Anish Kapoor @ Palazzo Strozzi, Florence - "Untrue Unreal" Exhibition

Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal

Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

7 October 2023 – 4 February 2024

Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence presents Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal, a major new exhibition devised and produced with the celebrated artist who has revolutionised the notion of sculpture in contemporary art. Curated by Arturo Galansino, Director General of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the show features monumental installations, intimate environments and thought-provoking forms that will forge an original and captivating dialogue between the art of Anish Kapoor and the architecture and audience of Palazzo Strozzi. 

With a wide range of early, mid-career and recent works, including a new architecturally scaled work especially conceived for the Renaissance courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, the exhibition offers an opportunity to engage directly with the artist’s oeuvre in all its versatility, discord, entropy and ephemerality. Palazzo Strozzi becomes a venue at once concave and convex, whole and yet fragmented, in which visitors are called on to question their senses.

In Anish Kapoor's art, the unreal merges with the untrue, transforming or negating the common perception of reality. He invites us to explore a world where the boundaries between what is true and false dissolve, opening the doors to the realm of the impossible. One of the distinguishing features is the way Anish Kapoor’s works transcend their materiality. Pigment, stone, steel, wax and silicone, to name only a few of the materials he works with, are manipulated – carved, polished, saturated and formed – to the point of a dissolution of boundaries between the plastic and the immaterial. Colour in Anish Kapoor’s hands is not simply matter and hue, but becomes an immersive phenomenon, containing its own spatial and illusive volume.

Anish Kapoor’s works merge empty and full space, absorbing and reflecting surface, geometrical and biomorphic form. Shunning categorisation and distinguishing himself by a unique visual language that embraces painting, sculpture and architectural forms, Kapoor explores space and time, the interior and the exterior, urging us to probe in the first person the limits and potential of our relationship with the world around us and to reflect on perceived dualities such as body and mind, nature and artifice. His work sparks amazement and uneasiness, encouraging us to question certainties and embrace complexity. In a world where reality seems increasingly elusive and manipulable, Anish Kapoor challenges us to seek truth beyond appearances, inviting us to explore the territory of the untrue and the unreal.

Arturo Galansino, General Director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and curator of the exhibition states: “In the wake of our series of exhibitions dedicated to the leading figures of contemporary art, Kapoor has engaged in a direct dialogue with the Renaissance architecture. The result is entirely original, almost a kind of dialectical juxtaposition, where symmetry, harmony, and rigor are called into question, and the boundaries between material and immaterial dissolve. Amidst the rational geometries of Palazzo Strozzi, Kapoor invites us in this exhibition to lose and rediscover ourselves, prompting us to question what is untrue or unreal."

Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal unfolds in the spaces of Palazzo Strozzi in between the galleries at the Piano Nobile and the Renaissance courtyard, in a journey through Kapoor’s diverse artistic practice that challenges the very notion of form and formlessness, fiction and reality.

At the centre of the courtyard stands "Void Pavilion VI"I (2023), a large pavilion that serves as both a point of departure and arrival in the dialogue between Kapoor’s art and Palazzo Strozzi. Upon entering the sculpture, visitors are confronted by a triad of rectangular voids that invite the gaze to descend within, offering a meditative experience of space, perspective and time that unsettles the rational geometric structure of the Renaissance building in which it sits and the orderliness it so emblematically represents.

At the Piano Nobile, the exhibition takes off with the iconic work "Svayambhu" (2007), a title that derives from the Sanskrit term denoting self-originated entities, akin to the Christian concept of acheropoieta, images not made by human hands. As this vast block of blood-red wax moves slowly along its track between two rooms of Palazzo Strozzi, it creates a dialectic between void and matter as its formless substance is shaped by the architecture it pushes through.

This work is presented in dialogue with "Endless Column" (1992), a work that references Constantin Brâncuși's iconic modernist sculpture of the same title from 1937. Anish Kapoor’s red pigment sculpture penetrates floor and ceiling to create an aethereal architectural physicality that stands as a link between earth and cosmos. On a different scale but equally architectural is "To Reflect an Intimate Part of the Red" (1981), a seminal work from Anish Kapoor's early career that marked his breakthrough on the international art scene as a profoundly original voice in contemporary art. A suggestive combination of yellow and red pigment forms, appear to emerge from the floor—fragile, otherworldly, yet powerfully present.

