www.laurette.net / projects / 2001 / Il dono
show / project
Il Dono
Offerta, ospitalità, insidia
(THE GIFT : Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality)
June 3 - September 23, 2001
With Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Carlo Benvenuto, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, James Lee Byars, Cai Guo-Qiang, Clegg & Guttman, Claude Closky, Roberto Cuoghi, Gabriele Di Matteo, Lara Favaretto, Jochen Gerz, Enrico Ghezzi, Nan Goldin, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Fabrice Gygi, Mona Hatoum, Carsten Höller, Zhang Huan, Pierre Huyghe, Ettore Innocente, Alfredo Jaar, Francesco Jodice, Joko, Massimo Kaufmann, On Kawara, Karen Kilimnik, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Wolfgang Laib, Matthieu Laurette, Urs Lüthi, Piero Manzoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Cildo Meireles, Ana Mendieta, Lee Mingwei, Mariko Mori, Liliana Moro, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Maurizio Nannucci, Hermann Nitsch, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Luca Pancrazzi, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Navin Rawanchaikul, Man Ray, Pipilotti Rist, Mario Rizzi, Roee Rosen, Anri Sala, Andreas Slominski, Kiki Smith, Yutaka Sone, Georgina Starr, Superflex, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Patrick Tuttofuoco.
Curated by Gianfranco Maraniello, Sergio Risaliti and Antonio Somaini
> PALAZZO DELLE PAPESSE
Center for Contemporary Art
Via di Città 126, Siena, Italy
Travelling exhibition
The exhibition toured in various museums in the United States, organized by the New York-based association ICI - Independent Curators International.
Bronx Museum of the Arts
November 27, 2002 - March 2, 2003
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ
May 31 - August 9, 2003
Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario
September 13, 2003 - January 2004
exhibited work(s)
Installation. Posters, TV set, wall bracket, video onto DVD (’Apparitions: Money-Back Products (96-97)’, duration: 40min.looped with subtitles). Unique piece.
press release
THE GIFT
Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality
curated by Gianfranco Maraniello, Sergio Risaliti and Antonio Somaini
co-ordination: Lucia Minunno
site: Palazzo delle Papesse Center for Contemporary Art, Via di Città 126, Siena
On June 2, 2001 the exhibition The Gift. Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality, overseen by Gianfranco Maraniello and Antonio Somaini, will be inaugurated at Palazzo delle Papesse Center for Contemporary Art in Siena.
The exhibition is a co-production of Palazzo delle Papesse Center for Contemporary Art in Siena and Candiani Cultural Center in Mestre, in collaboration with the Cultural Councils of the municipalities of Siena and Venice.
The exhibition, which gathers the works of about fifty contemporary artists including figures who have been in the foreground of the international art scene during the past thirty years and young emerging artists, proposes to explore the notions of gift, homage, dedication, offering, invitation and hospitality in all their ambiguity. In a world ever-more dominated by the rigid regulation of personal relationships and populated mostly by objects intended as products and commodities, certain works of art seem to underline the importance of disinterested and gratuitous gestures, capable of generating and symbolizing a new binding relationship between artist, work and viewer.
In an attempt to shed light on the wealth of meanings inherent in the acts of giving and receiving, the exhibition presents works that have been conceived as gifts of things and gifts of the self, gifts of one's own body and gifts of symbols, dedications, homages, gratuitous dispersions and selfless gestures, signs of invitation and hospitality. The picture that emerges from the whole of the works exhibited indicates not so much the need for a nostalgic re-evaluation of generosity and altruism, but rather displays all of the ambiguity of the practice of giving: every gift (whether a present, an homage, a dedication or an offering of hospitality) always reveals itself to be ambiguously suspended self-interest and selflessness, generosity and insult, seduction and insidiousness, homage and challenge. Giving, in fact, certainly means performing an act of devotion and respect towards another, but often hides the attempt to affirm one's own superiority and to challenge the other to respond with an equivalent or superior gift. The purpose of the exhibition, then, is that of inviting the spectator to reflect on the many implications inherent in the acts of giving and receiving, and on the diverse forms of interpersonal relations that these acts can produce.
