The project The true color of the sky , by Eugenia Vanni, is part of a path of reflection, started by the artist in 2008, on the possible ways of applying and developing professional manual activities. The artist’s objective is to expand the potential of specific knowledge through the completion of aesthetic experiences, according to a process of transposition of skills and cancellation of functional uses. In continuity with this path, the project room of the museum will be transformed into a painting atelier, an open laboratory for sharing knowledge and studying new unconventional perspectives.

The workshop, which took place at MAN from 23 to 25 October, involved professionals from different sectors, unrelated to the world of art (surgeons, chefs, beauticians…). The people involved were invited to address the theme of the portrait and create works of an ambiguous nature, identifiable neither with the work of a professional nor with that of an amateur, rather expressing the essence, the quality, of specific manual skills. The artefacts created will be presented in the museum rooms starting from 30 October together with a selection of works by the artist.

Eugenia Vanni’s work is configured as an articulated reflection on painting, an analysis in which “know-how” becomes the object of an expanded investigation into techniques and processes. Here the traditional artistic procedures – from the priming to the clay surface for bas-relief – from being a tool become the subject of the painting. The intermediate steps, of which usually no trace remains, become the protagonists of anomalous works, in which painting, an illusion of reality, becomes a second reality in which to believe.

Eugenia Vanni’s work, presented by the Fuoricampo Gallery, was selected by the MAN Museum on the occasion of Art Verona 2014, as part of the project Level Zero , which was joined by ten of the most important Italian contemporary art museums.

Eugenia Vanni (Siena, 1980) attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and the NABA in Milan. Among the most recent exhibitions: Postpone my departure, International Museum and Library of Music, Bologna 2015; Barbecue , Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan 2014; Sturm und drang , Marino Marini Museum, Florence 2012; Cartabianca-Florence , Villa Croce Museum, Genoa 2012.