In "Non-Object Black" (2015) – characterised by the use of the highly innovative material Vantablack, capable of absorbing over 99.9% of visible light – Kapoor challenges the very idea of a physical and tangible object, presenting us with a form that dissipates as the gaze moves around it. In these groundbreaking works Anish Kapoor provokes us to question the very notion of being, offering a reflection not only on the fictional object but on the immateriality that permeates our world. The fullness of the experience of the no-thing is continued in "Gathering Clouds" (2014), concave monochromes that absorb the space around them in their brooding darkness. Anish Kapoor’s work offers a new way of seeing and thinking about how we experience ‘reality’, with his unique use of form and saturation these works are permeated with psychic resonance.

Flesh, organic matter, body and blood are recurring and fundamental themes in Kapoor’s artistic creation. An entire room is dedicated to works in which Kapoor examines a flayed and ravaged interiority that renders the body as entropic and abjected. The large sculpture in steel and resin "A Blackish Fluid Excavation" (2018) evokes a gnarled vaginal void, that crosses the space and the senses of the spectator. On the wall, Kapoor’s paintings created with silicone are shaped with fluid forms that appear to us as visceral masses, pulsating with their own life. These structures twist, expand, and contract, evoking a sense of continuous movement and transformation. At the same time, a strong tactile sensuality arises from the interplay between softness and solidity, organicity and linearity. These qualities underlie works with evocative titles such as "First Milk" (2015), "Tongue Memory" (2016), "Today You Will Be in Paradise" (2016), "Three Days of Mourning" (2016).

The notion of boundaries and the duality between subject and object are central to Anish Kapoor’s mirror works like "Vertigo" (2006), "Mirror" (2018) and "Newborn" (2019), a work that again pays homage to Constantin Brâncuși’s formal experiments. With their inverted reflections, the specular is thrown into the realm of the illusory in works that seem to defy the laws of physics. These large-scale sculptures reflect and distort the surrounding space, enlarging, reducing and multiplying it, creating a sense of unreality and destabilization while drawing the viewer into the indefinite space they emanate.

The exhibition path of the Piano Nobile concludes with "Angel" (1990): large slate stones covered in numerous layers of intense Prussian blue pigment. These weighty masses appear in contradiction with their ethereal appearance; they seem to solidify the air and suggest the transformation of slate slabs into pieces of sky, transfiguring the concept of purity into a material element. Anish Kapoor manipulates the hyper-materiality of this work to evoke a sense of mystery that responds to the esoteric ambition of achieving the fusion of opposites.

ANISH KAPOOR is one of the most influential artists of our time. Born in Mumbai, India in 1954, Anish Kapoor has lived and worked in London since studying sculpture at Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea College of Art in the mid-seventies. In recent years dividing his time between studios in London and Venice.

His works are permanently exhibited in the most important collections and museums around the world from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Tate in London; the Prada Foundation in Milan and the Guggenheim Museums in Venice, Bilbao and Abu Dhabi. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Galleria dell’Accademia di Venezia & Palazzo Manfrin, Venice, Italy (2022); Modern Art Oxford, UK (2021); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK (2020); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2020); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and Imperial Ancestral Tempie, Beijing (2019); Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires (2019); Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Porto, Portugal (2018); University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City (2016); Chateau de Versailles, France (2015); Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow, (2015); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2013); Sakip Sabanci Muzesi, Istanbul (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012).

Anish Kapoor represented Great Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 where he was awarded the Premio Duemila Prize. In 1991 he won the Turner Prize and has gone on to receive numerous international awards and honours. Also renowned for his architecturally scaled works, public projects include: Cloud Gate (2004), Millennium Park, Chicago, USA; Leviathan (2011) exhibited at Monumenta, Paris, France; Orbit (2012), Oueen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London; Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created for Lucerne Festival, Japan (2013); Descension (2014) most recently installed in Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, USA (2017) and the soon to be completed Traiano and Universitá Monte St Angelo Metro Stations, Naples, Italy (2002–24).

Curated by Arturo Galansino

PALAZZO STROZZI, FLORENCE

www.palazzostrozzi.org

Anne-Karin Furunes @ Tornabuoni Arte, Florence

Anne-Karin Furunes 

Tornabuoni Arte, Florence 

June 8 – September 29, 2018 

Anne-Karin Furunes (Trondheim – Norway, 1961), first studied art in Oslo and in Trondheim and then architecture in London and in Copenhagen. She made a series of public works in Norway and held solo-exhibitions in Europe, Canada and the United States. Some of her works are displayed in important collections, like the National Museum of Contemporary Art, in Oslo, the National Museum of China, in Beijing, and the Museum of Art and Design, in New York.

