Luci d'Artista

Comune di Torino > Arte e Cultura > Luci d'artista > edizione 2008

Contemporary Arts Torino Piemonte

Logo Contemporary Arts Torino Piemonte

Luci d'Artista 2008

Contemporary Arts Torino Piemonte is the brand - promoted by the City of Turin, the Region of Piedmont and the Province of Turin - which groups together all the autumnal dates aimed to increase the value of the expressive contemporary arts.

Certainly one of its more important events is Luci d’Artista. The artworks of the eleventh edition are by Mario Airò Cosmometrie in piazza Castello, Vasco Are Vele di natale (Christmas Sails) in Largo Borgo Dora, Enrica Borghi Palle di Neve (Snow Balls) in via Lagrange, Daniel Buren Tappeto Volante (Flying Carpet) in piazza Palazzo di Città, Nicola De Maria Regno dei Fiori... (Kingdom of Flowers…) in piazza San Carlo, Richi Ferrero Lucedotto (Light-duct) in corso Lecce on the corner of corso Regina Margherita, Jeppe Hein Illuminate Benches in piazza Vittorio Veneto, Rebecca Horn Piccoli Spiriti Blu (Little Blue Spirits) circling around Monte dei Cappuccini, Joseph Kosuth Doppio Passaggio (Double Passage) at Murazzi, Qingyun Ma Neongraphy in via Modane, Luigi Mainolfi Luì e l’arte di andare nel bosco in via Garibaldi, Mario Merz with his Il volo dei numeri (Flight of Numbers) climbing up the Mole Antonelliana, Mario Molinari Concerto di parole (Concert of Words) in Giardini Reali, Luigi Nervo Vento solare (Solar Wind) in piazzetta Mollino, Mimmo Paladino Schegge di luce (Light Fragments) on the Fiat Building in corso Agnelli, Giulio Paolini Palomar in via Po, Michelangelo Pistoletto Amare le differenze (Love Differences) at Porta Palazzo, Luigi Stoisa Noi (Us) in via Nizza and Gilberto Zorio Luce, fontana, ruota (Light, Fountain, Wheel) in the lake of Italia '61.

This year besides to Luci d’Artista it is possible to admire also the artworks by Alberto De Braud Newton Twins in Aiuola Secondo Pia (Porta Palatina) and Franco Gervasio Il futuro ha buona memora at Cortile del Maglio.

The artistic twinning between the City of Turin and the City of Salerno (which started in 2006) has been continuing this year too. To coincide with the local cultural event entitled Notti di Luce Salerno is hosting Volo su… by Francesco Casorati and L’amore non fa rumore by Domenico Luca Pannoli from November 8th 2008 to January 18th 2009 (more information on www.comune.salerno.it).

Call center: Vetrina Torinocultura: 800 329 329

artisti

Mario Airò - Cosmometrie
- Piazza Castello - Portici antistanti al Teatro Regio
  
  Mario Airò was born in 1961 in Pavia, and lives and works in Tuscany.
  Airò’s work stems from what the artist defines as a ‘wandering’, meaning the experience of someone who moves and talks through the things he or she comes across, thereby avoiding any kind of intellectual or formal narrow-mindedness. His works originate from a wide range of cultural references including literature, cinema, history of art and elements of everyday life.
  Forty-two of Giordano Bruno’s drawings, taken from the book ‘Articuli 160 adversus mathematicos’, are projected onto the paving of the arches in front of the Teatro Regio. In this installation Giordano Bruno’s graphic work is re-used to underline the cognitive value of images.
Vasco Are - Vele di Natale
- Via Borgo Dora
  
  Vasco Are (Castelletto Stura, Cuneo 1943 – Torino 2001). Are began his artistic activity in the 1960s, expressing himself with extreme versatility in the most varied fields, from poetry to painting, and from sculpture to the realisation of films and documentaries.
  His work consists of a triangular wooden frame containing a hexagonal mesh net, which is decorated with fragments of multicoloured plexiglass: red, yellow, green, orange, blue, refracting the light. These are the Vele di Natale (Christmas Sails), which, when glimpsed from afar, seem like Christmas trees from bygone days, created by the artist to sail the seas of the imagination, to evoke simple emotions with similarly simple materials. At the centre of the street, at the top of a high pole, a giant compass rose also shines in the night, an eight-pointed star constructed from eight multicoloured sails.
Enrica Borghi - Palle di neve
- Via Lagrange
  
