INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM HUDSON
ELISA MUSCATELLI

Elisa Muscatelli – How would you describe your artistic practice to an audience that is experiencing it for the first time?

Graham Hudson – Experiencing any artwork for the first time, should be a little uncomfortable, you should have to pull your core tight, remember to breathe, and accept that discomfort is part of the process towards feeling better, towards understanding something new.

EM – In Classic Greek culture, the harmony of the body was reflected in the soul’s value and vice versa. Today, the body is stifled by an increasingly confused body positivity trend. How do you portray the 21st century’s bodies?

GH – The harmony of the body in Greek culture, was, of course, steeped in class structure, abuse, and slavery. Only a select few got to experience the academy and the luxury of the gymnasium. This is mirrored today in ideas of health and fitness, the juxtaposition, or in fact, the contradiction is what interests me. We know that good nutrition and exercise can make us feel better, at the same time this message exists within a market structure, which promotes
guilt, shame, and aims to get your money, as well let’s homogenize your body, and your behaviour.

EM – In the last few years, the material substance has been remodelling itself, according to the rules of virtual experience. Your account @physical_culture_philosophy presents a new way of seeing physicality. What is your vision on this topic, and what expressive limits/advantages does your social account impose, compared to sculptural practice?

GH – The vision for this Instagram account is to present art, philosophy, science, sport, and fitness as one, just like the Greeks and Romans saw it. In the fitness space, it’s rare to meet someone who knows that the history of the treadmill, is actually a prison punishment. To pivot into the future, the gym is an essential piece of equipment on any space exploration, as the muscles start to atrophy, at the moment they’re out of earth’s gravity. Presenting this on
Instagram enables a direct interdisciplinary approach. In the art world, to sculpt is inherently male, “to be a sculptor”. In the fitness world ‘sculpture’, or to sculpt, is actually gendered female, as it suggests the removal of material, the space in between, is where it’s fun to play.

EM – Your recent activities include the difficult request for an artistic residency in a gym and the installation of your work in a Burberry shop. What do you think about the mixing between high fashion, multinationals, and the art
system?

GH – All of those ecosystems: fashion, art, corporate, fitness, have their own embedded hierarchies and behaviors, invisible rules, and social constructs, mixing them up, and putting them face to face, becomes like raw material in itself. Can a gym be a gallery? Can a fashion house be a vegetable market? Where should art exist, depends on who is asking. What do we expect from art and design anyway? From creative experience? From life itself?

EM – Is there an artistic, literary, or cinematographic reference that had an impact on the development of your artistic and personal career?

GH – So, the easy answer is, of course, yes, many, and while I’d love to name a few, I think what’s significant is that every encounter, influences your development in life. In terms of art, it could be a piece made by a student, by a child, or something from a museum that you’ve travelled far, and waited a long time to see. The artistic encounter is reliant on your experience, what kind of day you’re having, is it raining? Are you hungry? A brief conversation can affect your entire life, the decision to take a bus one day, instead of a train. Or to attend an art lecture that you could have easily missed, all these things form the big picture, and I think that’s kind of the inspiring and exciting thing.
Thank you

The Blank Contemporary Art is pleased to be among the winners of the Italian Council (7′ Edition, 2019), a program that promotes Italian contemporary art in the world of Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism.

The Ministry awarded the project by the artist Gian Maria Tosatti Diptych of the Trauma. Its aim is to show the controversial aspects of certain European contexts, creating “portraits” of society without personal political positions or arbitrary convictions. Specifically, the artist will investigate the panoramas offered by Ukraine (Odesa Episode) and Turkey (Istanbul Episode), two emblematic places in contemporary Europe, two areas where traumas have strongly altered the territory, its culture, and politic. These traumas will be examined from the intimate and human point of view of the citizen.

The artist will create two environmental installations, one for each area. The final restitution of the entire experience will take place in the city of Bergamo, in an exhibition that will contain the two “episodes” that, being part of the same project, will form the Diptych of Trauma.
The project will be accompanied by the creation of a catalog that will document the exhibitions and will include critical texts aimed at testifying from different perspectives the current state of our civilization and images documenting the interventions. The catalog will be officially presented on the occasion of the exhibition in Bergamo.

