University of Verona and AGI Verona
present
Contemporaries / Contemporaries
80 works by artists of different generations
in an exhibition by Denis Isaia
A new and innovative project
to raise awareness and train students and the community
to contemporary art
From Adrian Paci to Debora Hirsch, from Sisley Xhafa to Nico Vascellari, from Jorge Paris to Shilpa Gupta, and also Loris Cecchini, Giovanni Ozzola, Gianni Caravaggio, Pierre Bismouth, Lawrence Carroll, Christian Chironi and many others: more than 80 Italian and international artists – born mostly after the Seventies – are the protagonists of Contemporanee / Contemporanei, the exhibition project curated by Denis Isaia that opens Tuesday, September 10 in the spaces of the Polo Santa Marta and other venues of the University of Verona.
The project – born from the collaboration between the University of Verona and AGI Verona and the result of an agreement with which the association has granted on loan for five years part of its collection – inaugurates a path of knowledge and research, which aims to make the protagonists above all students.
Contemporanee / Contemporanei, in fact, is not only an exhibition, but a project of awareness and continuous training in contemporary art that provides innovative educational paths and the direct involvement of students in the realization of conferences, talks, guided tours of the exhibition.
The project aims, on the one hand, to develop transversal skills among students and, on the other hand, to promote actions to enhance contemporary art, transforming the University into a place of confrontation with Art, understood as the key to interpreting reality, a living subject from which to learn.
An invitation addressed primarily to young people, but that extends to the entire community, to discover and deal with contemporary creativity. A new way, as Giorgio Fasol, President of AGI Verona, says, to be “infected without fear by the importance of research, by the vertigo of discovery, by the thrill of passion, by the pleasure of contact, by the urgency of dialogue and confrontation”.
Set up in the spaces of the Santa Marta complex – former Provianda of the Hapsburg troops, since 2009 seat of the University of Verona – and in other locations of the University, Contemponraee / Contemporanei is the first permanent public exhibition of contemporary art in Italy, dedicated to works produced mainly in the 2000s.
The exhibition, designed by the curator Denis Isaia, aims to contaminate university life in a free and informal way thanks to an exhibition – created in collaboration with the architect Francesca Maria Martellono – that enhances and highlights the historical value of the building and prepares for discreet and poetic encounters with the works: this space that today welcomes knowledge, innovation and experimentation, open to the university community, the city and the territory, will be the sounding board for the dreamlike, ironic, twilight or political tones of the more than 80 artists involved.