Pollino National Park

Event stamp release: ARTEPOLLINO un altro sud- Another South

From Saturday 18^th July 2009 to Saturday 5^th September 2009

The interrelated artists Anish Kapoor, Carsten Höller, Giuseppe Penone

In the Lucania side of Pollino National Park, the largest National Park of Italy, there will be the ARTEPOLLINO un altro sud-Another South first edition. In a unique natural context, some world-famous artists will realize site-specific permanent works, in one of the most beautiful naturalistic area of the South of Italy.
ARTEPOLLINO is a project for the local development, which is part of “Sensi contemporanei” programme, promoted by Basilicata Region, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Cultural Activities and Heritage and the Venice Biennale Foundation, with the aim to enhance the environmental and cultural heritage in the territory of Lucania in the Pollino National Park.

For the ARTEPOLLINO un altro sud-Another South first edition, it has been set up a prestigious scientific committee, composed of persons that are part of the contemporary art world, to which the Basilicata Region referred in order to select the artists. Its chairman was Mario Cristiani, the chairman of Arte Continua Association, and Vicente Todolì, Director of Tate Modern of London, was part of it too.

The artists who were invited at the ARTEPOLLINO un altro sud-Another South first edition are three undisputed protagonists of the international contemporary art: Anish Kapoor, Carsten Höller and Giuseppe Penone, and it was requested to them to realize three site-specific permanent and large-sized works in the territory of the park. “Works, as Vicente Todolì says, that are able to interpret the spirit of the place and at the same time they draw the world's attention to this territory”. The installations will be open to the public from the end of July 2009, while the opening will take place at the beginning of September. Anish Kapoor will realize his work in the thermal baths of Latronico, in the Sinni Valley, Carsten Höller in San Severino Lucano, in the Frido Valley, and Giuseppe Penone in Noepoli in the Sarmento Valley.

As a central figure in the contemporary art scene, Anish Kapoor planned for the Pollino an installation named Earth Cinema: a “cut” that has been hollowed in the earth (45m of length), where visitors could enter from both sides. Inside, a long embrasure will allow people to “see” the extraordinary natural landscape and feel as a part of it. Instead, along a torrent, it will rise the work by Giuseppe Penone, Vegetal Theatre: “a place that is part of the region's landscape, created by vegetal elements which limit the spaces and the parts”. The circle-shaped theatre (with a diameter of 125m.) is made by natural elements, trees, bushes, stones. In the middle there is a stretch of water, between the audience and the stage.

In this work by Penone returns the idea that it does not exist any difference between the mankind and the other things, a conviction that has already been expressed by the artist in his most recent works.
Carsten Höller loves to confuse and provoke the spectator, modifying the traditional perceptive processes. Looking at many of her works, at first sight, they seem to be ironic and playful, but beyond the innocent appearance the artist suggests elements of doubts and uncertainty that are able to change the ordinary perception of things. Some examples are the big slides created for the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in London in the 2006, defined by the artist as “euphoria and happiness producers”. On the Pollino, Höller creates the RB Ride installation, a gigantic merry-go-round with 12 arms for 24 persons. It is located on the top of a hill, from which you can see an extraordinary natural landscape, and it will move as a normal merry-go-round but at an almost maddeningly slow pace.

Still in the ambit of ARTEPOLLINO un altro sud-Another South, it has been also promoted a project on education and territorial start-up named “local communities”, that willl finish on September, in which other artists as Claudia Losi, Nils-Udo, Anni Rapinoja and the cello player Mario Brunello were involved.
ARTEPOLLINO un altro sud-Another South is the continuation of a contemporary art-based route promoted by Basilicata Region in the 2004, by the signing of the Programma Quadro Agreement, whose plans were to realize a series of interventions in the ambit of the “Sensi Contemporanei” programme. After the success of this first experience and thanks to the synergies with the Ministry of Cultural Activities and Heritage, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Venice Biennale Foundation, since 2006 it has been possible to work on the second stage of Sensi Contemporanei in Basilicata, in order to carry out the ARTEPOLLINO un altro sud-Another South project.

To further develop this project, Basilicata Region also promoted the setting up of the ArtePollino cultural Association – whose members are young people, small entrepreneurs in the tourism, art lovers – with the aim to locally support the initiative through educational activities in the schools and popular workshops and seminars.

Hence, through ARTEPOLLINO un altro sud-Another South, Basilicata Region stakes on culture and in particular on contemporary art as the driving force behind the territorial development, making the realization of “Another South” possible.

ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES

CARSTEN HÖLLER
Carsten Höller, of German origin, was born in Bruxelles in the 1961 and lives and works in Stockholm. He made a name for himself in the art world of Ninties, he exhibited in some important international institutions his numerous personal and collective collections.
Höller considers art as a cognitive instrument and he uses his works to alter the sensory and emotional experiences of individuals. He loves to confuse and provoke the spectator, modifying the traditional perceptive processes. At first sight, his works are ironic and playful, but beyond the innocent appearance, Höller suggests elements of doubts and uncertainty that are able to change the ordinary perception of things. He creates situations and experiences that invite the audience to have an active participation. This leads to his famous works as the installation with the big slides for the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern of London (2006) – which are defined by the artist as “ the euphoria and happiness producers” - or the gigantic upside-down mushrooms for the Prada Foundation in Milan in 2000.

At the end of 2008, Höller realized in London a temporary installation, The Double Club, a club with a restaurant, a bar and a dance hall, which was going to be open just for six months. It was created to promote a meeting between the Congolese community and the Occidental one, the club offers a double menu with typical recipes from the North of Europe and Congo.

Carsten Höller took part in some important international exhibitions, from Documenta to Manifesta, from the Venice Biennale to those of Berlin and San Paolo in Brasil. He acted for the Sweden, with Miriam Bäckström, at the 51^th Venice Biennale. He exhibited in important situations as the Tate Modern of London, the Mass MoCA in America, the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, the Kunstverein of Hamburg and Cologne, the Museum für Gegenwartkunst of Basilea, the Moderna Museet of Stockholm and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki.

ANISH KAPOOR
He was born in Bombay in 1954, to an Indian father and a Jewish-Iraqi mother and lives and works in London since the beginnings of 70s, where he moved because of studies.

As a central figure in the contemporary art scene, he exhibited in the most important museums of the world, his works are part of private and public international collections.

Kapoor studies the opposites dialectic and the using of colour in its purity has become a standard element of his works and a symbol of the synthesis between East and West. His artistic path consists of two periods, the former consists of the works in the 80s: abstract- and natural-shaped sculpture objects, entirely covered by pure pigment, whose intense colour conceals its manufactured origin and suggests the idea of exceeding the limits. Since 90s onwards, his sculptures are more and more monumental and they represents the vacuum, showed through hollows that are filled or matter that empties out. A decisive year in his artistic career was the 1979, when Kapoor came back in India and rediscovered his origins and tha fact to be on a subtle bordeline between East and West. Once he came back in England he realized the series of 1000 Names. In 1980 had his first personal exhibition in the Patrice Alexandre' studio in Paris, after in the 1981 he was in London in the Coracle Press. In the same year he began the collaboration with Nicholas Logsdail, a manager of an art gallery and person in charge of the Lisson Gallery of London. Soon he had a prominent role in the New British Sculpture, the English sculpture new scene, together with artists as Cragg, Deacon, Woodrow e Gormley. In these years, his research is addressed to the using of colour which are able to give to his works a surface nature: “Skin, the external surface, has always been for me the place of action. It is the contact moment between the object and the world. The wrap which divides the inside from the outside”.

In 1990 he took part to the 44^th Venice Biennale, as a representative of Great Britain and he won the “2000 Prize”. In 1992 he won the Turner Prize and again the “Two thousand Prize” at the 45^th Venice Biennale. It followed exhibitions all around the world and public and private commissions.

His works are exhibited in the Tate of London, MOMA of New York, Reina Sofia of Madrid, Kunsthalle Basel, Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam. www.anishkapoor.com

GIUSEPPE PENONE
He was born in Garessio in 1947 and lives between Turin and Paris.

In his sculptures or installations, dated since 1967, the realization process is an integral part of the work, and so they are the artist's actions in a dialectic connection with the ones of the nature to give shape to a matter, which is different each time, revealing its imaginary characteristic.

Between 1968 and 1969, he had his first exhibitions in the Deposito d’Arte Presente and in the Sperone Gallery in Turin. In those years became one of the protagonists of Arte Povera, the critical theory created by Germano Celant since 1967, and he took part in some international exhibitions dedicated to avant-garde researches: “Konzeption-Conception” at the Städtische Museum of Leverkusen in 1969, “Conceptual Art Arte Povera Land Art” at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna of Turin and “Information” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, both in 1970.
The tree, thought by Penone as “the prime and simpler idea of life, culture, sculpture”, is a central element for his work. To create Alberi, a series that started in 1969, he digs a tree out of a wooden beam, but he never hollows out totally, so the trunk with its branches remains built-in the geometrical structure, revealing its natural origin.