  Enrica Borghi was born in 1966 in Premosello Chiovenda (Novara).
  In her first works, she spoke ironically about the consumerist stereotype of female beauty by using materials like curlers, false nails, feathers and buttons to create ironic neo-kitsch sculptures. In her
  latest production she uses waste plastic, especially bottles, to assemble conceptually and ideologically ecological installations. Even the tritest leftovers of our affluent society thus become the constitutive elements of a beautiful and captivating work of art.
  They look like giant snowballs that turn into sparkling ice crystals by night. Take a closer look and you will see that the snow-white balls are actually made up of several plastic bottles cut in half, the necks stuck into a polystyrene ball and the bodies hot-fringed with scissors to form a rose with transparent petals. A light bulb is inserted into each of these corollas so that when placed side-by-side, the artificial flowers become luminescent crystals in a giant snowflake.
Daniel Buren - Tappeto Volante
- Piazza Palazzo di Città
  
  Daniel Buren was born in 1938 at Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, he now says that he ‘lives where he works’. One of the founders of the BMPT (Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni) French artistic group, Buren’s minimalist and conceptual research is reflected in his use of regular alternate white and coloured stripes of standard width, using different supports and contexts. After experimenting initially on fabrics, he moved on to unauthorised actions on billboards in the streets of Paris and in the Metro stations and then to in situ installations in galleries and museums in which the painting extends on wooden panels and walls, proposing a new perception of space.
  A tightly-knit mesh of steel cables to which red and white or blue and white cubes are attached and illuminated at night, appears to be a tappeto volante (flying carpet) floating in the air.
Nicola De Maria - Regno dei fiori: Nido cosmico di tutte le anime
- Piazza San Carlo
  
  Nicola De Maria was born in Foglianise (Benevento) in 1954 and lives and works in Torino.
  In the mid-Seventies he invented an original lyrical and pictorial language. His painting, with lively and intense colours, fills spaces, reshaping them with charm and legend. “From the sky, the squares of Torino are wonderful, at night they are diadems of the city I live in (…). You never realise just how much you love a place, you never understand just how rich it is. Reflecting on the work of light I understood my love for Torino. I saw the cornucopias of the square become magical flowers of the sky, left on earth to cheer up the men and women who live in this city. And I imagined these flowers, touched by the movement of light, becoming the cosmic nest of all the souls that live in the universe and in our hearts. These magical flowers are the stars of the city.’ (Nicola De Maria)
  This year, the work will be set up in Piazza San Carlo, the most beautiful seventeenth-century square in Torino. This visually stunning work will involve the 8 cornucopias and the street lamps in the piazza.
Richi Ferrero - Lucedotto
- Corso Lecce / Corso Regina Margherita
  
  Richi Ferrero was born in Torino in 1951, where he lives and works.
  He is an artist in the broadest sense of the word and has always sought the concept of ‘total’ art, which involves music, theatre and multimedia.
  It’s an enormous crane on a specious traffic island. A three-sided upside-down pyramid hangs from its hook. This solid form has a light positioned inside which lights up in the evenings, changing colour according to the instructions received from a barometer positioned on the crane. “In this way, each evening this great pendulum will almost magically inform the city of the next day’s weather. The red colour will forecast good weather, while in the case of bad weather it will turn blue/azure. A combination of the two colours will signal changeable weather. The name Lucedotto - a pun on the Italian words luce (light) and dotto (intelligent) remains, since this installation is intelligent in its ability to interpret and communicate the weather forecast”. (Richi Ferrero)
Jepp Hein - Illuminate benches
- Piazza Vittorio (isola tra via della Rocca e via Bonafous)
  
  Jeppe Hein was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1974 and he now lives and works in Berlin.
  His works suspend the laws of cause and effect and create situations in which objects seem to come to life and react to the presence of the passers-by. The benches that light up become an integral part of a modular sculptural and architectural system through which Hein commences a dialogue with the public.
  His works exist and are activated only in relation to the spectator, simultaneously generating a relationship of playfulness and unease, of dialogue and annoyance. The artist thus develops sculptural signs that challenge the normal perception of the site.
  The work Illuminate Benches creates a direct relationship with the existing structures and transforms the movements of the public fashioning a space in which to act out new social interactions
Rebecca Horn - Piccoli spiriti blu
- Monte dei Cappuccini
  
