Since 2011, Art Cologne has been inviting innovative contemporary art projects and galleries of the city of Cologne to take part in a reception held during the opening of Venice Biennale. Temporary Gallery, which played host in 2013, is returning to this year’s Biennale with a project involving six curators, among them the Spaniard Sergio Rubira, who carry out a site-specific collective intervention.
The seven Spanish artists taking part in the project entitled Situations, with the support of AC/E – Azucena Vieties, Dora Garcia, Ana Carceller, Francesc Ruiz, Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Juan Luis Moraza and Ignasi Aballí – are designing a poster intended to trigger a reaction to the context where it is displayed during the reception, the Castello neighbourhood. A bar belonging to the Partito della Rifondazione Communista and a likeness of the Virgin Mary coexist in this street as the symbol of the country’s recent history. These supposed historical contradictions could shed a positive light on certain aspects of the Southern European countries. The history of the Italian Communist Party from its beginnings to its conversion in 1991 following the crisis triggered by the fall of the Berlin wall is taken as a point of departure. One of the party’s founders, Antonio Gramsci, influenced the work of a few leading contemporary intellectuals, ranging from the Italians Pier Paolo Pasolini and Paolo Virno, to Judith Butler, Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak. Posters as a medium are steeped in political connotations and many avant-garde artists used them as a means of conveying their ideas. The project also has points in common with some of the strategies used by the los situationists insofar as the real world can be altered by an intervention in the streets.
The seven Spanish artists taking part in the project entitled Situations, with the support of AC/E – Azucena Vieties, Dora Garcia, Ana Carceller, Francesc Ruiz, Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Juan Luis Moraza and Ignasi Aballí – are designing a poster intended to trigger a reaction to the context where it is displayed during the reception, the Castello neighbourhood. A bar belonging to the Partito della Rifondazione Communista and a likeness of the Virgin Mary coexist in this street as the symbol of the country’s recent history. These supposed historical contradictions could shed a positive light on certain aspects of the Southern European countries. The history of the Italian Communist Party from its beginnings to its conversion in 1991 following the crisis triggered by the fall of the Berlin wall is taken as a point of departure. One of the party’s founders, Antonio Gramsci, influenced the work of a few leading contemporary intellectuals, ranging from the Italians Pier Paolo Pasolini and Paolo Virno, to Judith Butler, Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak. Posters as a medium are steeped in political connotations and many avant-garde artists used them as a means of conveying their ideas. The project also has points in common with some of the strategies used by the los situationists insofar as the real world can be altered by an intervention in the streets.