In some of his works the human and nature agency interweave as in Zucche of 1978 or in Gesti vegetali (since 1983). Since the early Seventies, Penone has thought about the identity principle, conceiving the idea of limit in the sense of boundary and considering the action of contact.
In Svolgere la propria pelle (since 1970), Palpebre (since 1978), Propagazioni (since 1994), Pelle di grafite (since 2004), as in other series of works, traces and enlarged fingerprints, through the drawing, evoke the separation of everything, but also their mutual relation, their unavoidable belonging to the same universe.

In Soffi (since 1978), breathing and poetical inspiration materialize in the clay or in the vegetal elements that sorround the artist's body, who leaves his fingerprint on them.

“The difference between the man and the other things doesn't exist”, the artist states several times, and this conviction, in his most recent works, is expressed through the vital transmigration of the images from a material to another one, the assimilation of entities that are commonly considered different. As it happens in Paesaggi del cervello (since 2000), the drawings of the brain's mark on the cranium are transposed in the images of big leafs or in the Anatomie series (since 1993), where the artist digs into the marble's surface highlighting its veins that are so similar to the duct through which, in the living beings, the blood flows.

Since the early Seventies, the work of Penone has been receiving important awards in Italy, Europe, United States and Japan. He had personal exhibitions in numerous public institutions, as the Kustmuseum of Lucerna (1977), Staatliche Kunsthalle of Baden-Baden, Museum Folkwang of Essen (1978), Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam (1980), Städtische Museum Abteiberg of Mönchengladbach (1982), National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (1983), Forth Worth Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (1984), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1984), Musée des Beaux-Arts of Nantes (1986), Villa delle Rose, Bologna (1990), Musée d’Art Moderne of Strasburgo, Castello di Rivoli (1991), Kunstmuseum of Bonn (1997), Musée d’Art Contemporain of Nîmes, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (1997), Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea of Trento (1998), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Santiago de Compostela (1999), Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2004), Museum Kurhaus of Kleve (2006), Académie de France, Villa Medici in Rome (2008), MAMbo Museo d’Arte Moderna of Bologna (2008).
(text edited by Daniela Lancioni)

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ARTEPOLLINO UN ALTRO SUD SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

President
Mario Cristiani, Arte Continua Association's Chairman

Members
Vicente Todolì, Director of Tate Modern of London

Laura Barreca, Ministry of Cultural Activities and Heritage

Emanuele Montibeller, ArteSella Art Director

Gianpiero Perri, Director of Territorial Promotion Basilicata

Catterina Seia, UniCredit & Art in charge

Giuseppe Cosenza, Nicola Ferri, Davide Rossi, Vincenzo Vitale,
experts about the Pollino territory and members of the Arte Pollino Association

Press Preview 18^th July 2009

Opening to the public 5^th September 2009

Info:
www. artepollinobasilicata.it
toll free number: 800292020
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TOURIST INFORMATION:
Associazione Culturale ArtePollino
Via Giovanni Falcone 3
85043 Latronico (PZ)
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www.artepollino.it
Phone and fax 0973 859455
mobile. 340 6786865

APT Basilicata
www.aptbasilicata.it
www.discoverbasilicata.com
www.basilicata.travel
www.flickr.com/photos/basilicatatravel

PARK AUTHORITY
www.parcopollino.it

HOW TO ARRIVE
By car, for those who arrive both from North and South, leaving the A3 motorway when between the toolbooths of Lauria Nord, in Basilicata, and Spezzano Terme, in Calabria, it is possible to reach numerous municipalities of the Park, all connected by the S.S. 19 (A road) that goes all through the protected area.

By bus, thanks to some bus service societies, the Park's territory is also connected, by motorway, to

Bari, Naples, Rome, Perugia, Florence, Bologna, Genoa, Turin and Venice www.saj.it - www.lavallelinee.it - www.simetspa.it - www.iasautolinee.it - www. sitabus.it
By train, the nearest railway station are: Sapri, in Campania; Policoro and Maratea in Basilicata, Scalea, Paola and Sibari in Calabria.
By plane, the nearest airports are: Lamezia Terme, Napoli and Bari