Programming: Artissima 2017

Alongside a refined fair project capable of bringing together a simultaneously rigorous and fresh selection of the best contemporary art galleries operating on the international scene, Artissima continues its cutting-edge investigation, experimenting with new ways of interacting with its audience of collectors, art professionals and art lovers.  

It does this not only through a new digital platform, artissima.art, but also with two special projects, two new models of communication with the art audience.

In the 1960s Torino was one of the international capitals of artistic research. Today Artissima pays tribute to that heritage, looking back on one of the most innovative experiences of the time: the Deposito d’Arte Presente (Warehouse of Present-Day Art, 1967–68). A place of production and display organised by a group of emerging artists at the time, with the support of Gian Enzo Sperone the Deposito, in the words of art historian Robert Lumley, was “an extemporaneous, non-permanent collection … a space for the present, for a type of art connected to the hic et nunc and stripped of any sacred character”.  

With the Deposito d’Arte Italiana Presente, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Vittoria Martini, Artissima retrieves that format, shifting it into the present time and using it as a conceptual framework for a project that absorbs the operative modes of the original.  

Presenting works from Piedmont-based institutions and the galleries exhibiting at the fair, the Deposito is not an exhibition but a dynamic warehouse, a place of in-depth research through which to narrate the last 20 years of Italian art, to capture it today and understand its future developments. The Deposito becomes a place of study and discovery for curators, collectors and art lovers.  

PIPER. Learning at the discotheque is the title of the programme of Artissima talks coordinated by “the classroom”, a centre of art and education directed by Paola Nicolin.  

The content of the project develops from reflections on the Piper club in Torino, a discotheque designed by Pietro Derossi with Giorgio Ceretti and Riccardo Rosso, which became a popular venue from 1966 to 1969, welcoming eclectic and creative personalities like Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alighiero Boetti, Piero Gilardi, Mario and Marisa Merz, Gianni Piacentino, Carlo Colnaghi, Carlo Quartucci, Patty Pravo, Living Theater, Carmelo Bene, Massimo Pellegrini, Pietro Gallina, just to name a few.  

Transforming the provincial atmosphere of a “dance hall” into a self-managed cultural centre, the Piper set a precedent on an international level for non-institutional spaces focusing on contemporary art. Artissima offers an evocative reconstruction: a classroom-disco created in collaboration with the art groupSuperbudda, and with the contribution of Gufram, which due to its historic ties with Derossi, Ceretti, Rosso and its outstanding role in the 1960s and 1970s in Torino, has reproduced the chairs designed by Pietro Derossi for the Piper, based on the original drawings from 1966.  

A space occupied first by the course taught by the artist Seb Patane, and then open during the days of the fair for interviews and talks on contemporary artistic production. For the complete programme of events visit our agenda.