In her paintings, Anne-Karin Furunes uses archival photos of nameless faces to examine their personality and identity. She analyzes the faded photographic features and looks for traces of forgotten lives and personalities that have been ignored by the eye of history. The ingredients skillfully used by the artist in her canvasses, are light and memory. Her works draw on the course of history and of the human being that lives through it. Only in her later paintings does the artist start to depict natural elements. As Rachele Ferrario writes in this exhibition’s catalogue, “Anne Karin Furunes has focused for many years on history, on today’s ever impelling need to conserve for preserving and to preserve for bequeathing. The faces of women to whom she gave new life tell us of their personal and collective struggles and remind us of the tragedies that shaped Europe and the Western world: the fall of the Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian Empires, two world wars, the Holocaust and eugenics, the cold war. Then she decided to give voice to the fights the youths of the 1980s were standing up for: the Chinese students’ protest against the government in Tienanmen Square (to which she dedicated a series of portraits) and the fall of the Berlin Wall”.

Anne-Karin Furunes observes and memorizes the photographs, then she reproduces them on surfaces coated by thousands of perforations. This technique, achieved by using a stamp and a hammer, has an artisan, almost sculptural dimension to it. These hand-punches have different dimensions in order to make the light pass through and define the lines of the image, thanks to the dynamics of the chiaroscuro. The perforation functions as a negative, as an engraving plate.

At first glance, what we see in the work is a canvas filled with perfect and different-sized holes. Only by distancing ourselves from it can we finally see a face, or a landscape appear. What at the beginning was simply an allusion to the image portrayed, becomes a more clear and defined depiction, as we walk away from the canvas. If we miss the right point of view, the image disappears.

Of her drawings of holes Anne-Karin Furunes says: “The image evaporates as soon as we approach the canvas. If you look closely, you will only see the walls through the empty holes”.

It is thanks to the variation of light and weather conditions they are surrounded by, that these works keep enriching and enjoying new life.

TORNABUONI ARTE

Lungarno Benvenuto Cellini, 3 – 50125 Florence

www.tornabuoniart.com

Ghirlandaio: A century-long artistic saga - The Ghirlandaio Family. Italian Renaissance Painters in Florence and Scandicci

The Ghirlandaio Family
Renaissance Painters in Florence and Scandicci
Castello dell’Acciaiolo, Scandicci – Italy
Through May 1st, 2011

 

Always used in the singular, Ghirlandaio is actually the trademark of the dynasty of such artists and entrepreneurs, who, beginning in the second half of the 15th century, dominated the scene of the Florentine Renaissance for a century. DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO (1449-1494) was therefore the first artist in the Ghirlandaio family of which were also part his brothers DAVID GHIRLANDAIO (1452-1525) and BENEDETTO GHIRLANDAIO (1458-1497), his half-brother GIOVAMBATTISTA, his brother-in-law BASTIANO, and his son RIDOLFO GHIRLANDAIO (1483-1561). Numerous artists who were apprenticed to their school (MICHELANGELO and GRANACCI being the most renowned) contributed to spreading in Italy and Europe their fame as masterly illustrators of Florence and its civitas.

The Ghirlandaio’s workshop was above all a place with extraordinary professionals - very productive and organized according to modern criteria as to skills and roles - where Domenico and Ridolfo were the true creative masters of colour, some were extremely good at painting, and others besides expert in the workshop management.

Such a well-balanced, prolific and long-lived clan is now the focus of an extremely important exhibition, the first one on the family in its entirety, which involves the whole area from Florence to Scandicci as well as various other places in the hinterland. It is the land where the Ghirlandaio family lived and worked, rarely leaving it, disseminating it with masterpieces, so much so as to turn it into a spectacular and diffused museum.

Hence the title of the event: The Ghirlandaio Family. Renaissance Painters in Florence and Scandicci. The venues: the Castello dell’Acciaiolo in Scandicci, showcasing 15 works of art. From here visitors may follow a double itinerary leading them to large and small museums, palazzos and churches, villas and abbeys which house dozens of panel paintings, altarpieces and frescoes. Works which have mainly a religious character and represent the Madonna and Child, the nativity, the annunciation, but which also include portraits and figures that document the Florence of that time.

This implies that the exhibition is made up of a series of exhibitions and venues, ascribable to two well-known cultural projects: that of the Città degli Uffizi, conceived by Antonio Natali, director of the famous gallery, to showcase the immense artistic heritage kept in the Uffizi store rooms and promote the beautiful areas around Florence, and the Piccoli Grandi Musei one organized by the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze with an expert committee presided over by Antonio Paolucci, which has the aim of promoting the artistic and monumental heritage of the Florentine area.

