ABSTRACT
The curatorial theme of this exhibition is memory: personal and collective memory of traditions, cultures and history. We are curious how memories of history and traditions might affect the production of art in different locations around the world. The aim of the project is to experiment how the memory and cultural background of each single artist can integrate and/or speak to that of other artists through painting without losing the specificity of their own artistic expression.
The questions that inform this process include:
- Do cultural roots and traditions create different values in an artist’s practice, and can these perspectives coincide with others in the same space?
- How can an artistic rendering of memory through paint- as the material on the canvas- affect the ideas and painting of the others?
- What psychological reaction can layers of memory engender in the creative souls of the artists?
- What psychological reaction can provoke to the artist, the fact that he/her are not “alone” in front of the canvas , not “the only artist” to deal with the space in front of him , but there are other “presences” over and inside that space?
- Could this situation create a change in his/her usual style and in his/her way of making art?
The most important conceptual basis to participate in this art adventure is to be aware that the participants have to interact with each other. No one can overwhelm the work of the others, each participant has to look at the works and intimately interact with them, without detachment or cultural superiority, and separate his own work from the work of the others and without covering or silencing the other works.
The real challenge is the capacity of each artist to interact and work “together” with the others through the medium, where he/she must use a painterly capacity to put his/her own particular mark on the canvas, to be recognizable, yet in communion with the work of the others.
Can this practice allow for an artist’s capacity to demonstrate and to explain his/her own cultural awareness, traditions and specificity, in concert with that capacity of others.
It is focused around the concept of a “multicultural experience” in terms of art.
The project has been split in two sections: one dedicated and realized by men and the other by women because it is important to us to experiment the point of view of the gender and the possible (if it exists) reaction and psychological position towards this way to produce art.
