“Due Qui/To Hear” has been inaugurated at the Arsenale of Venice, the Italian pavilion set up for the 60th International Art Exhibition, which will open to the public tomorrow 20 April. Speakers included, among others, the curator Luca Cerizza, the exhibiting artist, Massimo Bartolini, the president of the Biennale Pierangelo Buttafuoco, the minister of culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, the general director of creativity of the MiC Angelo Piero Cappello and the mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro.
The inauguration came the day after the frontal attack by the former undersecretary Vittorio Sgarbi who had called it “a horror”, and at the opening the minister Sangiuliano defended the choice of curator and artist and spoke of a project that “invites us to an encounter with others and with ourselves. Its multiple and multisensorial itinerary offers us a physical and metaphysical experience, a profound invitation to search for our identity, transforming self-awareness into a moment of contact with the other. We must establish relationships and ensure that culture becomes a bridge between peoples and people.”
«A living organism that withdraws so that guests have greater presence: it is beautiful in its withdrawal and proclaiming absence» said the president of the Biennale Buttafuoco, wondering «what does Art have if not this ability to lead us into the void, to knowledge of ourselves?”.
The statement from the mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro was clearer, as he also received some boos for saying: «I’m honest, I didn’t like the Pavilion. But it is not an attack on art, the more art is discussed the more joy there is in participating”, a position then reiterated on his profile create discussion and participation around art and works”.
The pavilion
The underlying theme of Bartolini’s work on display is sound, made of music but also of silence, and listening: hence the title, “Due qui – To hear”, which plays with the words Due Qui (two here) and To Hear (to listen) by assonance with English. «The first tense seems minimalist but is actually full of meaning. The green wall symbolizes the A on the pentagram: confusion. The wall violates the A flat, the reconciliation” explained the curator Luca Cerizza. A work which, however, also produces many readings, as the artist explains: «As a child I played on the scaffolding, which here has become organ pipes, almost a reconciliation with the family, a summary of life».
The Pavilion thus becomes a gigantic musical instrument and the notes fluctuate between the three environments thanks to a labyrinth of innocent tubes, an organ of metal pipes. The work was financed by the Ministry for 800 thousand euros, 400 thousand by private individuals. In the garden of the Virgins, performances, readings, meetings and readings will be held until November which will also be collected in the catalogue, edited by Luca Cerizza: there will therefore be texts signed, among others, by the Venetian Tiziano Scarpa and Nicoletta It costs.
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