That’s IT!

MAMbo – Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna opens its new seasons in the main venue—Sala delle Ciminiere—with That’s IT! On the newest generation of artists in Italy and one meter eighty from the border, an exhibition curated by Lorenzo Balbi and showcasing works by 56 artists and collectives born in 1980 or later, an exploratory journey through different media and languages.

Clearly generational in tone, the exhibition explores the latest developments of art in Italy, consistently with the specific position that MAMbo decided to take on the Italian and international scene.

That’s IT! (IT as the EU code that stands for Italy) deliberately chooses not to revolve around a single, monolithic concept, instead it comes up with questions, potential perceptions of the contemporary world from an open, dialectic, magmatic perspective. Does it still make sense nowadays to speak of an “Italian” artist? What defines “Italian-ness”? Does such definition have consequences on an artist’s self-representation? Where and how do we put the generational boundary?

The exhibition offers some cues. It includes artists born in Italy and working in Italy; born in Italy and working abroad; born in Italy and working both in Italy and abroad; born abroad and working in Italy; born abroad and working abroad but who have studied in Italy. Such a wide variety of potential combinations of birthplaces, places to study and places to work in is the epitome of a fluidity that shies away from barriers and easy labels, which we can sense in the subtitle of the exhibition, from Arte e confini by Bruno Munari (Codice ovvio, 1971).

The works on display at MAMbo, which include installations, videos, photography, sound art, sculptures, performances, paintings, works on paper, are set in an open layout, with no barriers, that appropriates and contaminates all the areas of the Museum and even outside of it, with art installations in the adjoining Parco del Cavaticcio and a number of videos screened at Cinema Lumière, in partnership with Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, works showed on the Instagram profile of MAMbo and among the pages of the Edizioni MAMbo book that accompanies That's IT!.

Artists and collectives from the older to the younger one:

Matilde Cassani (1980), Giuseppe De Mattia (1980), Margherita Moscardini (1981), Michele Sibiloni (1981), Riccardo Benassi (1982), Ludovica Carbotta (1982), Danilo Correale (1982), Andrea De Stefani (1982), Giulio Squillacciotti (1982), Marco Strappato (1982), Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli (1982), Ian Tweedy (1982), Invernomuto (Simone Trabucchi, 1982 and Simone Bertuzzi, 1983), Francesco Bertocco (1983), Giovanni Giaretta (1983), Lorenzo Senni (1983), Alberto Tadiello (1983), IOCOSE (Filippo Cuttica, 1983, Davide Prati, 1983, Matteo Cremonesi, 1984 and Paolo Ruffino, 1984), Elia Cantori (1984), Giulio Delvè (1984), Elena Mazzi (1984), Diego Tonus (1984), Calori&Maillard (Violette Maillard, 1984 and Letizia Calori, 1986), Federico Antonini (1985), Alessio D’Ellena (1985), Nicolò Degiorgis (1985), Riccardo Giacconi (1985), Adelita Husni-Bey (1985), Diego Marcon (1985), Ruth Beraha (1986), Elisa Caldana (1986), Roberto Fassone (1986), Francesco Fonassi (1986), Petrit Halilaj (1986), Andrea Kvas (1986), Beatrice Marchi (1986), The Cool Couple (Niccolò Benetton, 1986 and Simone Santilli, 1987), Filippo Bisagni (1987), Benni Bosetto (1987), Lia Cecchin (1987), Alessandro Di Pietro (1987), Stefano Serretta (1987), Giulia Cenci (1988), Tomaso De Luca (1988), Julia Frank (1988), Marco Giordano (1988), Orestis Mavroudis (1988), Valentina Furian (1989), Parasite 2.0 (Stefano Colombo, 1989, Eugenio Cosentino, 1989 and Luca Marullo, 1989), Alice Ronchi (1989), Emilio Vavarella (1989), Irene Fenara (1990), Angelo Licciardello (1990) & Francesco Tagliavia (1992), Caterina Morigi (1991), Margherita Raso (1991), Guendalina Cerruti (1992).

That’s IT! On the newest generation of artists in Italy and one meter eighty from the border has been supported by Hera, the main sponsor, by the sponsor Gruppo Unipol and by Regione Emilia-Romagna. The exhibition is part of BE Here. Bologna Estate, the summer programme of events promoted and coordinated by the Municipality of Bologna.

Curatorial assistants: Sabrina Samorì and Stefano Vittorini.