  Rebecca Horn was born in 1944 in Michelstadt, Germany, and lives and works between Berlin, New York and Paris. Since the end of the Sixties, Rebecca Horn has been interested in a form of art that transcends the boundaries of specific traditional languages, fostering the direct involvement of the artist and the spectator in the creative act. The central theme of her performances, sculptures and installations is the body, in every aspect. Since the Eighties she has used machines and mechanical devices which move to bring inanimate objects to life.
  At night, the Church of Santa Maria del Monte dei Cappuccini stands out on the top of a hill that overlooks the Po, right opposite the Murazzi embankments, as if suspended in mid-air. Lit up by powerful blue lights, the church sheds its customary conventual appearance and becomes a surreal presence, almost like a spaceship in flight. All around the Monte dei Cappuccini church there are neon tubes, circles of light that from afar, especially with the low clouds and winter fog that drifts up from the Po, become little blue spirits.
Joseph Kosuth - Doppio passaggio
- Murazzi del Po
  
  Joseph Kosuth was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1945, and is one of the most symbolic exponents of conceptual art. His research, since the first half of the Sixties, has addressed the comparison
  between visual art and the philosophy of language. Kosuth's works, intentionally different from anything that has to do with emotionalism or autobiographical aims, investigate the nature of artistic concepts (images, iconic or verbal signs, objects) by analysing them from a linguistic point of view.
  For his installation the artist has chosen two quotations, one from Italo Calvino’s book ‘Invisible Cities’ and the other from ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ by Friedrich Nietzsche, which will be written in neon at the Murazzi, next to the Vittorio Emanuele I bridge. Both writers loved Torino and identified with the city. Their sentences are philosophical considerations conveyed by metaphors on the bridge.
Qingyun Ma - Neongraphy
- Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (via Modane)
  
  Qingyun Ma was born in 1965 in the Xi’an region of China. In 1999 he founded MADA s.p.a.m., a studio of young designers and architects from all over the world, based in Shanghai.
  Qingyun Ma has created Neongraphy, an installation positioned on the entrance door to the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. It is a large neon sign in red, blue and green, the primary digital colours. During the day, when the neon lights are off, it is possible to see the outline of the ideograms that spell out ming, which means light. In the dark, the Chinese ideograms that spell out the words China, Japan and Korea are lit. Qingyun Ma worked on the design of the various ideograms combining them into a harmonious blend of shapes and colours.

Luigi Mainolfi - Luì e l'arte di andare nel bosco
- Via Garibaldi
  
  Luigi Mainolfi was born in Rotondi, in the province of Avellino, in 1948. He lives and works in Torino. Having joined the city’s artistic community in the early Seventies, Mainolfi is now one of the leading exponents of post-conceptual contemporary sculpture. Since making his debut he has created sculptures using natural materials (terracotta, plaster, wood, volcanic rock) and cast bronze, in which the popular culture and traditions of Campania, the region he is from, swell to represent the archaic sediments of contemporary culture.
  ‘Luì was crazy and this story tells how Mad Luì managed to find the children who were lost in the Silent Woods.’ This is the opening sentence of the fable written by short-story writer Guido Quarzo, which is narrated word for word in a series of colourful signs that unravel along the entire street.
Mario Merz - Il volo dei numeri
- Mole Antonelliana
  
  Mario Merz (Milan 1925 – Torino 2003) abandoned his studies to become a self-taught artist. He made his debut in 1953 with an expressionistic work, after which he went on to investigate less traditional methods. From 1967 he was an active member of the Arte Povera movement. He experimented with non-art materials, often with natural substances, and ordinary objects crisscrossed by beams of neon light, which he used in installations that often involve the environment.
  By night a long sequence of numbers (1,1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89…) is visible from afar on the Mole Antonelliana. This is the so-called Fibonacci sequence, named after its inventor, a Pisan mathematician who lived between 1170 and 1250. The artist uses this progressive number sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two that precede it, to construct conceptual installations that represent the explosive, seemingly chaotic organic growth processes present in nature.
Mario Molinari - Concerto di parole
- Giardini Reali (Viale dei Partigiani)
  
