Ennesima. An Exhibition of Seven Exhibitions on Italian Art, curated by Vincenzo de Bellis, is currently on view at Triennale di Milanountil 6 March 2016. Not “one” exhibition of Italian art but, literally, an ‘exhibition of exhibitions’ that, via seven paths, tries to explore the last fifty years of contemporary art in Italy, collectingmore than one hundred and seventy works and over seventy artists, from the early Sixties through to the present day, in a display extending over the whole first floor of the Milan Triennale.
The title is inspired by a work by Giulio Paolini, Ennesima (appunti per la descrizione di sette tele datate 1973), the first version of which, dated 1973, is divided into seven paintings. This gives the number of exhibition projects included in de Bellis’s exhibition for La Triennale: seven independent exhibitions, in the form of notes or suggestions that explore different aspects, links, coincidences and discrepancies, as well as the exhibition grammar in the recent history of Italian art. Seven working hypotheses through which we can read, reinterpret and tell Italian art also through the analysis of some of the possible exhibition formats: from the solo exhibition to the site-specific installation, through to the thematic group show and chronological group show, the group exhibition on specific movement and the medium-based group exhibition and on to thearchive exhibition. Not just a single project that attempts at all costs to find thematic or stylistic, chronological or generational connections, but rather a platform that tries to suggest the coexistence of all these and other possible formats, creating a cross-section of the past fifty years of art in Italy.
Artists:
Vincenzo Accame, Vincenzo Agnetti, Alessandro Agudio, Mario Airò, Yuri Ancarani, Giorgio AndreottaCalò, Francesco Arena, Stefano Arienti, Massimo Bartolini, Gianfranco Baruchello, Vanessa Beecroft, AlighieroBoetti, Monica Bonvicini, Lupo Borgonovo, Ugo Carrega, Elisabetta Catalano, Maurizio Cattelan, GiuseppeChiari, Francesco Clemente, Roberto Cuoghi, Danilo Correale, Gino De Dominicis, Patrizio Di Massimo, Luciano Fabro, Lara Favaretto, Vincenzo Ferrari, Linda Fregni Nagler, Giuseppe Gabellone, Alberto Garutti, Francesco Gennari, Paolo Gioli, Massimo Grimaldi, Adelita Husni-Bey, Emilio Isgrò, Jannis Kounellis, KettyLa Rocca, Gruppo di via Lazzaro Palazzi (Mario Airò, Enzo Buonaguro, Matteo Donati, Stefano Dugnani, Giuseppina Mele, Chiyoko Miura, Liliana Moro, Andrea Rabbiosi, Bernhard Rüdiger, Antonello Ruggieri, Adriano Trovato, Massimo Uberti, Francesco Voltolina), Marcello Maloberti, Lucia Marcucci, Nicola Martini, Fabio Mauri, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Eugenio Miccini, Luca Monterastelli, Liliana Moro, MaurizioNannucci, Alek O., Martino Oberto, Luigi Ontani, Luciano Ori, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Diego Perrone, Alessandro Pessoli, Lamberto Pignotti, Vettor Pisani, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Paola Pivi, Luigi Presicce, Carol Rama, Pietro Roccasalva, Andrea Romano, Gianni Emilio Simonetti, Rudolf Stingel, Santo Tolone, Franco Vaccari, Francesco Vezzoli, Luca Vitone.
Ennesima is accompanied by a publication in seven books and a catalogue-guide curated by Vincenzo de Bellis and published by Mousse Publishing, that mirrors the division of the exhibition in seven parts and is enriched with unpublished contributions, essays and critical writings, commissioned for the occasion, from Italian curators and critics of the latest generations, that have stood out during the last few years at both national and international levels: Cristina Baldacci, Lorenzo Benedetti, Barbara Casavecchia, LauraCherubini, Vincenzo de Bellis, Eva Fabbris, Luigi Fassi, Francesco Garutti, Massimiliano Gioni, AndreaLissoni, Luca Lo Pinto, Francesco Manacorda, Simone Menegoi, Paola Nicolin, Allegra Pesenti, AndreaPinotti, Alessandro Rabottini, Letizia Ragaglia, Nicola Ricciardi, Alberto Salvadori, Marco Scotini, AndreaViliani, Elena Volpato, Giorgio Zanchetti.
