Young Artists between Venice and New York

Published: 2008 - December/2009 - January, Cultural and Artistic Paths

Next year In June, in concurrence with the opening of the Venice Biennale, opens a new exhibition centre François Pinault’s Punta della Dogana. So will be born - so it’s said - the world centre for contemporary art, which will see united in a type of ‘art city’ three prestigious Venetian museum institutions: Palazzo Grassi, the Guggenheim Collection and, precisely, the new ‘museum’ of the Punta della Dogana. But does Venice, who invented the art Biennale, really love contemporary art, that which is obstinately imposed on the great public for the last decades and, now, also at François Pinault’s new Palazzo Grassi? There is some doubt, because the exhibitions, which have been the most successful in the last few years, have been the exhibition of Giovanni Segantini at the Guggenheim Collection in 2001 and that of Lucien Freud at the Correr Museum, shown in occasion of the 2005 Biennale. That is to say, a nineteenth century painter and a symbolic artist. Which, if on one side seem to confirm the voices, which have been for years announcing the return of the figurative painter, find in reality a denial of the facts, because painting has all but disappeared in the great international shows, replaced by television screens and installations?
But is it really like this? Are these truly the latest trends of today’s art? The originality exhibited every two years at the Biennale are in fact originality of convenience, because the curators offer works by now homogenized by the big international art circuit, instead of going , as they should, to the studios of young artists in search of new talent. This is in fact what we are committed to do, because we are convinced that art is not only what we see in the consecrated official spaces but at times nestled in the more modest places, where young unappreciated artists work. In Venice as in New York or in any other part of the world. You only need to go and find them.