Exhibiting artists
The exhibition The Gift. Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality, presents works by about fifty artists of diverse origins, among which historic works like those of Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni and Man Ray; personalities in the forefront of the art scene of the past thirty years (such as Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Kosuth, Ana Mendieta and Yoko Ono); artists who affirmed themselves between the second half of the '80s and the first half of the '90s (like Clegg & Guttman, Jochen Gerz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mona Hatoum, Gabriel Orozco); and young artists who have made their marks on an international level in the last few years (including Japanese artists Mariko Mori and Yutaka Sone, Chinese artists Cai Guo Qiang, Zhang Huan and Lee Mingwei, Thai artists Navin Rawanchaikul and Rirkrit Tiravanija, French artists Marie-Ange Guilleminot and Mathieu Laurette, Italian artists Carlo Benvenuto, Lara Favaretto, Massimo Kaufmann, Luca Pancrazzi and Patrick Tuttofuoco, Israeli Roee Rosen).
The catalogue
The exhibition catalogue curated by Antonio Somaini, edited and distributed by Charta publishers, will contain images of all of the works on exhibit and several essays, in addition to those by curators Gianfranco Maraniello and Antonio Somaini and by Palazzo delle Papesse Director Sergio Risaliti, written by internationally-known art critics, philosophers, anthropologists and writers. The authors are: philosophers Jean Baudrillard, Riccardo Caldura, Jacques Derrida, Raoul Kirchmayr, Jean-Luc Marion, Pietro Montani, Jean-Luc Nancy; anthropologists Alain Caillé, Franco La Cecla, Antonio Marazzi and Alfredo Salsano; art critics Chiara Bertola, Giorgina Bertolino, Achille Bonito Oliva, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jaqueline Burckhardt, Dan Cameron, Henry Meyric Hughes, Cornelia Lauf, Yehuda Safran, Marco Senaldi, Harald Szeemann; literary scholars Nicola Gardini and Martino Marazzi.
The exhibition was preceded by the international convention on "Figures of the gift and hospitality in contemporary artistic practice," organized in January 2000 at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice with sponsorship from Herno SpA. Important personalities participating in the convention included philosopher Jean Baudrillard; historian Giovanni Levi; anthropologists Alain Caillé and Franco La Cecla; art critics Lorand Hegyi, Henry Meyric Hughes, Marco Senaldi and Angela Vettese; artists Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Joseph Kosuth, Eva Marisaldi, writers Daniele Del Giudice and Tiziano Scarpa.
The purpose of the convention, which was held as a three-day closed-door seminar, was to gather diverse commentaries on two themes: a) what are the forms that the ancient practices of giving and receiving have assumed in contemporary society, from offering to sacrifice, from tribute to donation, from dedication to alms; b) in what way is the wealth of the practice of the gift manifested in contemporary artistic production. A good part of the essays presented in the exhibition catalog had their origins in talks and debates that took place during the three days of the convention.
With sponsorship by:
Herno S.p.a.
With the contribution of:
Fondazione Monte dei Paschi
Monte dei Paschi di Siena
The Charming Hotels
Bayer
Gondrand
Group & Group
Futura wide format
Siena APT
Protagon Editori Toscani
VideoSistemi
Idroelettrica
With the support of:
Ministry for Cultural Activities and Properties
Didactics: Elicona Servizi Culturali
press office: Maria Cammelli, Chiara Calciolari
Tel. 0577-220720/21; fax 0577-42039; e-mail:
stampa.papesse@comune.siena.it
website: http://www.papesse.org
invitation card
coming soon
catalogue / publication(s)
Il dono / The Gift, Exh. Cat. Milano: Charta, 2001. Essays by various authors (Antonio Somaini, Gianfranco Maraniello, Harald Szeemann...), documentation of works.
The exhibition catalogue curated by Antonio Somaini, edited and distributed by Charta publishers, contains images of all of the works on exhibit and several essays, in addition to those by curators Gianfranco Maraniello and Antonio Somaini and by Palazzo delle Papesse Director Sergio Risaliti, written by internationally-known art critics, philosophers, anthropologists and writers. The authors are: philosophers Jean Baudrillard, Riccardo Caldura, Jacques Derrida, Raoul Kirchmayr, Jean-Luc Marion, Pietro Montani, Jean-Luc Nancy; anthropologists Alain Caillé, Franco La Cecla, Antonio Marazzi and Alfredo Salsano; art critics Chiara Bertola, Giorgina Bertolino, Achille Bonito Oliva, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jaqueline Burckhardt, Dan Cameron, Henry Meyric Hughes, Cornelia Lauf, Yehuda Safran, Marco Senaldi, Harald Szeemann; literary scholars Nicola Gardini and Martino Marazzi.
related articles
coming soon
related links
Palazzo delle Papesse web site http://www.papesse.org
Palazzo delle Papesse press kit http://papesse.org/cgi-bin/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid989487540,33960,
IKT congress : http://papesse.org/cgi-bin/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid988472554,56364,
ICI web site : http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/Exhibitions/Gift/gift.htm
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