ArtLine Milan: program for Art Week 2022

ArtLine Milano 2022

 

The exciting yearly program of inaugurations and initiatives of Milano Art Week 2022, that from 28 March to 3 April will spread to the entire city and to the public and private institutions dedicated to modern and contemporary art, returns this year with an important public art event.

 

Friday 1 April at 12.30 pm ArtLine Milano– the public art project of the Municipality of Milan dedicated to the introduction of twenty permanent artworks in the CityLife Park – is presenting three new works: Atrio dello sguardo sul futuro by Mario Airò, Padiglione Rossoby Alfredo Jaar, and Guardiansby Kiki Smith.

 

The works by Mario Airò, Alfredo Jaar and Kiki Smith are an addition to the first nine site-specific interventions already installed in the park by artists Riccardo Benassi, Judith Hopf, Maurizio Nannucci, Adrian Paci, Ornaghi & Prestinari, Wilfredo Prieto, Matteo Rubbi, Pascale Marthine Tayou and Serena Vestrucci. Further works by Rossella Biscotti, Elisabetta Benassi, Jeremy Deller, Shilpa Gupta, Adelita Husni-Bey, Liliana Moro, andOtobong Nkanga are currently in the making and will be installed in the future.

 

Atrio dello sguardo sul futuro by Mario Airò (Pavia, 1961) is an underground sculpture, surmounted by an external bronze dome and inspired by the so-called “Liver of Piacenza” or “Etruscan Liver” (dating back to the second to first century BCE). By reversing the traditional way of understanding this divinatory object, the artist presents it to the viewer as a ceiling coinciding with the celestial vault.

 

Atrio dello sguardo sul futuro is an environmental installation inspired by the ‘spatial-environmental’ vocation of Milanese avant-garde art,” explains Mario Airò.“It is inspired by the Liver of Piacenza, a small late-Etruscan bronze object that served as a map for the reading of the sacrificial animal’s entrails. The various parts of the liver and its protuberances are made to coincide with a superimposed celestial map, so as to establish a connection between the manifestations in the organ and the influence of this or that deity. This was how the Haruspex could read signs, omens, and tell the future. The idea was to pair this ancestral, somewhat chthonic root, to a place mainly characterized by the vertical thrust of the Three Towers.”

 

Padiglione Rosso by Alfredo Jaar (Santiago de Chile, 1956) welcomes the visitor inside a perfectly cubic space offering an alternative view of the CityLife context. Through a large red glass window, the artist invites us to reflect through the transformed image of the surrounding reality.

 

Padiglione Rosso is a frame that reduces the gigantic scale of CityLife to a more human scale,” explains Alfredo Jaar, “a modest frame that allows the spectator to see everything at once, have everything under control. Padiglione Rosso offers a space of silence and meditation. A thinking space about the state of culture and finance in our contemporary world.A thinking space about the state of culture and politics in our contemporary world. Padiglione Rosso is a space of resistance, a space of hope.”

The architectural design of the installation is by AOUMM.

 

 

Guardians by Kiki Smith(Nuremberg, 1954) consists of two bronze statues of two cats placed a short distance from one another.

 

These two cats are benevolent protectors, guarding the neighborhood,” underlines Kiki Smith, “Cats are mystical companions that bring us joy and solace. These sacred animals, like many living creatures, have become perceived as burdens to modern cities. People abandon them for social and economic reasons. They are left without care and subject to disease. Often their reproductive organs are destroyed for our convenience.  Like the loss of diversity in the plant world, the genetic diversity of animals is dwindling. I was inspired by the cats living in the moat surrounding Castello Sforzesco to make my piece for Citylife (ArtLine).

 

 

The inauguration will take place at 12.30 pm in the presence of the Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Milan Tommaso Sacchi, the CEO of SmartCityLife Roberto Russo, the director of the Office of Art in Public Spaces Marina Pugliese, the coordinator of ArtLine Milano Roberto Pinto and the artist Mario Airò.