Francesco Arena is one of the 5 finalists of the Mario Merz Prize, 2nd edition, art section | February 28, 2017

Olnick Spanu Art Program artist Francesco Arena is one of the five finalists of the Mario Merz Price, 2nd edition, art section.

The other finalists are Petrit Halilaj, Gili Lavy, Shahryar Nashat and Suha Traboulsi and they were shortlisted by members of the pre-selection judging panel, Marisa Merz (artist), Nicholas Cullinan (Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London) and Claudia Gioia (independent curator).

The five finalists will participate in a group exhibition (March 8 – May 21, 2017) at the Fondazione Merz, Torino (Italy), curated by Beatrice Merz and showcasing the most significant works by each of the finalists.
The public will be able to vote for their favorite artist by visiting the exhibition or logging into the website mariomerzprize.org

More information about the exhibition can be found here.

The International Mario Merz Prize was established with the desire on the one hand of commemorating Mario Merz, and on the other to launch a new project looking to the future of art and which, thanks to a wide international panel of experts, would make it possible to identify and highlight exponents in the field of art and in parallel enable composers to propose an innovative project for contemporary music.

ARTECINEMA screenings: A Selection of Italian Films on Contemporary Art at Casa Italiana on December 9 | December 6, 2016

On December 9, 2016 (6.30 pm – 8.30 pm) Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, in collaboration with ArteCinema and sponsored by Magazzino Italian Art, will be hosting screenings of a selection of Italian Films on Contemporary Art curated by Laura Trisorio.

Among these, at 7.05 pm, the film Posatoi documenting the creation of a site-specific work by Olnick Spanu Art Program artist Francesco Arena, will be shown.

Check the detailed program here.

Artecinema is an international festival of films on contemporary art, established in Naples in 1996 with the objective of making various facets of contemporary art known to the public at large. This objective has been attained by presenting a selection of documentaries of important artists, architects and photographers who have been active during the last fifty years. Biographies, interviews, narrations edited with archival material allow the spectators to gain insight into the world of art and follow the artists at work in their studies or behind the scenes of major international projects and exhibits. Directors and artists are invited to the Festival to personally present their films.

More information can be found here.

Kindly RSVP here.

VENUE:

Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò
24 W 12th Street
New York, NY 10011
Telephone: (212) 998-8739
casa.italiana@nyu.edu

Francesco Arena in London | February 13, 2016

A solo show by Olnick Spanu Art Program artist Francesco Arena entitled Autumn Lines recently opened at the Sprovieri Gallery, London (February 11 – April 30, 2016).

The exhibition presents a series of works conceived at the end of autumn 2015 and inspired by the recent mass migration towards Europe by hundreds of thousands of refugees from war-torn Syria and the Middle East.

Arena Sprovieri Art Gallery — Autumn Lines, Sprovieri Art Gallery, London, © Sprovieri Art Gallery

Arena’s sculptures arise from the geometric shapes of Minimal art and from the more archetypal ones of Arte Povera and are often the translation of formulae and numbers linked to specific histories and narrations.

All the four pieces featured in the show, albeit autonomous, are the translation of a numeric figure into a line, to which the title of the entire project alludes. Further information about the exhibition can be found here.