IDENTITÁ MULTIPLE

curated by GAL – Gallerie d’Arte di Lugano

Curated by GAL – Gallerie d’Arte di Lugano

After the success of the first exhibition organized by GAL in 2023, the association of gallery owners inLugano returns to the spaces of the Asilo Ciani proposing an exhibition dedicated to the theme of identity.

GAL is the area’s first trade association, founded in 2023, with the aim of bringing together Lugano’s art galleries and promoting them as an element of the city’s cultural, rather than economic, fabric, to show how Lugano can be able to establish itself as an intellectually stimulating destination. In addition to various events and conferences that enliven the city’s cultural life throughout the year, the “Multiple Identities” exhibition is the second major exhibition event organized by the Association, which in 2023 had presented the group show “On Sculpture: from the material to the immaterial” in the same location.

The galleries participating in this edition, most of those associated, are Daniele Agostini Gallery, Buchmann Lugano, Cortesi Gallery, Studio Dabbeni, IMAGO Art Gallery, KROMYA Art Gallery, Allegra Ravizza Gallery, Repetto Gallery. The project is realized with the partnership of the City of Lugano, the support of Lugano Region and the contribution of Ceresio Investors.

Visitors will have the opportunity, among other things, to learn more about the activities and initiatives of the ProMuseo association, which, invited by GAL, will be present at the Asilo Ciani. ProMuseo, a Supporting Friends Association of MASI, aims to support the museum and enrich its collection by purchasing works of art, which go into a fund made available indefinitely. ProMuseo’s presence this year marks the important involvement in GAL’s event of the world of collecting and patronage, elements that are also vital to the contemporary art ecosystem.

Giving voice to contemporary society that increasingly aims to fight categorization and free itself from labels and conformity, the exhibition “Multiple Identities” aims to be an art-historical investigation and comparison of the various and diverse identities, creative intelligences, intellectual coincidences and stylistic equivalences that make up one’s self or a collective.

Without any limitation in medium and technique, the exhibition will analyze both the identity development in the career of a single artist, personalities from different historical generations investigating the same theme, and multiple identities constituting an artistic collective. Works by Regina Cassolo Bracchi, Maurizio Donzelli, Thomas Huber, Serena Maisto, Luca Marignoni, Tania Pistone, Mario Schifano, Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Salmo Suyo and Nanda Vigo will be presented.

“Multiple identities” are also those represented by the participating galleries, which-thanks to individual exhibition choices representing their different and varied rosters of artists-propose various approaches to the exhibition theme.

“Galleries,” says Tecla Riva, president of GAL, “certainly play a fundamental role in the marketing of artworks, supporting artists and acting as guarantors of quality to collectors, but they are also important places of production and promotion of culture, able to contribute to the processes that lead to the formation of personal and collective identity. After the positive feedback we received last year, we decided to propose a new exhibition, this time analyzing the theme of identity through specially selected proposals from each participating gallery. We are in addition very pleased that ProMuseo has accepted our proposal to be present at this second edition, bringing with it the theme of collecting and acquiring artworks for public institutions. Special thanks go to the partners and sponsors who believed in the project, enabling us once again to offer a quality initiative that is open and accessible to all.”

Head of the Department of Culture Sports and Events, Roberto Badaracco, reiterated the importance for the City of galleries for a strong contemporary art ecosystem: “We are very pleased to once again be able to host GAL’s initiative in the spaces of the Ciani Kindergarten. Art galleries play a key role in supporting and promoting contemporary art by providing a physical space where works of great quality can be exhibited and appreciated by the public. GAL’s new group exhibition reaffirms and demonstrates the importance of galleries as actors not only in the art market but also as cultural mediators who are open, welcoming and accessible to all.”

Lugano Region Director Massimo Boni also says that more and more galleries are a place of interest for tourists who are passionate about art and art collecting. With this in mind, Lugano Region’s collaboration with GAL continues, both on the occasion of group exhibitions such as “Multiple Identities” and in organizing “Art Galleries Walks,” exciting fixed-date or on-demand tours to discover Lugano’s art galleries.

Free of charge and accessible to the general public, both from Ticino and Switzerland as well as internationally, the exhibition aims to offer through the enjoyment of individual works a stimulating and engaging experiential path, capable of stimulating the viewer’s curiosity and intellect to question and investigate their multiple and varied identities.

A rich program of events and lectures is planned during the exhibition days.

IMPULSE FOR A JOURNEY

Galleria Allegra Ravizza is pleased to present “Impulse for a Journey,” a dialogue between two Artistic Identities of different generation, united by the same expressive force and artistic intent: Nanda Vigo and Tania Pistone. 
Although concretely distant and different, both artists aim with their art to project the viewer into an “other” dimension: in fact the former conceives of her works as forms and structures capable of activating informational impulses that, through the diffusion and immateriality of light, lead the viewer to veer toward distant, intelligible concepts and worlds; the latter, on the other hand, through the visual impact of language and writing, transforms the graphic sign into a symbol capable of projecting the viewer into a further, abstract and emotional dimension. 
Nanda Vigo’s Cronotopo and Tania Pistone’s canvases crammed with signs and writing lead to an abstract exploration of one’s knowledge, memory and subconscious. Nanda Vigo’s sculptures characterized by a clean, industrial aesthetic, as well as the drawings of which they are a graphic representation, deform space by leading the viewer on a journey into the totality of one’s memory. If in the Milanese artist’s work the omnipresent and inescapable element is light, conceived as a unifying tool between space/topos and time/chronos, in Tania Pistone’s creations the main element is writing demolished of its primary function, that is, legibility. On a monochrome basis, graphically recognizable but totally indecipherable words, aphorisms and thoughts alternate and layer under unknown symbols generating an intimate subconscious narrative, different and personal for each individual.