  Mario Molinari (Coazze 1930 - Torino 2000). The material that was initially most congenial to him was copper. In the Seventies, he also started to use aluminium, wood and plastic materials. This marked an ironically technological turning point and was followed by a period in which he turned to polished and vividly coloured surfaces. Starting in the Eighties, he mainly devoted himself to making sure that art could be enjoyed by everyone, bringing sculpture to public places, among people. Colour was the most important element in his philosophy of life, both as an artist and as an individual.
  Gigantic abstract sculptures, made of expanded polystyrene, painted with vivid colours and illuminated by powerful lights, seem to want to burst into the darkness of night. Massive looking, but actually light, they are made up of cylinders, parallelepipeds and other solid figures.
Luigi Nervo - Vento solare
- Piazzetta Mollino
  
  Luigi Nervo (Torino 1930 – 2006). The artist has always favoured wood, using it to create sculptures with primitive lines. Nervo stated: “Vento Solare (Solar Wind) consists of elementary particles emitted from the sun that hit the earth, a scientific concept conceived in the mind of an astronomer that gradually reached me via a long series of intermediaries, becoming more and more hazy in the process. I fell in love with the name, paying little attention to the concept (…). As any provincial cabalist would, they arrange the fragments of light and sky that I have in my hands (…). Light that evokes icons that are otherwise imperceptible, opposed to the raucous sound of Darkness and Abyss; this is what I now ask of a Solar Wind that brings light: more Light”.
  “Singing, even when your notes are the lights of a piazza, is a soothing experience: the “m’a dolça lo cor” (“it soothes my heart”) with which Bernart de Ventadorn summed up his Provence, nine centuries ago. I imagine this is what it must have been like for the musicians onboard the Titanic, who continued to play while the water began to flood the decks, an unwitting metaphor for how it would have been to create art in the grey future that was approaching.”
Mimmo Paladino - Schegge di luce
- Palazzina FIAT (Corso Agnelli)
  
  Mimmo Paladino was born in 1948 in Paduli, near Benevento, where he still lives and works.
  Fragments of light and luminous tracts sketch a rigorous and precise geometric structure, facing towards the city. The labours of man come to life, restored and projected in a perspective of white light, and emerge as a huge background at the end of a long avenue. At night the factory is still, it shuts down and a shower of light re-illuminates the building, becoming a reference point for the movements of the city.
  Reason and imagination are the twin souls of the work. ‘As if Fiat - says the artist Paladino - enshrines the idea of proportion and technology, but at the same time also elements of imagination and creativity. Shapes and content, design and technology are after all the two souls of the automobile’.
Giulio Paolini - Palomar
- via Po
  
  Born in Genova in 1940, he lives and works between Torino and Paris.
  An artist of international acclaim, his initial fame was due to him being part of the fundamental core of the Arte Povera movement. Paolini quickly made his name in this genre on account of the highly conceptual nature of his works. His artistic production is a learned analysis of processes, codes and conventions related to the relationship between art, artist and audience.
  Palomar consists of dozens of circles of light that juxtapose and interweave with one another, assuming the appearance of a multitude of planets, with various satellites orbiting around them. A tightrope walker is suspended in the glittering skies, the conceptual fulcrum of the entire installation, conceived as a metaphor for man’s unstable balance between knowledge and the unknown.
Michelangelo Pistoletto - Amare le differenze
- Porta Palazzo - Antica Tettoia dell'Orologio
  
  Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in 1933 in Biella.
  A leading figure in the Arte Povera movement, after his first paintings on a neutral background, he went on to use mirrored and Plexiglas surfaces involving the spectator in enigmatic and alienating situations. Later, he experimented with the use of everyday objects and rags to create his works and installations. In 1994 he created Progetto Arte, a project run by the Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, in Biella.
  This work, which is openly concerned with social issues, is part of the Love Difference project - an Artistic Movement of ideas that pursues an InterMediterranean policy, promoted by Pistoletto through Cittadellarte. The basic concept of this project is to bring love to wherever there is tension due to diversity.
  The words Love Difference are repeated in 39 different languages to reflect the variety of social components present in the city. Porta Palazzo, the part of the city with the highest concentration of different ethnic, religious and cultural groups, is the most fitting backdrop against which the message of this work is even more incisive.
Luigi Stoisa - Noi
- Via Nizza
  
