Admission Free
Sandro Chia, a painter closely associated with the new Italian movement known as “post-modern primitivism,” worked with video in the mid-seventies, producing three works. In these tapes, one can see the development of his approach to art-making before his involvement with the “ritorno alla pittura” scene. The three works which will be screened include: Di come il fuoco rigenera la candela (Of how the fire regenerates the candle), Tempo medio per un videotape (Average time for a videotape), and The navel-less singer, all by Sandro Chia, Produced by Art/Tapes/22 (1975, 50 mins, b&w, tapes courtesy Archivo della Biennale di Venezia).
Alighiero Boetti and Giulio Paolini are two of the artists who were part of the politicized Italian minimal movement known as Arte Povera. These two short tapes show the influence of the late sixties radicalism in Europe and the United States, in which slogans like the French “l'imagination au pouvoir” (power to the imagination) were inspirational to both political activists and the emerging conceptual art movement: Ciò ché sempre parla in silenzio è il corpo (What ever speaks in silence is the body), by Alighiero Boetti, and Unisono (One sound), by Giulio Paolini, both Produced by Art/Tapes/22 (1974, 5 mins, b&w, tapes courtesy Archivo della Biennale di Venezia).
Vincenzo Agnetti, a painter, theoretician, and close collaborator with the late Piero Manzoni, made use of video as a supplementary artistic tool. His work Documentario no. 2 forms a linguistic theory in which words are replaced by numbers which are then transformed into tones. By Vincenzo Agnetti, Produced by Art/Tapes/22 (1973, 8 mins, b&w, tape courtesy Archivo della Biennale di Venezia).
Alberto Moretti is a neo-dada conceptual artist formerly associated with the sixties Italian movement known as “Informal Art.” His work Il Magico è la scienza della giungla (Magic is the science of the jungle) focuses on an exploration of the symbolic value of the still image. By Alberto Moretti, Produced by Art/Tapes/22 (1975, 30 mins, color, tape courtesy Archivo della Biennale di Venezia).