SI Sindrome Italiana @ Le Magasin – Grenoble

, 11 December 2010

Italy is fucked. And not because of the economic crisis (most of their public debt is kept within the country), but for all those raves, parties and scandals their politicians keep having every now and then. A wild life of excess and orgies….. maybe I’m jealous. Maybe Italians don’t understand their president, some of them even want to get inside his dreams.

And today for example several thousands of Italians went to Rome to protest against Il Cavaliere, trying to “wake up” their own country. Whether they’ll succeed is another story.

But on the other side there’s this new generation of Italian artists that despite all the censorship and all the media manipulation, scandals, rubbish pilings and political disillusion have managed to impose & succeed on the international art scene . Lara Favaretto, Alex Cecchetti, Seb Patane, Sabina Grasso… a long list of talented individuals who have generally adopted an anti-establishment mood against their own country and their own politicians and who are trying to find their own room in a world where Maurizio Cattelan seems to be the only Italian identity for contemporary art.

Chariot, Fool, Emperor, Force

@ Le Magasin, an exhibtion center in Grenoble (France) there’s room for up to 40 artists born in the 1970s and 1980s, who’ve been invited to present recent works, or ones created for the occasion, in thematic groups developed in the exhibition galleries and the central glass-covered space known as “la Rue”.

While most of these artists were educated in Italy, they now live and work in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, etc… But if the artists seem to be scattered across the world, exhibition organizers of the same generation have followed the same path. SI Sindrome Italiana is symptomatic of this phenomenon. It reflects a highly successful artistic system whose action has found support from a few institutions and from above all the organization of local 2 autonomous initiatives with international resonance, organized by high-profile individuals.

Lupo Borgonovo, Bastone, 2009

Curated by Yves Aupetitallot you have until January 2nd to decide whether the new young artistic scene is something of your taste, a scene which refuses any pompous or pretentious shows.. unlike their political class. What a shame, if only they could understand Berlusconi….

So as we always say, nothing better to do this Christmas vacations and are around Grenoble? Pop-in, pop-out, let us know how it went.

Patrick Tuttofuoco, Three Wise Monkeys, 2010