the fair takes place for the first time with the leadership of Ilaria Bonacossa, appointed director in December 2016.  

Artissima confirms its position as a unique event on the European cultural scene, capable of attracting galleries, artists, collectors and art professionals from all over the world.  

Known internationally for its focus on experimental practices and its capacity to renew its vision with each edition, in 2017 the fair introduces a series of new developments that have an across-the-board impact on its programme and structure.  

The innovations for 2017 underline the fair’s role in the discovery and encouragement of talent, reasserting its position as an authoritative platform of research for the future of art.  

Artissima now includes a new section, Disegni, joining the other existing curated sections Present Future, for emerging talents, which began in 2001, and Back to the Future, inserted in 2010 with a focus on the major pioneers of contemporary art. These two latter formats have become true must-see events on the international fair circuit.  

Artissima 2017 pays particularly close attention to nurturing young collectors, reinforcing the network of international collectors hosted in Torino and actively supporting Italian art, allowing the finest creative resources of the territory to emerge and identifying the Italian artists of the future.  

For the 50th anniversary of the birth of Arte Povera, this 24th edition also strengthens the bond between the fair and the city of Torino, reinvestigating and re-evaluating the cultural foundations that in those days made Torino the Italian capital of contemporary art.  

The vitality of Artissima and its innovative thrust resonate throughout the city, through collaborations with the many museums and institutions, and the development of special projects.  

The fair has always been considered a fundamental event for Torino, thanks to its ability to attract a wide-ranging international audience and to activate effective, inclusive economic and cultural processes. During the 2017 edition, the impact on the city and the region will be analysed through a specific research project commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce of Torino – confirming its interest in the fair – to the Department of Management of the University of Torino. The results will be presented in 2018.  

Once again, Artissima confirms its role as a unique platform capable of supporting curatorial research with a dynamic, constantly evolving approach.  

The fair is managed by Artissima srl, a company affiliated with Fondazione Torino Musei.  

Disegni: the new section of Artissima curated by Luís Silva and João Mourão. Besides focusing on an artistic practice – drawing – capable of capturing the immediacy of the creative process and the thinking gesture, Disegni also addresses the advent of a new form of collecting.  

A new team of curators for the various sections has been appointed, engaging with Italian and international personalities who have an active role in the transformations in progress in the world of contemporary art.  

The Deposito d’Arte Italiana Presente: the new exhibition project of Artissima on Italian art from 1994 to the present curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Vittoria Martini. The Deposito will host prestigious loans from Piedmont-based institutions and works from the galleries taking part in the fair.  

“Piper. Learning at the discotheque”: the new programme of talks coordinated by the classroom, conceived to narrate contemporary art in an unconventional way, inside a space based on the historic Piper discotheque in Torino.  

Three new prizes assigned to artists and galleries participating at the fair: the OGR Award is the new prize of the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, involving the acquisition of a work for its collection, taking its place at the new OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni of Torino. Refresh Premio Irinox, supported by Irinox and focusing in 2017 on the new Disegni section, honors an artist who “reinvents by conserving”, bringing out the expressive immediacy of drawing in a contemporary way. The Campari Art Prize, in collaboration with Gruppo Campari, is assigned to an artist under 35 years of age who focuses on the evocative power of storytelling in its multiple interpretations.  

A digital platform: Artissima has transformed its catalogue in a digital platform that is constantly updated to offer galleries a showcase that is not only physical but also virtual, where they can independently organise content and make contact with a much larger audience of art connoisseurs.    

The fair design: the studio Vudafieri Saverino Partners of Milan has designed the new installation to enhance the spaces of the pavilion and the various projects of the fair.  

#SocialRoom: a space of #ArtissimaLive in which visitors can recharge their digital devices in an atmosphere full of stimuli, ideas and digital inspirations.  

The new coordinated image by Studio Sonnoli. The graphic design chosen to represent the identity of the fair narrates the transformative spirit of contemporary art, which has always been the focus of Artissima.  

New focus on food, wine and culinary research. The inventive vigour of the award-winning chef Mariangela Susigan, of Gardenia in Caluso, will host the fair’s guests at the restaurant on the balcony of the VIP Lounge offering them an intense and imaginative experience. The bistro will be organised by Piaceri d’Italia, a gastronomy company with a focus on quality and authenticity, thanks to contacts with Slow Food affiliates.  

After Artissima: the historic Società Canottieri Esperia club will organise “After Artissima”, a “chill, drink and dance” lounge, from Thursday 2 to Saturday 4 November, from 22.30 to 03.00. (Open to guests with exhibitor badges, VIP cards and press passes).

This year, Artissima is collaborating with the Austrian fashion designer Arthur Arbesser (Vienna, 1982), who will oversee the wardrobe of Ilaria Bonacossa during the fair (arthurarbesser.com).  

In the words of Ilaria Bonacossa, “2017 marks an important anniversary, not just for Torino but for the entire art world: 50 years have passed since the first Arte Povera exhibition (in 1967), the most revolutionary, thrilling and poetic avant-garde movement of the postwar era, which reflected the contemporary spirit of this city. To celebrate that creative energy today, in the spaces of the Oval Artissima evokes two surprising and still little known experiences of those years: the Piper Club of Torino (1966–69), and the Deposito dell’Arte Presente (1967–68). The story of the Piper discotheque, home to a vivacious subculture, is narrated in the project “Piper. Learning at the discotheque”, in which a programme of lecture-conferences becomes an unconventional school. The revolutionary experience of the Deposito, an industrial space opened up to present the works of the nascent Arte Povera outside of “bourgeois” venues, becomes the cue for the project Deposito d’Arte Italiana Presente, in which a warehouse is transformed in an exhibition space to present a selection of works made from 1994 to 2017 by Italian artists of different generations.  

For a curator, directing Artissima is an opportunity not only to rediscover the past, but also to get a glimpse of the future of art, challenging the status quo. Contemporary art fairs stand out for the lack of hierarchy of their offerings, in which the multiplicity of paths of artistic research redefines the global system of contemporary art. The fair develops horizontally like a rhizome, juxtaposing the works of 700 artists presented by over 200 galleries in a diffused, reticular, acentric structure. Just as the rhizome is an anti-tree, an anti-root, so the fair is an anti-structure capable in its multiplicity of opening vantage points on the future transformations of the contemporary society. While art alone may not be able to change the world, we hope that the encounter with surprising and thrilling works can change the way each of us looks at reality.”