It was in honour of the Ghirlandaio family that the two aforementioned projects merged. The initiative is promoted by the Special Office for Monuments and Fine Arts of the Polo Museale Fiorentino, the Uffizi Gallery and the Municipality of Scandicci, along with the Ente Cassa di Risparmio, the Regional Office for the Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Tuscany, the Monuments and Fine Arts Office of the metropolitan area (Florence-Pistoia-Prato), the Provincial Administration of Florence, the Municipality of Florence, and the Romualdo del Bianco Foundation. It is under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and involves the collaboration of the Tuscan Regional Administration, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the municipalities of Calenzano, Campi Bisenzio, Sesto Fiorentino, Signa and Lastra a Signa. The catalogue is published by Polistampa.

As it is known, the true surname of Domenico Ghirlandaio was Bigordi, and he and his brothers ended up being identified with the nickname of their father, an excellent goldsmith renowned for his special skill in making garlands (ghirlanda in Italian). From Scandicci, their homeland, they moved to Florence in the first half of the 15th century, and in this town, which was then the world capital of art, their workshop became established in the second half of the century. The exhibition tour starts from Scandicci. Curated by the art historian Annamaria Bernacchioni, the exhibition at the Castello dell’Acciaiolo showcases a famous painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio (Saints James, Stephen and Peter), the beautiful Madonna by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (from the Fuligno Refectory) and another 14 works loaned by various museums in Florence.

From here two different Ghirlandaio exhibition tours start. The one in Florence includes the frescoes in the Sala dei Gigli of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Sassetti Chapel and the Tornabuoni Chapel - respectively in the churches of Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella - and the Adoration of the Magi at the Museo degli Innocenti. Numerous other masterpieces by such artists are in the Uffizi Gallery, the Accademia Gallery, the Palatine Gallery and in the Ognissanti and San Marco Refectories, all of which are to be visited even though not part of this specific programme.

The other tour is in the area north-west of Florence, on both sides of the Arno, abounding in works of art that the Ghirlandaio family left behind: in the houses which belonged to the family in San Martino and Colleramole, in the millenary Settimo Abbey, in the Church of Sant’Andrea in Campi Bisenzio, in the Sacred Art Museums of San Donnino and San Martino a Gangalandi. And also Mosciano, Giogoli, San Martino alla Palma, and San Colombano.

A fascinating journey in the Florentine Renaissance.

www.ghirlandaio.it

11-21-2010 / 05-01-2011

Michelangello Pistoletto Installation Exhibition at CCCS, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Metrocubo d'Infinito in un Cubo Specchiante 

Square Metre of Infinity in a Mirror Cube 

CCCS, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy

Through January 23, 2011

Michelangelo Pistoletto

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO, Grande cubo specchiante - Luogo di riflessione e meditazione, 2007. Photo: Enrico Amici. Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin.

The CCCS – Centro di Cultura Contemporanea STROZZINA, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence – has invited one of the most celebrated contemporary artists in Italy to present an installation which is on view in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, a spectacular example of Renaissance architecture in Florence. Through 23 January 2011, visitors to Palazzo Strozzi encounters Metrocubo d'Infinito in un Cubo Specchiante – Square Metre of Infinity in a Mirror Cube, by MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO. 

This installation is on view concurrently with the exhibition Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures in the CCCS and Bronzino, Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici on Palazzo Strozzi’s piano nobile .

Metrocubo d'Infinito in un Cubo Specchiante (Square Metre of Infinity in a Mirror Cube), an installation covered externally with opaque steel plates and internally clad with mirrors, is intended to offer the public an opportunity to experience boundless space. Its centre is occupied by one of this Piedmontese artist's historic works, the Metrocubo di Infinito (Square Metre of Infinity), 1966, which consists of exceptionally opaque surfaces on the outside and reflecting surfaces on the inside, thus taking the potential of refraction to its extreme limit.

Mirrors are a crucial element in Pistoletto's art. They represent the physical and intellectual extension of the human mind, revealing that which is normally hidden from the human eye. Pistoletto himself argues that “the mirror expands the eye's characteristics and the mind's capabilities to the point where it offers a vision of totality”. He also says that “this space for concentration is designed to be one of art's places of prophecy, a territory where art succeeds in expressing its religious value”. The work of art becomes a secular place for meditation, where man with his capacity for imagination is the only true value.

Michelangelo Pistoletto

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO, Grande cubo specchiante - Luogo di riflessione e meditazione, 2007. Photo: Enrico Amici. Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin. 