Project realized in collaboration with RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts (Rome, Italy), Academy of Fine Arts of Naples (Naples, Italy), IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Kyiv, Ukraine), Depo (Istanbul, Turkey).

Gian Maria Tosatti (Roma, 1980) is an Italian visual artist.
His projects usually are long term investigations on specific topics related to the concept of identity, from political to the spiritual standpoint. His work consists mainly of large-scale site-specific installation is conceived for entire buildings or urban areas. His practice involves often the communities of the places where he works. In 2015 Art Review included him in their list of the 30 most interesting artists of his generation (Future Greats). In 2014 the international magazine Domus listed the installation My dreams, they’ll never surrender among the ten best shows in the world for that year. Tosatti is also a journalist, columnist for Corriere della Sera and Opera Viva magazine, writer of essays on art and politics.
His work has been shown at the Hessel Museum del CCS BARD (New York, 2014), the MADRE museum (Napoli, 2016), the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York, 2011), the Galleria Nazionale (Roma, 2017), the Petah Tikva Museum of Art (Petah Tikva, 2017), the Museo Archeologico di Salerno (Salerno, 2014), American Academy in Rome (Roma, 2013), Museo Villa Croce (Genova, 2012), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Roma, 2008), Chelsea Art Museum (New York, 2009), BJCEM (2014).

Our cultural mediators accompany deaf and hearing children and their families to discover Italian Sign Language through creative workshops on contemporary art.

The accessible art workshops in LIS create a dimension in which it is possible to overcome the communication barriers, that sometimes separate deaf children from hearing children, and to discover a common and unifying space of dialogue and fun.

The research within the scope of accessibility and inclusion of deaf audience develops through conferences, talks and training seminars involving deaf and hearing experts of the international cultural field.

The literary contest related to The Blank ArtDate – The City of crossed destinies gets started.

The Blank proposes to the public to write a short story inspired by the succession of the exhibition spaces visited during ArtDate, connecting at least 5 elements that has characterised the festival.

The works can serve as inspiration, but also the tarots associated with the places, as well as the history of the deck of cards or the experience and production of contemporary artists.

Thanks to the three categories in contest, The Blank offers to visitors of all ages the chance to win a xylography by Andrea Mastrovito, tickets for the Pinacoteca Carrara to see the famous Visconti-Sforza Tarots and the publication of the awarded tale in a dedicated newsletter.

The deadline for sending the tales is the
15 June 2016.

Read and download the full regulations on the website www.theblank.it/literary-contest-artdate-2016/

For further information associazione@theblank.it

Since 20 November 2018 the corridors surrounding the Intensive Care Unit of the Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo permanently host CANONE INFINITO, a site-specific sound installation by Lorenzo Senni (Cesena, 1983), curated by Stefano Raimondi and Claudia Santeroni.

The initiative is supported by Fondazione Credito Bergamasco, Amici della Pediatria and the family of Santo Radici. The project stands as a successful union between health and art, within a virtuous path that the hospital took over the years. It has the aim of offering the most effective and innovative tools and services in the health and cultural spheres.

The work of the artist, musician and composer takes the form of a delicate and poetic sound, designed for the families of the patients hospitalised in the intensive care unit and set up in the adjacent corridors.

The work was developed from an analysis of the particular needs that the context of the intensive care unit requires. The decision to use the medium of sound, in addition of being a reflection of the latest research in contemporary art, responds to the need to propose a work that is perceptible but does not want to become an invasive visual background for the people waiting in the corridors. The composition will be a sound that accompanies people throughout the day, audible at the transit points of the long corridors, but far away from the places of stay and treatment.

Lorenzo Senni has already shown interest in and sensitivity to the hospital environment, deepening the theme of illness, hospitalisation and operation. An example of this is the soundtrack of the video Da Vinci by Yuri Ancarani, presented at the Venice Biennale in 2013, which focuses on a robotic microsurgery operation performed using the ‘Da Vinci’ machine.

