Michele Dantini. Cythère
BardiniContemporanea 2
curated by Alberto Salvadori
29 Nov 2008 – 28 Feb 2009
Villa Bardini
BardiniContemporanea
Costa San Giorgio, 2 and 6°
Florence
ENTE CASSA DI RISPARMIO DI FIRENZE
VILLA BARDINI. BARDINI CONTEMPORANEA
There are enigmatic ambivalences in the relationships between mind and world, architecture and nature. We construct narrations of nature in the very cores of cities, and patches of lost splendor are scattered in places of social, cultural and urban design transformation, in corporate headquarters and big professional offices, in streets or squares, within institutional contexts. What are the political and social uses of nature? What is the desire that drives “biophile” fictions? In reflecting on practices of conservation and archiving, Cythère’s title alludes to Watteau’s famous painting, and to the island on which Aphrodite dwelled, both a pilgrimage destination and a reward of love. The project, realized through extensive research and photography campaigns in museum institutions dedicated to the contemporary and contexts often little-known or not accessible to the public, is a sort of selective and fragmentary inquiry on the human mind, an attempt at an experiment on the anthropology of the “immaterial” conducted through attention to the fictions of distance, shifting, splendor; to the devices, the signs, the lines of consolidation or fractures of illusion and the artifices that have supported and generated it. More in general, Cythére reflects on the complex relationships between museum and myth, modernist architecture and travel narration, encounter and discovery. It is a backwards movement along the narrow genealogical path that leads from edifice to mirage, from the rhetorics of set-up and display to the mental process awakened.
On display in the premises of Villa Bardini, one of the most striking exhibition venues in Florence, are 12 large-size photos, drawings and an audio work by Michele Dantini.
In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalogue will be published by Gli Ori, with texts by Alberto Salvadori and Luigi Fassi.
BardiniContemporanea is part of the Osservatorio per le Arti Contemporanee initiative of the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze.
Information
Press conference: 28th November 2008, 12.00 a.m. at the exhibition seat
Opening of the exhibition: 28th November 2008, 7.00 p.m.
Title: Michele Dantini. Cythère
Location: Firenze, Villa Bardini, Costa San Giorgio, 2 and 6a
Duration: 29th November 2008- 28th February 2009
Free entrance
Exhibition hours: from Tuesday to Sunday 8.15 a.m. -10 p.m.; closed on Monday, 25th December, 1st January
Information: tel. +39 055 2613289
Web site: http://www.bardinipeyron.it
Press office: Susanna Holm – Sigma C.S.C., Firenze
tel. +39 055 2340742 fax +39 055 244145 – cscsigma@cscsigma.it
Michele Dantini.
Artist, writer and curator, Michele Dantini mixes fieldwork practices, archive research and fine arts’ esthetics. Professor of history of contemporary art, involved in socioecological conservation projects, his complex exhibition projects are informed by many languages and/or cultural and relational practices (installations, photography, interviewing, social solidarity initiatives). They focus on the themes of displacement on the one hand, the aesthetics and politics of unexpected on the other.
BardiniContemporanea. The complex of Villa Bardini, both for its architectural structure and its splendid view over Florence, is the natural seat to represent the multiplicity of the city’s cultural aspects epitomizing different historical periods, but also those showing a continuity in the present. Together with the collection of works by Pietro Annigoni and the ingenious fashion “architectural” creations by Roberto Capucci, this space also contains contemporary works, in particular those by Italian and foreign artists most innovative as for conceptual and performative languages, in line with the ongoing international research trend. BardiniContemporanea, a small yet particularly significant exhibition space, actually succeeds in integrating the network of places and events that the Osservatorio per le Arti Contemporanee is fostering and supporting, for it is undoubtedly possible to consider Florence as a sort of scattered museum of contemporary art, particularly active and with incisive prospects.
