Olnick Spanu News

Manju Shandler at the 9/11 Museum, New York |   September 9, 2016

Manju Shandler’s installation entitled Gesture will be on view at the 9/11 Museum, New York from September 12 to December 18, 2016, on the occasion of the exhibition Rendering the Unthinkable: artists respond to 9/11.

Overwhelmed with emotion like so many New Yorkers in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Manju Shandler sought to ground herself through the process of making art. She chose to express the magnitude of loss through individual paintings, one for each victim.

Gesture is an almost 3,000-piece installation consisting of one painting for each person who died as a result of the 9/11 attacks. When installed, the paintings form a grid of vibrant blocks that subtly shift from red to yellow, white, black, and pink. Shandler turned to the images that dominated the news media after 9/11 and juxtaposed them with images of her own creation. Among the approximately 3,000 paintings she created are portraits drawn from photographs appearing in the New York Times’ Portraits of Grief series.

More information about the exhibition can be found: here

Marco Bagnoli, Domenico Bianchi and Remo Salvadori have been chosen to exhibit at Capri the Island of Art 2016 |   August 29, 2016

Olnick Spanu Art Program artists Marco Bagnoli, Domenico Bianchi and Remo Salvadori have been selected to participate in the exhibition Capri Orient Express (September 11 – December 11, 2016), curated by Sergio Risaliti at the church of the Certosa di San Giacomo, Capri.

The exhibition is organized on the occasion of the second edition of the project Capri the Island of Art, which aims at creating a dialogue between the artists and the most characteristic places of Capri.

The exhibition will highlight a common element in the works of Bagnoli, Bianchi and Salvadori: the presence of symbols and graphic elements belonging to the eastern culture.

Further information about the project can be found here

Bruna Esposito has been selected to participate in the upcoming XIII Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador |   August 29, 2016

Olnick Spanu Art Program artist Bruna Esposito has been selected to participate in the upcoming XIII Bienal de Cuenca Impermanencia (October 21 – December 31, 2016, Cuenca, Ecuador), curated by Dan Cameron.

For most of its recorded history, an essential quality of visual art has been the effort made to prolong its existence. If an artwork was deemed truly important, then the responsibility fell to its owners or custodians to ensure that it was safely conveyed from one generation to the next; failure to do so could only be rationalized by calamity on the scale of war or conflagration.

The XIII Bienal de Cuenca, Impermanencia, proposes to bring together a geographically and stylistically diverse group of artists who share an interest in mirroring the frailties and follies of human existence relative to our fundamentally fleeting existence. In its emphasis on the viewer’s internal responsiveness to the works on view, the 13th Bienal de Cuenca also subtly challenges certain preconditions of ownership with respect to works of art, which in the final analysis are more the patrimony of all humankind than a single museum, state, or individual.

As a thematic concept, impermanence, also one of the guiding precepts of Buddhism, is increasingly characteristic of the lives we lead today, when art’s value seems less rooted in the precondition that its appearance be preserved intact a hundred or thousand years from now, and instead is increasingly defined by its ability to connect with us in the present, fleeting moment of our exchange with it, even if a week from now it has vanished without a trace.

Further information on the Bienal de Cuenca can be found here.

Stefano Arienti in Palermo |   August 26, 2016

Olnick Spanu Art Program artist Stefano Arienti’s most recent solo exhibition, Golden Hand, curated by Agata Polizzi, is currently on view until September 22, 2016, at Francesco Pantaleone Contemporary Art Gallery, Palermo.

The project is a retrospective of Arienti’s works. Here in Palermo, he chooses to look back while remaining focused on the present.

In Golden Hand the works bear the marks of Arienti’s historical works. The techniques and media are those which the artist has used since the 1980s. What changes though is the relationship with the image. The subject is the same, but the technique changes.

Always at the center of Arienti’s artistic research, this allows the artist to say “new things” about his personal vision of contemporary culture through elements derived from the most diverse fields.

The techniques and medium are those that the artist has been using ever since the eighties: what changes is the relationship with the image. The subject remains the same, but the technique changes. This approach allows Arienti to say “new things” about his personal vision of contemporary culture, often violent and glaring, yet subjugated by the reckless overlapping of images, thus becoming impossible to interpret and hence devoid of any value. Further information about the show can be found here.

The exhibition has received a very positive review in Exibart.com.

Remo Salvadori in Carrara |   July 16, 2016

On the occasion of Carrara Marble Weeks 2016 (July 16 – September 11, 2016), Carrara is hosting a solo exhibition of Olnick Spanu Art Program artist Remo Salvadori Né da né verso, curated by Luciano Massari.

