The nineteenth edition of OPEN, International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations will be held from 2 September to 2 October 2016 at the Hilton Molino Stucky at the same time as the Venice Film Festival. Conceived and curated by Paolo De Grandis, co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa, the exhibition is organised by PDG Arte Communications with the patronage of the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities and Tourism and by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
19 years of history of sculptures and installations in the open air in public spaces and unconventional ones that open for the enjoyment of a heterogeneous public, like the recent exhibition area in the Molino Stucky, the most important example of industrial archaeology preserved in Venice: now home to the Hilton and a culture centre. This interaction between the work of art and the public space for lingering or passing through brings beauty into everyday life through the activation of the onlooker’s aesthetic perception with the consequent withdrawal of his usual rational interpretation of reality. Reflection becomes a constant in OPEN, as well as a challenge for the artist to create unprecedented expressive developments through the dialogue between work and space.
The artists taking part in the exhibition combine an extremely free use of the expressive medium to contaminate the spaces of Molino Stucky, from the great sculptures of Liu Po Chun, Stefano Bressani and Giuseppe Verri which can be seen on the Fondamenta della Giudecca to the plastic works of the two Russian artists of the Recycle Group where the leitmotiv of recycled material debunks the new contemporary myths, and then to the installation by Li Chevalier where the particular technique with which the canvas undergoes a sequence of layers of ink is expanded in a serial intervention, to Yahon Chang, the Master from Taiwan who recently made his debut at the MACRO in Rome in the second stage of the long-term project From La Biennale in Venice to MACRO. International Perspectives coordinated by Paolo De Grandis and Claudio Crescentini and whose works will be remodelled for OPEN.
Linguistic experiments in a research into the expressive possibilities of colour as an emotional presence and pure physical value for Lee Tsung-Jen, Verteramo, Carlo Nieddu and Tomas. Heterogeneous works, different paths all sharing a vitalism that goes beyond the limits imposed by the surface, by the colour allowed to flow as though it were a pulsation, to new schemes of composition of tones and spatial backgrounds.
Photography is expressed in a research and an aesthetic that are as different as they are surprising in the works of Miresi and Federico Nero. Setting Venice: the first sets out to capture its views, secret corners, atmospheres, fragrances and architectural details, while the second presents an imperceptible whole through a neat symmetry that transforms industrial archaeological sites into symbolic and conceptual abstractions.
