Where and when
From
To
Museo Novecento
Inauguration of the artistic project by Nanni Balestrini, created by MUS.E in collaboration with BONOTTOEDITIONS, with the artistic direction of Valentina Gensini
Poet, writer and visual artist, since the 1960s Nanni Balestrini has participated in the most radical movements in the field of the European literary and artistic avant-garde, experimenting with the possible relationships between word, text and image. For the city of Florence, the artist created Verbal Columns, a site-specific artistic project for the Renaissance loggia of the Leopoldine complex.
Once again Nanni Balestrini confronts the precious medium of tapestry in a work of a conceptual nature. Nine monumental tapestries designed by the artist thanks to the manufacturing expertise of BONOTTOEDITIONS will cover the columns of the loggia of the Novecento Museum, creating an unusual dialogue with the architecture, the Basilica and Piazza Santa Maria Novella. In Nanni Balestrini’s Colonne Verbali the word, the backbone of grammar and of verb-visual communication, is understood in analogy with the column, a basic premise of architectural syntax.
In addition to the public installation that will involve the external loggia, two tangible tapestries will inhabit the cloister of the Leopoldine as a sign of connection with the exhibition, inside the Museum, of the historical work La dulze vita, offered as a gift by Nanni Balestrini to the city from Florence. The work, a collage from 1962, testifies to the artist’s first experiments and adds another great name to the interdisciplinary room dedicated to the Sixties of the permanent itinerary of the Twentieth Century Museum.
The project, created by MUS.E in partnership with BONOTTOEDITIONS, is one of the initiatives promoted by the Municipality of Florence for the Florentine Summer 2016 and is part of the Secret Florence program created in collaboration with Pitti Immagine.
Verbal Columns will remain visible from June 15th until October 23rd 2016.
Nanni Balestrini
He was part of the poets “Novissimi” and “Gruppo 63”. He was the first to make a computer poem in 1961. He is the author of the cycle of poems on Miss Richmond and the trilogy The Great Revolt (We want everything, The Invisibles and The Publisher) on the struggles of the movement in the 1970s, and of the electronic multiple novel Tristan. He recently published Caosmogonia (poetry, Lo Specchio Mondadori), Anthology, poems 1958-2010 (Oscar Mondadori) and the novel Carbonia. We were all Communists (Bompiani). In parallel with his literary production, he developed intense research in the visual field, documented by the monograph With the eyes of language. It is present in numerous galleries and museums in Italy and abroad, and has participated in international exhibitions and reviews including the Venice Biennale and Documenta, Kassel.
BONOTTOEDITIONS
It is a conceptual and visual experiment, focused on rarity, material and immaterial, which offers extra-ordinary, unexpected, sumptuous objects. The fabric becomes the privileged point of view through which to read the codes of contemporary invention and creation.
A manufacturing model that focuses on the culture of know-how, a manifesto against industrial standardization and mass production, which praises reflection on the singularity and uniqueness of the product. To translate the artist’s thoughts into fabric, BONOTTOEDITIONS therefore makes available the artisan know-how and the extraordinary production capacity that have always distinguished it. The nine textile tapestries, made through a complex weaving technique and using yarns of different kinds, represent the artist’s nine graphic works: a fragmenting series of words, which are articulated and mixed in different combinations.
Giovanni Bonotto
He was a pupil of Umberto Eco at Dams in Bologna. He learned the trade working in Nagoya with Japanese master weavers and living with Patagonian ranchers. Today he runs Bonotto Spa with his brother Lorenzo, a vertical production cycle factory that has about 200 master craftsmen. He is an ambassador of a new way of doing business which he called “Slow Factory”, which earned him the Masi award for business culture.
Cristiano Seganfreddo is a cultural producer and creative entrepreneur with an exasperated dandyism who relates to the themes of art / fashion / contemporary culture with projects and actions with a high capacity for innovation. Columnist for numerous Italian magazines and newspapers, he conceived the Gaetano Marzotto Award, of which he is director, is President of the Agenzia del Contemporaneo, Vice President of the Intertrade Group and, together with the brothers Lorenzo and Giovanni Bonotto, he founded BONOTTOEDITIONS, a brand of which he is also creative director.
Installation View
