Page 50 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

BIENNALE VENEZIA

50TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION 2003

Dreams and Conflicts - The Dictatorship of the Viewer

The Zone behind the Stirling bookshop, THE ZONE is an ephemeral construction
The Giardini of the Biennale that does not alter the original fabric of the Giardii, although it does
Realised by A12 not play second fiddle to the buildings around it. It is both piazza and
THE ZONE is a territory crossed by opposing tensions, a space for a crossroads simultaneously, an area with precise borders although
confrontation and a platform for dialogue in which to test a new image also an open, crossable space; the architecture designed by the A12
of contemporary Italian art. group can be seen as a metaphor for the role Italy has played both
Resulting from an initiative from the director of visual arts, Francesco in European history and, more specifically as regards the Biennale, a
Bonami, who has commissioned its realisation from a group of architects, catalyst for different identities, a city in which distant nations loom,
A12, and entrusted its supervision to the curator, Massimiliano Gioni, all sharing the language of contemporary art.
THE ZONE is above all a new space for Italian art. Designed by the The temporary nature of the building reflects a new vision of national
A12 group, which has been working at the border between art and identity: whilst the European Union, migratory movements and the
architecture for some time, THE ZONE, is both an installation and an end of the cold war have traced out new borders between countries,
exhibition space, a container and contained: a temporary building that the geography of the Giardino has remained resistant to change. The
opens to host the new work of young Italian artists. national pavilions still preserve a 19th century view of the nation-
Positioned in the open space opposite the American Pavilion and state, whose role remains prevalently celebratory and diplomatic.

THE ZONE
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni

As imposing as castles and monumental as embassies, the Giardii Patrick Tuttofuoco Gruppo A12
pavilions are institutions that confirm and sanction national identity, Project for Brazil, 2003 The Zone Project, 2003
and only rarely question it.
THE ZONE, instead, outlines a place for participation: a geography
to be built, rather than to be celebrated - a mobile, do-it-yourself
identity. The choice of the artists invited also reflects a flexible idea
of the contemporary art and culture of Italy. Rather than being based
on one artist, as is usual in the foreign pavilions, THE ZONE is both
an overview of Italian art today, and an observatory from which
to follow the transformations affecting Italian society. By mixing
tasks that speak a multiplicity of languages, THE ZONE amplifies
the signals from a generation of artists who have grown up in Italy
but with their eyes on Europe and the world, and so creates new
links between physical and mental places. An unstable generation
willingly or unwillingly, which in its pockets filled with euros and
mobile telephones also carries the memory of an ancient tradition, of
a good-luck gesture or a phrase in dialect, whilst seeking a new place
for the baggage of history, submitted to the sudden accelerations
of the present. THE ZONE thus becomes a disturbed territory, rich
in different temporalities and stratifications: a landscape that is at -Alessandra Ariatti, Micol Assaël, Anna de Manincor-ZimmerFrei,
once forest, root, house, road, factory and labyrinth. A noisy, chaotic Diego Perrone and Patrick Tuttofuoco, are exhibiting at the Biennale
landscape, but also slow and distant, preserving differences and di Venezia for the first time.
attending to the contradictions of our present.All the artists invited

50 WORLD of ART