The conception of CANONE INFINITO took place in total harmony and dialogue with the hospital and its needs. The work has developed from an analysis of the particular context of intensive care units. An in-depth examination thanks to the support of Maria Simonetta Spada, Director of the Psychology Unit, and the contribution of Santo Radici, former Director of Human Resources at the Hospital and contact person for the artistic installations in the healthcare unit.

CANONE INFINITO enriches the high quality cultural and artistic heritage that characterises the Hospital of Bergamo and makes it unique on an international level thanks to the presence of permanent interventions by artists such as Stefano Arienti, Francesco Garutti, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Andrea Mastrovito.

Luogo_e is a not only-space-exhibition, operating in Bergamo, in via Pignolo 116, since November 2017. Since 2019 it has been constituted as a non-profit cultural association for contemporary art. The exhibition program of luogo_e is composed by collective thematic exhibitions, which arise from the a book reading, in line with the tradition handed down by Ars Arte+Libri, historical art bookshop who preceded luogo-e to its location in the Bergamo area. Each exhibition adopts a well-established format, in which works by emerging visual artists are flanked by the work of a contemporary artist already historicized, to a non-contemporary work and a literary work. For each exhibition place_and proposes various events such as lectures, book presentations and musical research, film forums and public readings. The site of luogo_e, www.luogoe.com , is a platform for discussion and artistic and literary critical sharing, artistic and literary.

The section of BFM37 dedicated to the contaminations between cinema and contemporary art will offer a close-up look on the work of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, a Swedish duo awarded with the Leone d’Argento at Venice Biennale in 2009, for the first time in Bergamo.

The exhibition, curated by Stefano Raimondi and Claudia Santeroni, will bring the artists’ fantastic worlds in the Sixteenth-century spaces of Porta Sant’Agostino.

The partnership between Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg began in 2004; their work is presented in large immersive installations, bizarre landscapes populated by people, animals and plants portraying the impulses and contradictions of the human soul.
Playing with the historical meaning of Porta Sant’Agostino as a transit point, the exhibition develops around a large projection and, at the same time, shows the sculptural research carried out by the artists.

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg will meet the festival audience on Saturday March 9, 3:30PM at Cinema San Marco. During the event, a selection of video works will be available, allowing visitors to learn, through the words of the protagonists, the main implications related to their work.

The exhibition is promoted by the City of Bergamo and is organized by Associazione The Blank, Bergamo Film Meeting and Lab 80 film.
In collaboration with Giò Marconi (Milan) and with technical contribution of Dielle Ceramiche and the partnership with La Torre tappeti.

Nathalie Djurberg (Lysekil, Sweden – 1978) and Hans Berg (Rättvik, Sweden – 1978) live and work in Berlin. In 2009, they participated in the 53rd Venice Biennale “Fare Mondi”, winning the Silver Lion. Their works were at the centre of solo exhibitions in the most important artistic institutions, including the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, the MART in Trento and Rovereto, the Tate Britain in London, the PICA in Perth, the Moscow Garage and the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis. Their works can also be found in public collections such as: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kunsthaus Zuerich, Zurich; Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Borås Konstmuseum, Borås; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Paolo Fabbri is the semiotician that with his speech “The tarot card story and the language of the emblems” to international Seminar on the narrative structures, inspired by Italo Calvino for the drafting of “The Castle of Crossed Destinies”.

Studio of Paolo Icaro, Tavullia, 2019
in the foreground
P. Icaro, Racconto, since 1969, onyx, lead,
cm. 116x152x11

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH PAOLO ICARO

I thought I had met in that ingot of common steel, commonly called iron, a proportion, a unit I would say” symbolic “of all the iron: that metal was all there inside in an atomic explosion. That ingot was not a form, it was not an object but a thing in itself. So I looked for other materials that were equally intensely appealing to me, and the only formal criterion that I imposed was the size of the first Racconto. […] The other criterion was intensity and the satisfaction of the various meetings, now echoes of memories now of nostalgia, of places and situations.

extract from Paolo Icaro. Faredisfarerifarevedere, curated by Lara Conte, Mousse publishing, 2016