Melania Pallini e Laura Gazzani durante la performace allo Spazio Leonardo di Milano

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.

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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.

Francesco Arena (Torre Santa Susanna, Brindisi, 1978) makes artworks inspired by historical events, particularly social and political phenomena of the recent past. These are episodes that are often hidden or silenced, finding a new life through processes of formal and metaphoric reduction into sculptures. He was awarded the Premio New York, was featured in the Italian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale and has exhibited his works in major museums such as MaXXI (Rome), Castello di Rivoli (Rivoli, TO) and La Casa Encendida (Madrid).

Marc Bauer (1975, Geneva, Switzerland) was awarded the GASAG Art Prize and the Prix Meret Oppenheim / the Swiss Grand Award for Art 2020. He uses drawing as a language to discuss issues such as migrations, identity and gender, as well as to develop a critique of new media and of the connections between religion and violence.
His works are part of public collections such as those of Kunsthaus Zürich, Centre Pompidou Paris, Museum Folkwang Essen and Migros Museum Zürich.

Guglielmo Castelli was born in 1987 in Turin, where he lives and works. Transience and fragility, instability and fluidity characterise the fragmented imagery of his drawings and paintings. His works have been presented in several major exhibitions such as: the 17th edition of Quadriennale di Roma (Rome), GAM (Turin), the Parkview Museum (Singapore), Foundation Louis Vuitton (Paris), Saint-Étienne Museum of Contemporary Art (Saint-Étienne), Fondazione Coppola (Vicenza).

Christian Fogarolli was born in 1983. His research focuses on the relationship between visual arts and scientific disciplines and theories, examining how, in a similar fashion, they have availed of artistic media to progress. His works have been exhibited in major international institutions such as dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel; MART - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rovereto; La Maison Rouge, Paris; de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; 5th Moscow International Biennale.

Luca Pignatelli (Milano, 1962) explores the mysteries that are hidden in construction sites, storage facilities and historical architectures of classic and contemporary cultures. He works with unusual materials that are inherently pictorial (hemp sheets, bits of wood and iron, paper assemblages). He manipulates them by superimposing his image archive: a catalogue of mechanical tools, boats, airplanes, urban landscapes, reminiscences of the past represented from the ruins of statues and objects. His works have been exhibited at the 53rd Venice Biennale, at Museo di Capodimonte (Napoli) and at Gam, Turin, as well as in many other major museums.

The Cool Couple is an artist duo (Niccolò Benetton and Simone Santilli) established in late 2012. Their research focuses on the points of friction that are generated daily through the relationship between people and images. A conception of images as active nodes, combined with a strong project-oriented approach, is translated into diverse expressive forms and languages. They exhibit internationally and have recently presented their works at Tbilisi Biennale (Georgia), Museo del Novecento (Milan) and MamBo (Bologna).