  A painter and sculptor, born in Giaveno (TO) in 1958, and a representative of postmodern sensibility, he began his career by exploring the Caravaggesque portrayal of the myth of Narcissus, whose face, reflected and superimposed on the tar-covered canvas, or installed in the exhibition space, constitutes the sole figurative element of a work that upends the traditional “support/painting” relationship in order to pursue the development of the subject and its form.
  Noi (Us) is an anthropomorphic work, featuring numerous pairs of gigantic human beings. Each couple consists of a man and a woman with their feet pointing towards the roadside and their heads touching, thus suggesting a symbolic emotional and mental union. A succession of arches, a suspended arcade to “protect” passers-by, all of Us.
Gilberto Zorio - Luce fontana ruota
- Laghetto di Italia '61 (Corso Unità d'Italia)
  
  Gilberto Zorio was born in Andorno Micca (Vercelli) in 1944, he lives and works in Torino. His works are endless fields of physical and mental energy. A leading figure in the Torinese Arte
  Povera group, Zorio initially concentrated on examining the processes that cause each work to undergo continuous change, using chemical or physical reactions. Typical installations by Zorio feature stars, canoes, alembics, javelins and crucibles made of metals, acids, copper sulphate and sodium chloride, to create conceptual metaphors of the chemical-alchemic processes inherent to reality.
  A big five-pointed star stands in the centre of the lake in the Italia ’61 Gardens. Each point on the star is a shiny blade that slowly turns in the running water and lifts sparkling sprays of water in the night, struck by the light of two powerful photocells, consequently making the work look like a gigantic watermill.

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Alberto De Braud - Newton Twins
- Aiuola Secondo Pia (Porta Palatina)
  
  Provided by Galleria Dieffe - via Porta Palatina 9
  
  He was born in 1959 in Milan, where he lives and works. He is an artist who frees himself from the mechanism of the quotation in order to pursue an open-minded synthesis, though without exaggeration. His works were created to be experienced, to convey moods or impenetrable unconscious states, since true feelings take shape at a depth that is not visited by our mind.
  Newton Twins is a sculpture consisting of two huge, superimposed and illuminated apples, 9 metres high and 4.5 metres in diameter, in polyester and helium. The work aims to communicate with the city and was conceived specifically to move beyond the confined spaces of an institution in order to dialogue with the surrounding metropolitan landscape.

Franco Gervasio - Il futuro ha buona memoria
- Cortile del Maglio
  
  In collaboration with Space Cannon VH S.p.A.
  
  Franco Gervasio, who was born in Torino, is a visual artist and a director.
  In June 2008, the exhibition “Lights in Landscape”, featuring paintings, photographs and lights, was staged in Istanbul. Light and music are, in fact, essential components of his work.
  In his capacity as a director, he has worked for the Teatro Stabile of Torino, the Biennale di Venezia, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Teatro Verdi of Trieste, the Teatro Stabile of Bologna, the Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Festival d’Automne, the Centre Pompidou, the Tokyo NHK, the Yokohama Theater, the Copenhagen Festival and the Istanbul Modern.
  
  Il futuro ha buona memoria (the future has a good memory) is a work that has been created in the Cortile del Maglio. The Cortile (courtyard) takes its name from the old machine (maglio or trip hammer) that is located at its centre, a relic of a working past.
  The installation consists of a projector and two “Specchiopiuma" (registered trademark) reflective surfaces, which are fastened at various heights to the tie rods of the covering.

Galleria fotografica

Cosmometrie

Palle di neve

Tappeto volante

Regno dei fiori

Lucedotto

Piccoli spiriti blu

Doppio passaggio

Neongraphy

Luì e l'arte di andare nel bosco

Il volo dei numeri

Concerto di parole

Vento solare

Schegge di luce

Palomar

Amare le differenze

Noi

Luce fontana ruota

Newton Twins

Il futuro ha buona memoria

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