#PASCALI2018

#PASCALI2018 – Contemporary art: innovation and social development

To mark the artist’s birthday, the Apulian Regional administration and the Pino Pascali Foundation are pleased to announce the acquisition of the artwork

Cinque Bachi da Setola e un Bozzolo (1968)

#artworks #film #theatre #territory #books #communication

The artwork is coming home to Polignano a Mare, on the 50th anniversary of the great Apulian artist’s untimely death, and will be travelling around Puglia, before reaching its final destination at the Pino Pascali Museum

Press conference: 19 October 2018, 11 am

Pino Pascali Museum Foundation

Via Parco del Lauro, 119

Polignano a Mare

50 years have passed since the untimely death – on 11th September 1968 – of Pino Pascali and, in order to pay a tribute to this great Apulian artist, the Foundation that bears his name, based in Polignano a Mare, has begun a year of celebrations with a series of talks, workshops, meetings, exhibitions, conferences, based on the theme of remembrance.

In addition to these celebrations of his life, in order to give a strong impetus to the revival and development of Apulia’s contemporary art scene, the Apulian Regional administration, in conjunction with the second project partner – the Municipality of Polignano –decided to entrust the Pino Pascali Foundation with a wide-ranging structural project: #Pascali2018, which will enable the Pino Pascali Museum to make a quality leap forward, both in the quality of its cultural offerings and in its standing on the international arts scene.

To announce this ambitious operation, which aims to place Apulia firmly at the centre of the domestic and international contemporary arts scene, will be the President of the Apulian Regional administration Michele Emiliano; the Head of the Tourism and Cultural Industries – Cultural Heritage Management and Promotion Agency, Loredana Capone; the Head of the Tourism, Cultural Economy and Territorial Promotions Agency, Aldo Patruno, the Mayor of Polignano a Mare, Domenico Vitto, and the President of the Pino Pascali Foundation, Giuseppe Teofilo, as well as various other leading figures in the project. This will be followed by a debate featuring technical and academic presentations by Pino Pascali Foundation director, Rosalba Branà and by Fabio Sargentini, the famed founder of Rome’s L’Attico Gallery.

The press conference will be taking place at 11 a.m. on 19 October 2018 to mark the artist’s birthday, half a century after his premature death, at the headquarters of the Pino Pascali Foundation.

The Apulian Regional administration regards contemporary art as a strategic asset for its cultural policy. In its role as promoter of the region as a whole, it aims to use this project to continue building a development model centred around the great attractors and Puglia’s finest exponents of the arts, making their heritage available to the whole community using innovative tools to encourage people to take part in cultural events, to promote audience development and engagement and, ultimately, social inclusion and cohesion. A highly sustainable model, based on contemporary art, through the cultural, tourism-based and socio-economic growth of the region. The debate involves the Pino Pascali Museum Foundation, from Polignano a Mare, the Apulia Film Commission and the Apulian Public Theatre – Regional Consortium for Arts and Culture, coming together to put on a big party in the name of the genius that was Pino Pascali.

The ARTWORK

The fulcrum around which the #Pascali2018 project revolves is the acquisition of Pino Pascali’s 1968 piece Cinque bachi da setola e un bozzolo (1968)

[or Five bristle bugs and a cocoon], among the artist’s most iconic and important works. Pascali used new materials from industrial society, in a concentric series of nylon brushes commonly used in households, to make a giant-scale simulation of crawling silkworms, mimicking a marvel of nature. Years later, the installation, which is one of his key artworks, has lost none of its revolutionary power, still as stunningly fresh as at its very first showing in Paris in February 1968, and immediately afterwards in Rome at the L’Attico Gallery and thereafter, following Pascali’s death, at prestigious public galleries in Italy and elsewhere. Furthermore, a highly innovative part of the project is the acquisition by the Pino Pascali Foundation of the “secret” for rebuilding the Bozzolo (or Cocoon), symbol of life and rebirth, which can be renewed from time to time, based on Pino Pascali’s original indications, which his mentor Fabio Sargentini had stumbled across in the intervening period.

Pino Pascali was one of the most brilliant artists to have been born here in Puglia. His works and research have earned international acclaim and opened up many new pathways – indeed critics and art historians from all over the world continue to this day to discuss his poetic language. His works are held in major museums, from the MoMA in New York to the Tate Modern in London, from the Mumok in Vienna to the Georges Pompidou in Paris as well as the Osaka Museum of Modern Art and Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Pascali Foundation has enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership with the latter, leading to the restoration of 32 mq di mare circa and the exhibition Dialogues 3.0. Pino Pascali and Claudio Cintoli, and the highly successful operation taking place in recent months, Open for Restoration, which led to the prestigious showing of Dinosaur at rest currently on view at the Museum.

The project stems from the premise that contemporary art is a strategic asset for cultural, economic and tourism development, and from the need, therefore, to provide the artist’s homeland – and the only museum dedicated to him – with a larger body of works by Pascali to offer his fellow citizens, and other visitors, especially from abroad, as well as to the numerous parties of schoolchildren who throng the Foundation galleries every day in its splendid location in Polignano a Mare.
After painstaking research and analysis into all of Pascali’s works that are currently available on the market – involving the greatest experts in the field – it was decided to purchase Cinque bachi da setola e un bozzolo, owned by Fabio Sargentini of Rome’s L’Attico Gallery, based on such criteria as quality, subject, period, technique, size, marketability and state of conservation.

