Spazio Leonardo Loves a Collection

he 2021 programme of Spazio Leonardo will close with an exhibition dedicated to an extraordinary project: A Collection.
Born in 2017 from the encounter between master weaver Giovanni Bonotto and curator Chiara Casarin, A Collection envisages a creative dialogue and exchange between the most talented artists of the present, both emerging and established ones. Through participating in a residency programme, they are invited to engage with tapestry making, by means of ancient crafts and new technologies.

The programme starts from the artists’ projects and visions, which, thanks to the experience of Giovanni Bonotto, can evolve into unique formal solutions and unexpected aesthetics.
The project’s key point is the desire to create unique artworks that could represent the values of our traditions, innovation and environmental responsibility; in a broader sense, artworks that are able to represent our time.
In fact, part of the sewing threads is obtained from recycled materials, which are sought and selected on the basis of the visual needs of each tapestry, considering which effect images and compositions aim to produce.
From this commitment and such sensitivity unique dialogues arise, where diverse forms of expertise merge to give shape to new production models.

On the 15th of September Spazio Leonardo will host six among the most recent projects produced by A Collection: the tapestries by Marc Bauer (A Collection Award, ArtVerona 2020), Luca Pignatelli and Francesco Arena: their works are the result of the latest residencies organised by A Collection. The tapestries by Christian Fogarolli, The Cool Couple (A Collection Award, Arte Fiera 2020) and Guglielmo Castelli, instead, have all been produced in 2020. However, the spaces of Spazio Leonardo won’t be dotted only by their interventions, but will also host a previously unseen work conceived and created by Giovanni Bonotto in collaboration with Florentina Isac, that specifically engages with architectural details of Spazio Leonardo.

The naturalistic triumphs and characters by Bauer, the cinematic settings and visions of Pignatelli, the political or mathematical analysis by Arena, the magical inscrutability in Castelli’s scenes, the three-dimensional approach of The Cool Couple, the scientific/biological and cultural analysis by Fogarolli, are displayed in the Manica Lunga of Spazio Leonardo as if they were theatrical curtains. And as such, they propose a trajectory on possible viewpoints on our time, offering an intense, diverse and articulated reading of some of the several tensions livening our thinking and the dynamics of the present up.

Elena Forin

A Collection became an Association of Social Promotion in 2020, but its history dates back to the encounter between Giovanni Bonotto and Chiara Casarin in 2017. Bonotto had already developed a series of strategies for the weaving of large scale images employing potentially unlimited materials. He had also produced tapestries exhibited in major institutions such as Museo Novecento in Florence, Teatro alla Scala in Milan and Centre Pompidou in Paris. With a background as a museum director and contemporary art curator, Chiara Casarin has combined Bonotto’s extraordinary textile mastery with the creativity of both emerging and established artists, among the most interesting ones of the contemporary art scene. They were joined by Anna Foffani (office management), Giovanni Morandina (visual communication and editorial activities), Alberto Habaibeh (video and movie production), Florentina Isac and Marco Bianchini (fabric designers), Nicole Condotta (intern). Together they gave life to A Collection APS, based in Venice, Dorsoduro 1584. Since 2017 A Collection has collaborated with Nicola Zanella, Luca Molinari, Michele Lanzingher, Claudio Piscopo, Catterina Seia, Elena Forin, Marcello Forin, Daniele Lago, Maria Chiara Valacchi, Antonio Di Mino, Stefano Raimondi, Simone Menegoi, Alessandro Pedron, Maria Pia La Tegola, Carlo Maiolini, Diego Bergamaschi.... read the rest of the article»