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO BIOBRAPHY

Born in Biella in 1933, Pistoletto is one of Italy's most famous contemporary artists. He started to exhibit his works in 1955 and in 1960 he had his first solo show, at the Galleria Galatea in Turin. His early work experimented with the painting of self-portraits. In 1961-1962 he produced the Quadri specchianti (Reflecting Pictures) that include the presence of the spectator in the work itself, creating a new real-time dimension and challenging the idea of perspective. These works brought him international recognition and success, resulting in solo exhibitions in prestigious European and American galleries during the Sixties. The Quadri specchianti would become the basis for Pistoletto’s entire artistic production and theoretic reflection. 

From 1965 to 1966 Pistoletto produced a series of works entitled Oggetti in meno – Fewer Objects– which played a key role in launching Arte Povera. He began to take his art outside traditional exhibition venues in March 1967, leading to the first of the so-called “creative collaborations”. Pistoletto was to develop this approach during the following decades, always cooperating with several artists coming from different disciplines and social fields. In the Seventies he revived the mirror theme, developing it in such works and actions as his Divisione-Moltiplicazione dello Specchio – Division-Multiplication of the Mirror and L’Arte assume la Religione – Art Takes on Religion. In 1975 to 1976 he produced at the Galleria Stein, Turin, a work that stretched over time: Le Stanze – The Rooms –  was an exhibition lasting a year, divided into twelve sections of a month each. It was the first of a series of complex works intended to be shown for a full year, such as Anno Bianco – White Year, 1986, or Tartaruga Felice – Happy Turtle, 1992. In 1978 he had an exhibition at the Galleria Persano in Turin, where he showed two of the most important new directions of his artistic research and production: Divisione e moltiplicazione dello specchio – Division and Multiplication of the Mirror –  and L’arte assume la religione (Art Takes on Religion). At the beginning of the Eighties he created a series of sculptures in stiff polyurethane, which were translated into marble for the solo show at the Forte Belvedere, Florence, in 1984. From 1985 to 1989 he worked on his series of “dark” volumes, entitled Arte dello squallore – Art of Squalor. During the Nineties, through Progetto Arte (Art Project) and the creation of Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, he created a straight and active link between different social fields aiming to achieve a responsible transformation of society. 

In 2003 he was awarded the Leone d’Oro, or Golden Lion award, for his career at the Venice Biennale. In 2004 the University of Turin awarded him an honoris causa degree in political sciences. On this occasion he unveiled the most recent phase of his work, which he called Terzo Paradiso – Third Paradise. In 2007 he was awarded the Wolf Foundation Prize in Arts at Jerusalem, “for his constantly inventive career as an artist, educator and activist, whose restless intelligence has created a prescient form of art that contributes to a new understanding of the world”. In 2008 Pistoletto – Cittadellarte received the Sasso Marconi city Special Award for his new use of languages. In 2009 he has shown at Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin two installations dedicated to spirituality: Metrocubo d'Infinito in un Cubo Specchiante and Il Tempo del Giudizio. A retrospective of Michelangelo Pistoletto is on view at the Contemporary Art Museum, Philadelphia, since November 2010 through January 2011. He has been recently nominated Artistic Director for the Bordeaux Event in 2011. He has published the essay Il Terzo Paradiso (The Third Paradise), Edizioni Marsilio.

Michelangello Pistoletto

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO, Grande cubo specchiante - Luogo di riflessione e meditazione, 2007. Photo: Enrico Amici. Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin.

The event follows similar initiatives in 2008 and 2009, when Wang Yu Yang (Harbin, China, 1979) and Yves Netzhammer (Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 1970) produced site-specific installations for the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi. The project, devised and produced by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi – in cooperation with Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin – marks the start of a new partnership with Castello di Ama per l’Arte Contemporanea in Gaiole in Chianti (Siena).

Lorenza Sebasti and Marco Pallanti, proprietors of the Castello di Ama wine company, decided to launch a project known as “Castello di Ama for Contemporary Art” in 2000. For this project, realized with the support of Galleria Continua, some of the leading artists on the international contemporary art scene have been invited to produce works of art designed to interact with the unique spirit of the small medieval village of Ama, nestling in the Siena hills. Over the years the Castello di Ama has hosted work by Michelangelo Pistoletto, Daniel Buren, Giulio Paolini, Kendell Geers, Anish Kapoor, Chen Zhen, Carlos Garaicoa, Nedko Solakov, Cristina Iglesias and Louise Bourgeois, offering personal reflections on this unique environment and producing permanent site-specific works now on display in the cellars and grounds of the company's two villas. (The works of art may be viewed by appointment only). 

CCCS, FLORENCE, ITALY

PALAZZO STROZZI 



www.strozzina.org
www.palazzostrozzi.org 

10-01-2010 / 01-23-2011