Centre for Contemporary Culture at Palazzo Strozzi
Palazzo Strozzi
Past
The exhibition (8 March–15 July 2012) comprises of a reflection on the work of artists who use fantasy, imagination and dreams to build alternative worlds to the increasingly complex reality of life today.
The exhibition (23 September 2011—22 January 2012) presents the diverse artworks of twelve international contemporary artists. Their works put together through this exhibition create a reflection on the values, contradictions and paradoxes that typify today’s society. The show further addresses the possible declinations of the principles of democracy, which recently is being challenged more and more.
The thematic approach of the exhibition fosters an analysis of the term ‘identity’ in times in with the growing role of digital technologies and new forms of communication have gained a foothold in society, prompting a rethink of the concept of identity under pressure from the clash between privacy and sharing, between the right to personal freedom and the need for collective security.
Realised on the occasion of Florence’s Notte Bianca, Tape Florence is composed of suspended shapes made of myriad layers of adhesive tape. Overlapping sculpture, design and performance, the installation offers visitors the opportunity to appreciate it both visually from the outside and physically from the inside. Calling into question the harmonies of the courtyard’s Renaissance architecture, the sculpture is reminiscent of an organic life form, a cocoon that is symbol of metamorphosis and natural or existential regeneration.
http://www.strozzina.org/en/events/numen-for-use-tape-florence/
CCC Strozzina presents the second edition of the Emerging Talents award, set up by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi to draw the attention of critics and of the general public to young artists in Italy today.
The selection of the participant artists has been made by committee composed of 4 established Italian curators: Luca Massimo Barbero (dir. MACRO, Roma), Chiara Bertola (dir. HangarBicocca, Milano), Andrea Bruciati (dir. Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea, Monfalcone) e Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (dir. GAMeC, Bergamo).
The exhibition explores portraiture and the representation of political, economical and social power in the contemporary world through the works of contemporary artists. Portraits of famous political figures, investigations into the lifestyle of the social elite, as well as inquiries into the power structures of international institutions.
In partnership with Castello di Ama per l’arte contemporanea, CCC Strozzina presents in the Palazzo Strozzi courtyard the work of the Italian master Michelangelo Pistoletto. The installation, covered externally with opaque steel plates and internally clad with mirrors, is intended to offer the public an opportunity to experience a “secular place for meditation”, creating a new dialogue with the proportions and harmonies of the Renaissance architecture.
The exhibition addresses the theme of time in our “high-speed society” and today’s pressured lifestyle with rapid communication and production dictated by new technology, through the works of 10 international artists.
Staged in collaboration with the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the exhibition presents the work of Gerhard Richter, one of the best-known and most sought-after living painters, in dialogue with works by seven international contemporary artists, who all share Richter’s profound distrust of the image as a guarantee of truth.
Photography and video art have always been based on the conflict between recording reality and, at the same time, becoming themselves a falsification of that reality, a viewpoint that builds a particular image of the world. Today, with the spreading popularity of digital technology, that ambiguity has if anything increased, pushing the conflict between appearance and reality to its outer edges.
What is true and what is real in our lives today?
