This exhibition is devoted to the finalists in the Emerging Talents Award,. created by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and organised by the Centre of Contemporary Culture Strozzina – the CCCS of Florence - . The competition is designed to encourage young Italian artists and draw critical and international attention to their work.
Contributions from twenty-five artists will be displayed in the rooms of the CCCS. The finalists were selected by a committee made up of four of the
new generation of leading independent Italian curators: Andrea Bellini,
Luca Cerizza, Caroline Corbetta, Andrea Lissoni together with the artist
and teacher Paolo Parisi.
The two prize winners, chosen by an International jury - Rudolf Frieling, Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco MOMA; Jan Boelen, Director of Z33, Belgium; Hubertus Gassner, Director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle; Cornelia Grassi, of the Greengrassi Gallery in London and Kathrin Becker (director of Videoforum at the Neue
Berliner Kunstverein); with the additional advice of Franziska Nori, project director of the CCCS, Heiner Holtappels (director of Netherlands Media Art Institute/Montevideo) and Christoph Tannert (director of the Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien) will be given scholarships to the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and to the Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo in Amsterdam. This project fully reflects the mission of the CCCS, providing a platform and point of reference for future projects. The exhibition of the finalists’ work serves to promote these artists while also stimulating a new arena for discussion among artists, critics and the public.
The selected works will be displayed in five sections to create a dialogue of formal and conceptual encounter-clash, through painting and video, sculpture and graphics, photography and installations, presenting a vast range of stimuli and ideas. Visitors will be drawn into contact with intimate domestic scenes, colourful symbolic paintings, small conceptual objects, ethereal installations of insubstantial material and large sculptures charged with hidden meaning.
The narration of this young Italian art requires a rich diversity of language and technique. It also reveals a wide ranging creative energy, intimate, private, authentic and absolutely aware of its European and international context.
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