Andrea Zittel
Between Art and Life
June 17 – July 16, 2010
Florence, Palazzo Pitti
Galleria del Costume, Sale della Meridiana
Confidence, freedom, consistency, experience: these are just a few of the key words we need to understand the work of Andrea Zittel. The 45 year old American is one of the most interesting figures on the international contemporary art scene; she has been invited – more than once – to participate in events such as the Biennale di Venezia, Documenta in Kassel, the Whitney Museum Biennial and she recently held a large personal exhibition at the Schaulager Museum in Basel.
Andrea Zittel’s career – she signs her works with A-Z Administrative Service Zittel, an original “brand name” that is also impersonal and a manifesto which reveals her approach to conceiving and producing art. She was born in California where she completed the first part of her education, then she moved to Brooklyn; now she is back in California and lives in the Joshua Tree Desert with her son.
Currently, Andrea is pursuing her artistic research and applying it to daily life: the materials, limits and meanings of living space, clothing and household objects, the body’s resistance in situations where time cannot be measured, and the procedures we use to define and evaluate quality. It involves strict personal discipline and both psychological and biological explorations of our existence.
Between Art and Life, the Florence exhibition in Palazzo Pitti curated by Alberto Salvadori – produced and sponsored by the Osservatorio Arti Contemporanee – Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze (OAC) and the Fondazione Pitti Discovery, with the support of the Polo Museale Fiorentino, and with the cooperation of the Andrea Rosen Gallery of New York and the Galleria Massimo De Carlo of Milan, presents a selection of more than 80 works of the artist, two of which were created specifically for this occasion. The show ranges from wagon stations to living systems and capsules for extreme situations, such as the desert, to clothing-uniforms, to gouaches, panel paintings and paper rugs.
“To see Andrea Zittel at the Galleria del Costume in Palazzo Pitti”, says Alberto Salvadori, the exhibition curator, “is to discover daily life, the personal dimension of living in a space that has turned the tiniest gestures of a lost intimacy into something fit for a museum”.
The exhibition opening at Palazzo Pitti – and this being Andrea Zittel’s first show in a public museum in Italy – will be the core artistic event of the forthcoming Pitti Uomo fashion week. The exhibiton will show at Galleria del Costume, Sale della Meridiana from June 18th until July 16th 2010.
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