Several works by Salvadori are exhibited all around the city, including Piazza del Duomo, Palazzo del Principe and Chiesa delle Lacrime, thus entering into a dialogue with some of the key historical buildings of Carrara and encouraging the viewer to think about the relation time-space.

Further information about the exhibition can be found here.

Domenico Bianchi in Amsterdam |   June 3, 2016

Two shows recently opened in Amsterdam that feature the work of Olnick Spanu Art Program artist Domenico Bianchi. The first of these is a solo exhibition at the Slewe Gallery (May 28 – July 2, 2016) and the other, at the Stedelijk Museum, is a show entitled Excitement, guest-curated by former director Rudi Fuchs (May 27 – October 2, 2016).

The exhibition at the Slewe Gallery, on view from May 28 until July 2, will feature all new works by Bianchi, including some on paper and others executed with the artist’s signature technique of mixing melted wax with oil paints. The Slewe has been showing Bianchi’s work since 2009, when he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery. More information on the current show can be found here.

Excitement, a show comprised of over 100 works, offers a look at contemporary art from the last half-century; its name, as Fuchs describes in a dedicated essay for the exhibition, derives from the sensation he felt when he began hanging works himself in the mid-1970s, and especially from looking at seemingly dissociated works side by side. Excitement is on view through October 2; more about this retrospective can be found here.

Additional information about Domenico Bianchi and his Panchina, created for the 2009 Olnick Spanu Art Program, can be found here. The book published on Bianchi and Panchina contains essays on the artist and his techniques, including the mixing of hot wax and oil paint deployed in some of the new works currently on view at the Slewe Gallery.

Massimo Bartolini exhibition opens at Frith Street Gallery, London |   June 3, 2016

Massimo Bartolini’s most recent solo exhibition, Golden Square, is on view in London from May 25th through July 30th. The show is presented by Frith Street Gallery, in both its Golden Square and Soho Square locations. The eponymous exhibition is indeed in large part a meditation on the site itself, and draws heavily from the historical, artistic, and literary lore of its location. In Bartolini’s words, these works, which engage a host of various concepts and are realized across a myriad of media, constitute a kind of “memento mori” to the more than 4,000 seventeenth-century plague victims believed to have been buried in a mass grave beneath where Golden Square stands today.

Bartolini was the participant in the 2006 Olnick Spanu Art Program. More information about Conveyance, his site-specific work found on the grounds of the Olnick Spanu estate in Garrison, NY, can be found here. Golden Square is the latest of several exhibitions of Bartolini’s work at Frith Street in recent years, which include solo shows in 2008 and 2013, as well as this year’s group exhibition Tell it Slant. A short essay by the artist about the ideation of the current exhibition can be found here.

Giorgio Vigna in Padova |   May 25, 2016

Olnick Spanu Art Program Giorgio Vigna is currently participating in the exhibition GLASS. ARTE DEL VETRO OGGI 2016 at Villa dei Vescovi, Luvigliano, Padova (May 25 – September 11, 2016), curated by Jean Blanchaert and Irina Eschenazi Focsaneanu.

The show features a selection of glass by well-known Italian and international designers.

Further information about the exhibition can be found here.

Mario Airò has been selected to create a site-specific installation at the GAM, Palermo |   May 10, 2016

Olnick Spanu Art Program artist Mario Airò has been selected by Gianluca Concialdi, a young artist from Palermo, to create a site-specific installation at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Palermo.

The collaboration between the two artists will produce an installation entitled Caro Federico, on view at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Palermo, from May 20 through June 30, 2016. More information on the project can be found here

Their work will combine natural materials like squid ink with elements taken from the urban world like recycled traffic signs thus showing the artists’ aim to create a connection between the dimension of reality and spirituality.

Paolo Canevari’s abstract etchings exhibited in Paris |   March 25, 2016

Paolo Canevari‘s portfolio of abstract etchings Monuments of Memory will be exhibited in Paris in the group show Sans Titre, curated by Marie Madec and on view from March 31 through April 30, 2016.

The series, published by Le Livre Art Publishing, presents a departure from Canevari’s previous works, instead turning towards the abstract as a response to what he refers to as “visual pollution” created by an excess of information. The twenty works present dramatic juxtapositions of varying jet-black geometric forms against a white background, creating an absence of distraction and referencing ancient religious symbolism. Described in an interview by Shirin Neshat with Canevari as “…directly conceptualizing the idea of void absence as if you are forcing your viewer to conjure what is missing”, they serve as a depiction of the power of imagination. Each work of art was produced at the noted printing house Harlan & Weaver.

Further information about the project can be found here