Back art art is an exhibition that brings together over forty works of thirty contemporary artists in the historic rooms of the Accademia Gallery in Florence. The exhibition involves not only the rooms of the museum specifically dedicated to temporary exhibitions, but also the salt of the permanent collection, the Tribune’s David , the Gallery of Prisons , the Gipsoteca, the Hall of the Colossus, where the inclusion of contemporary works highlighting clearly the relationship between present and past. The exhibition, curated by Bruno Cora, Franca Falletti and Daria Filardo, includes the installation in the halls of the Gallery of works: Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Burri, Catelani Antonio, Martin Creed, Gino de Dominicis, Rineke Dijkstra, Marcel Duchamp, Luciano Fabro, Hans Peter Feldmann, Luigi Ghirri, Antony Gormley, Yves Klein, Jannis Kounellis, Ketty La Rocca, Leoncillo, Sol LeWitt, Eliseo Mattiacci, Olaf Nicolai, Louis Alders, Giulio Paolini, Claudio Parmiggiani, Giuseppe Penone, Pablo Picasso, Alfredo Pirri, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Renato Rinaldi, Savinio, Thomas Struth, Fiona Tan, Bill Viola, Andy Warhol . The way back art art is what Luciano Fabro – between the artist most famous of the Italian who died in 2007 – had chosen for a collection of his writings, lectures and conferences held between 1981 and 1997 at universities, academies and museums worldwide. Take that phrase as the title of the exhibition marks the sharing of a thought turned to art as a continuum that renews and regenerates itself, drawing strength from itself and from its own history. Art art returns suggests the exemplary artists who with their works look at the history, the masterpieces of the past, using its iconography, elaborating the thought, taking on a responsibility not exhausted and belonging that has no boundaries, but which is divided according to language rich in interpretive possibilities. The place that hosting the exhibition is doubly symbolic. It is famously home of David and thePrisoners of Michelangelo, as well as funds that offer important masterpieces of various periods, but most of the fourteenth-century Florentine painting: thus emerges as the ideal place to make real dialogue between the works of the past and those artists of our day, offering audiences the experience of a constant counterpoint. The gallery exhibition space is also linked to the history of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, the first institution established in Italy to mark the continuity between past and present, where the collection of plaster casts and works, before and after the birth of the museum, has provided exempla of Renaissance thought and the lifeblood of artists from around the world, and the Accademia in Florence came to study. languages ​​put together in this museum and many are logical and cover all the ‘ arc of visual production techniques including more traditional such as painting, sculpture, drawing as well as photography, video, performance, environmental installations . All images are accepted and included in this process.The works have been carefully chosen for the reflections, the “survival” and the visual similarities with the past, with paintings, sculptures and architecture of the museum, which trigger and unravel a critical argument about the role and function of the gesture creative. Living artists were involved in the choice and some of them will carry out the works specially for the occasion. ‘s Arch of Hysteria by Louise Bourgeois, hung with all its load of “hysteria of living” in front of Venus by Pontormo and not far by David of Michelangelo, offering proof of how the Queen naked form of the human body can express ideas and feelings trigger more unfathomably distant. And the effort to bring out the shape from the raw material, on which it is consumed the life of Michelangelo, still seems to weigh on the shoulders of Joseph Penone difficult to dig in its mighty trunks of wood, as echoed in the shapes obtained in cement by Antony Gormley. The other figure of Giulio Paolini will be located almost opposite the video Surrender of Bill Viola: Two ways to revisit and interpret the contemporary theme of reflection and reproducibility of introducing, in the left arm of the Grandstand, the Fair chalks of the nineteenth century, only objects created to be played. The theme of reflection is also produced in the floor fractured mirror of Alfredo Pirri, in the work Portrait of the Artist as a Weeping Narcissus Olaf Nicolai weeping that makes ripples and different image reflected in mirror painting by Michelangelo Pistoletto holy conversation, which includes us in a conversation today. Metaphorically, the reflection becomes the identification of the gaze of the visitor, who enters conceptually a part of the creative process in a video installation by Rineke Dijkstra, which tells of a slow observation and reproduction of a Picasso painting, pictured in front of Thomas Struth Dürer’s self and in the performance of athletes that travel faster spaces of the Gallery of Martin Creed. The reproducibility, repetition and movement of images in art history has dealt with a critical eye in the works of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Louis Ghirri, Hans Peter Feldmann, Ketty La Rocca that directly relate to icons known. Jannis Kounellis with Untitled recall the iconography and the tragic sense of the Crucifixion, a theme taken up differently in the works of Alberto Burri and Triumphant Renato Rinaldi, while gold and ultramarine blue monochromes of Yves Klein rapporteranno gold funds of fourteenth-century altarpieces. The casts of the eyes of David in the work of Claudio Parmiggiani will pose the problem of the fragment, while the San Sebastian Leoncillo Alders and Luigi will give different visions of quell’iconografia sacred. Emblematic and mysterious gaze on the past will appear in Neptune Fisherman Alberto Savinio like Urvasi and Gilgamesh by Gino de Dominicis. Interesting reflections on the work of the past will be provided by Child Figure (the Cardinal) Francis Bacon, from ‘ Arlequín espejo with Pablo Picasso, Sol LeWitt’s drawings of the frescoes of Piero della Francesca, as the egg-shaped volumes of The Judgement of Paris Luciano Fabro or large iron sculpture Solar Chariot of Montefeltro Elisha Mattiacci. The memory in recognition of the origins and provenance will be the cornerstone of Provenance , reflection film by Fiona Tan and even classical elements of architecture museums are starting development of the form in Klettersteig Catelani Antonio.

