The New Frontiers of Painting

Curator: Demetrio Paparoni

34 works / 34 artists / 17 countries: these are the key numbers of the major international exhibition, conceived and realised by Fondazione Stelline and curated by Demetrio Paparoni, focused exclusively on new trends in contemporary figurative painting in European and Asian areas. The exhibition highlights the role that Fondazione Stelline plays in the international artistic debate and the focus it has always placed on the most important creative expressions of our time.

The New Frontiers of Painting presents 34 works by Francis Alÿs, Michaël Borremans, Kevin Cosgrove, Jules de Balincourt, Lars Elling, Inka Essenhigh, Laurent Grasso, Li Songsong, Liu Xiaodong, Victor Man, Margherita Manzelli, Rafael Megall, Justin Mortimer, Paulina Olowska, Alessandro Pessoli, Daniel Pitín, Pietro Roccasalva, Nicola Samorì, Wilhelm Sasnal, Markus Schinwald, David Schnell, Dana Schutz, Vibeke Slyngstad, Anj Smith, Nguyê˜n Thái Tuâ´n, Natee Utarit, Ronald Ventura, Nicola Verlato, Sophie von Hellermann, Ruprecht von Kaufmann, Wang Guangyi, Matthias Weischer, Yue Minjun, Zhang Huan.

The peculiarity of the exhibition lies in the fact that it presents only figurative paintings of painters born from 1960 onwards who live in different parts of the world. Almost all paintings are large size and comes mostly from artists consolidated on the international scene. Gathering them under one roof shows that painting is a language that still has a lot to say and this contrasts with the orientation of the large international exhibitions. The exhibition also establishes a dialogue with the work of leading artists living in the new Chinese and Southeast Asian scene, witnessing the importance of cultural exchanges with countries with whom dialogue is becoming increasingly intense. The project tends to highlight the incidence that painting has in the artistic landscape of the last decades and the stylistic-contentual turning point in the new millennium. 

A catalogue, edited by Skira, has been published for this exhibition. In addition to an introductory essay by the curator, and reproductions of the works on display, it will include critical and explanatory texts on the art, and on the artists, by Maria Cannarella, Pia Capelli, Elena Di Raddo, Alessandra Klimciuk, Tone Lyngstad Nyaas, Gianni Mercurio, Rischa Paterlini, Giulia Pra Floriani, Lorenzo Respi, Sabina Spada, Luigi Spagnol, Alberto Zanchetta, and Giacomo Zaza.