The MAN of Nuoro, directed by Cristiana Collu, was asked to create and present some visions of contemporary art in La Maddalena on the occasion of the 2010 edition of the Louis Vuitton Trophy.
The sailing competition, reserved for America’s Cup Class boats, will be hosted in La Maddalena from 22 May to 6 June. Previous editions of the LVT saw the victory of the Italians Azzurra over Emirates Team New Zealand in the autumn of 2009 in Nice. From 9 to 21 March 2010, Auckland hosted the second act, won by the New Zealand hosts over Mascalzone Latino, while La Maddalena will be the third venue, from 22 May to 6 June 2010, followed by Dubai in November and Hong Kong in January 2011.
An opportunity for great international visibility, the LVT is accompanied, in the locations that host it, by important events. La Maddalena has also chosen to focus on contemporary art. Hence the involvement of the MAN, which offers three exhibitions in the so-called “electrical department”, accompanied by a one-shot outdoor mega-projection, which will see Giacomo Costa, the Masbedo and Martì Guixé as protagonists.
Opening the route will be Giacomo Costa, an Italian artist present in the Italian Pavilion at the latest Venice Biennale with Resistances : these are 5 large images (3×2 metres) based on archaeological finds in Sardinia (Tamuli, Santa Sabina, Antas, Sa Coveccada, Tholmes) reworked in post-production on the computer. “Man’s behavior and the development models that society pursues lead the world in a direction in which paradoxically there will no longer be room for living beings. In the era of global language, brands, uniformity of thought and taste, the individual risks isolation and marginalization. It is in this scenario that the strong symbols of the past, the roots of the culture of peoples and peoples survive unscathed over time and eras. This is the contemporary meaning of resistance.”
In the next room, visitors will be welcomed by two video installations: Incompleteness theorem and Glima of the Masbedos (Nicolò Massazza and Jacopo Bedogni), who were also invited to the latest Venice biennial. For them “video art is the maximum expression of our time, because it allows us to use and experiment with many languages, starting from the more contemporary one of video and cinema, but crossing it with writing and screenplays. Video art is a container where many different disciplines are “crossbred”. Their research, after having metabolised important precedents for sensitive perception, from the disturbing atmospheres of the films of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick to the video masterpieces of Bill Viola and Gary Hill, no longer fears the comparison with the truthfulness of the images, with the perfection or the induced imperfection of the visible since the frontier of comparison has now been crossed in favor of visionaryness. Making use of the collaboration of illustrious writers (Michel Houellebecq, Aldo Nove), poets (Giancarlo Majorino), actors (Ernesto Mahieux, Juliette Binoche) and musicians (Marlene Kuntz, Gianni Maroccolo, Eugenio Finardi, Vittorio Cosma), Masbedo use the video tool drawing from cinematic construction the mastery of syncopated rhythms, the dilution of long times, references and the fragmentation of spatial connections.
On May 21st there will be a grand opening with Masbedo’s one-shot event, Schegge d’incanto in Fondo al Doubt (2009), a video-installation created for the Italian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, with two huge mega-screens in sync and at night visual and sound effect in the outdoor space.
Finally in the central room, RAA Art Crafts Department, where the route is conceived as a temporary shop created by designer Martí Guixé, whose layout, and the declination of the space in relation to the objects, creates a game of references and oscillations from tradition to the contemporary, through a series of Sardinian craftsmanship artefacts, from carpets to fabrics and ceramics.
Martí Guixé (Barcelona 1964) provocatively defines himself as an “ex-designer” to underline his aversion to the formalistic and stylized approach of our discipline. Instead of reinventing new forms linked to traditional interpretations of function each time for existing typologies, he practices the search for new ways of seeing and thinking about objects, ways that involve active participation on the part of the public. He is one of the most interesting exponents of contemporary critical thought on design, but his activity has nothing moralistic about it, rather it takes on playful connotations characterized by his very personal and gentle paradoxical approach. Artist, author of installations and performances, shop designer, creator of illustrated books, he was the first to work on the theme of food design in the 90s, and he is also a true product designer: “Objects have become a tool for perceiving everyday reality. You can communicate with objects and also communicate with people through objects.”