The recognition of the origins, the persistence of patterns and forms, the need to start over, go back and edit previous speculations, are elements of a thinking and a doing that belong to the essence of what we call the discourse of art history, its languages ​​and the way visual and plastic. The report opens with the memory has always been the continuing artistic reflection that evokes connections and complex thoughts, build new stores, constellations and articulated systems that allow to reason about the figures, the compositional process and the fundamental archetypes of art. In the work of artists of every age can be recognized lineages, findings, shown in a return always different. The simultaneity is not exempt from this attitude of continuous analysis and revision of the sources, which leads to nostalgic evocations empty but is capable of generating current and innovative creations deeply. Memory, as understood in this project, not the sequential recording of passing time, it is rather a subterranean memory that emerges precisely in its approach to heterogeneous fragments (past and present) that awaken the depth, grasp the unspoken, make see a dialectical “dizzying”. The unbroken meditation on the sources and processing in the works of great artists is open and vital resource to generate innovative creations deeply because, quoting Cesare de Seta, Italian art historian and writer “… there are those among our contemporaries who continue to engage with History and the past, and for this reason the art of the future. ” A program of events will join the exhibition in order to deepen and broaden the topics proposed. The theme of the reports that this art has with its past is at the heart of the choice of a series of six films presented Odeon Florence from Wednesday 23 to Friday, May 25, 2012.Edited by The Screen of the Film Festival, the program will bring together films by great directors of art films, from the sixties to today. In addition to meetings with artists, was scheduled for the autumn a series of three concerts (Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Luciano Berio) by Daniele Lombardi.

Dennis Olsen – from Aaron to Zeno
curated by Rebecca Olsen
opening Tuesday July 10th- at 6.30-8:30 pm
SRISA Gallery of Contemporary Art, Florence

Two headed twins, strange monstrous faces, elegant ladies, and leery-eyed men are just some of the images included in the archive of portraits (80 in total) that are included in the installation by Dennis Olsen, for the SRISA Gallery of Contemporary Art. These images represent an entire body of work that has been the focus of Olsen’s attention for the past four years.  For Olsen, this is the first time that the work will be viewed together in one space. The works are not in their original format but are reproductions, produced for the exhibition in a smaller more intimate format. Framed and informally arranged in the gallery, the work reminds us of a family album situated outside of time and positioned in a fictional place, whose only common ancestor is the artist that created them.   Each portrait is titled with a name, and accompanied by a short narrative depicting a personal anecdotal history. The stories are printed in a booklet, and the spectator is invited to browse the images and read the narratives imagining the characters whose tales may be all too familiar; or to contemplate new narratives within the faces, whose lines tell a story.

In terms of subject matter, this work represents a clear departure from Olsen’s earlier work that often incorporated the use of text, architectural elements and imagined landscapes.  These faces emerge through a buildup of marks and lines that Olsen appropriates through rubbings taken from portraits found on paper money that is scanned and manipulated to produce relief images.  While the new subject matter is in stark contrast to his earlier work, these fictive portraits relate strongly to Olsen’s use of process in the creation of his imagery.  Olsen’s background is in printmaking, but over time his work evolved, utilizing non-traditional printing techniques as well as the new technologies.  In the 1980s Olsen was creating works that were produced completely on the computer.  In 2003 Olsen ventured out of the 2D realm and began creating low relief ceramic works incorporating text. His interest in innovation is strong and at each stage of his creative development Olsen had invented and reinvented himself. The use of narrative is new to Olsen’s work, however, the fictive tales clearly draw from Olsen’s rich life and imagination.

Many have said that this is Olsen’s “capolavoro”. It is certainly the product of a life time of research that has culminated in a rich personal catalog of imagery, textures and ideas that is blended with an exhaustive life experience that spans continents. Olsen has produced a body of work that is both compelling and beautiful, filled with humor and a bit disturbing.

Bio & Background: Dennis Olsen is Professor of printmaking, drawing, and digital media at the University of Texas at San Antonio.   He received his M.A. degree from UCLA in 1967 and in that year was awarded a Fulbright grant to study printmaking in Italy.  In 1970 he co-founded the Santa Reparata Graphic Art Centre, now the Santa Reparata International School of Art (SRISA) in Florence, Italy, where he served as Director of printmaking classes until his return to the United States in 1981. He is now president of the SRISA Board of Directors.
Mr. Olsen’s work has been included in more than 160 exhibitions in the USA, Italy, Canada, Holland, France, Belgium, Mexico, Germany, Peru, Turkey, Estonia, Finland, and Russia.
The images have been shown separately in several solo exhibitions entitled “Fictive Portraits: Samplings from a Timeless Village”.  In April 2012, Olsen published a book of 35 of the images under the same title.
The books can be purchased on-line athttp://www.blurb.com/books/3230832

The exibition is open to the public from July 10th to August 1st, 2012, from 12pm-10pm. for more information: 055-4627374, gallery@srisa.org

Rebecca Olsen