THE FILM

An operation so important simply has to be told: the #Pascali2018 project includes the production of a docufilm on the artwork’s “journey”, from packaging it in Rome to delivery to the Foundation in Polignano. A series of fortuitous opportunities have turned the documentary into a true art film recounting the whole journey of the work back to its homeland. The film will be made by editor, composer, director and screenwriter Walter Fasano (born in Bari in 1970) in a refined project developed together with the Apulia Film Commission, featuring interviews with such renowned figures of the arts world as Dario Argento, Ferzan Özpetek and Luca Guadagnino, with whom Fasano recently worked on the Oscar-winning film Call Me By Your Name.

THE TOUR

Finally, in order to underline how much they mean to Puglia and Southern Italy, as part of the shared cultural heritage, before coming to their final resting place in the Pascali Foundation galleries in Polignano, the Five bristle bugs and a cocoon will be setting off on a tour of key destinations throughout Puglia, alongside some of the region’s greatest cultural attractions, and with a view to being exhibited, in 2019, in Matera, the European Capital of Culture.

CONFERENCES

With the arrival of the Five bristle bugs and a cocoon, the Pino Pascali Foundation will also be launching a broad-based series of events and lectures to highlight the importance of Pascali as an artistic figure, exploring his research, a natural segue to previous events that have been held on the artist’s works, contextualizing them in his heyday just before his tragic death. For Pascali, the 1960s were fundamental; 1968, in particular, saw the exhibition of some of his most crucial artworks, with his participation at a tumultuous Venice Biennale, where the artist was to obtain recognition from the international art world.

The first part of the Pino Pascali Foundation’s 2018 programme included an important conference “Pascali. Around 1968. Memories and perspectives” that introduced the theme, outlining research on the artist, but also retracing his footsteps in a fundamental year for Italian history and for the artist himself, featuring contributions from important critics and key figures from that era, but also from younger scholars: Achille Bonito Oliva, Vittorio Rubiu, Fabio Sargentini, Paola Pitagora, Marco Tonelli.

THE BOOK AND THE SHOW

Our homage to Pino Pascali will also include the creation of a pop-up book. We want to pay tribute to Pino Pascali’s more playful side through a creative object, which will be both an in-depth tool and a collector’s item, in line with the inventive and histrionic genius of an artist for whom everything could be transformed into art.

A total of 150 collectable pop-ups of his artworks will be reproduced in the book. Finally, this great festival of contemporary art will also be played out in theatres, with four site-specific actions and performances that will tell the story of Pascali as a performer, through the life of the artist and his eclectic character. The play, curated by the actor Vito Facciolla, will be put on in the various provinces involved in the project, at Puglia’s municipal theatres and in schools, in partnership with the Apulian Public Theatre – Regional Consortium for Arts and Culture.

THE PASCALI PRIZE

As part of the celebrations, the 2018 Pino Pascali Prize will be awarded to Fabio Sargentini, the life and soul of Rome’s L’Attico Gallery. The Committee (chairman Pietro Marino, Valérie Da Costa, Carlo Berardi, and Marco Giusti) explained the reason for their choice: “Fabio Sargentini has been an enlightened pioneer and promoter of some of the most avant-garde experiences in Italian and international art ever since the 1960s-1970s, not only in painting and sculpture, but also in theatre, dance and music in its new performance-related and multimedia role. He has put on a whole host of seminars, personal and collective exhibitions, festivals, events. Author of theatrical and literary works under the banner of linguistic experimentation. Exponent of a modern take on the art gallery as a place for production, for meetings and for dissemination of culture, looking carefully at the changes taking place over time and engaging in dialogue with society. Of the many great artists he helped to launch or supported, his association with Pino Pascali stands out. Sargentini not only encouraged Pino Pascali throughout his dazzling artistic life, but has also guarded his artworks, reviewing them and spreading the word ever since his premature death. He has also given great support to initiatives at the artist’s birthplace, which have proven to be key moments in the birth and growth of the Pascali Museum and Foundation.”

This award brings to a fitting close the first half century without Pino Pascali, one that has been pervaded by his art, and looks forward to a future in which the Foundation and Museum will become the focus of artistic and cultural achievement centred around the figure and works of our great Apulian genius.

THE LODOLO FUND

In addition to this success is the outstanding acquisition by the Foundation of the Pascali Photographic collection (over 170 photographs, many of which unpublished) and the advertising film collection (13 original carousels), thanks to a donation from Carla Ruta Lodolo. The photos and videos form part of the Pino Pascali. Photographs exhibition curated by Antonio Frugis and Roberto Lacarbonara, inaugurated on 13th October. On display are over 80 images taken by the artist in 1965, during an advertising tour in Rome and Naples.

COMMUNICATION:

The corporate image of the #PASCALI2018 project, under the hashtag #PASCALI50, was created by the PUSH STUDIO Agency, based on ideas created by students at the Liceo Artistico I.I.S.S. De Nittis-Pascali (under the watchful eye of Prof. Irma D’Ambrosio), a school project which was one of the educational activities carried out on behalf of the Pascali festival. The name of the student who conceived the inspiring image in the logo (from the 4th and 5th grade graphics courses in school section E) is Luca Cosimo Paoli. The team also included Roberta Colossi, Gaia Ceglie, Ornella Susca, Silvano Sorino and Angelica Dirello, ably supported by their teachers Marilena Di Tursi, Maria Pia Battista and Domenico Cacciapaglia.

#PASCALI2018

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