ARTE & SUD obiettivo contemporaneo

An exhibition of young, and sometimes very young, artists is both a tribute and an acknowledgement: a tribute to those who have so early chosen to bet their future on visual research in a world already besieged, and even <annoyed>, by images of all sorts; and the acknowledgement that this research is primarily driven by young, or very young, people. The tribute, then, originates from a paradox ( why more images, if we already have so many of them?), though only an apparent one. To the unbearable, vulgar usage of commercial and mediatic industries, the artist's images oppose the aspiration to integrity, to an uncompromising purity. In and by him/herself, the artist is an intransigent moral subject, his work mirrors an entrenched conviction, an incoercible truth; and this, in turn, does explain why so many young people, since young people are the most responsive to the appeal of truth.

Quite obvious, though equally difficult. Indeed, even a young guy will understand that the stubborn pursuit of his/her own goals might mean to give up ephemeral successes, the easiest and most superficial gratifications; but so much the better, because this is the way to feed the highest ambitions and to attain the most durable results. Results that will not be achieved by whomever, since only the best few, those who will prove most resistant to a discouraging environment, will become tomorrow's authors; and even if just some of them were sorted out from this exhibition, our task would be fulfilled.

While waiting for the future, < ART & SOUTH . contemporary goal > shows an exceptionally rich variety of expressive choices in the most recent visual research: no schools, here, and no constraining traits that do unify this generation's works. It is not only because the technical tools mechanically incentive differentiation, since they are unusually manifold (embracing video, painting, performance, installation, drawing). Indeed, as the same tools are used with very heterogeneous motivations and formal outcomes, the very root of variation should be in the psychology, the culture, the sensibility, the experience, of the single artist. This is, in turn, another novelty, since the general aim of previous generations was to find, to invent, a new language to distinguish itself (as a rule, polemically) from the previous ones; whereas language is now fully free, is multiple, contamination is the imperative, imitation is no longer feared, and originality is pursued precisely through the unconstrained consciousness of his/her own expressive freedom. The outcome is not the utter confusion that some cynical academicians, or some inattentive observer, would forecast. The apt word is complexity, the very complexity that is needed to answer, to oppose, to deconstruct, the banal saturation of our daily world of images. The visiting public, then, might feel an ambiguous sensation, the sensation of both recognizing, understanding, and being surprised: a flow of quite common, familiar, objects, images, and performed actions, coexists indeed with their own critique: be it an ironic or corroding, serene or apocalyptic, amused or wickedly tender, critique.

And there is more, since even such a large exhibition (with some fifty artists and one hundred works selected out of more than two hundred candidates from the project's partners: thirteen cities belonging to the association of the G iovani A rtisti I taliani and the Bartoli-Felter Art Foundation) does not claim to exhaust the inexhaustible, i. e., the magma of energies, proposals, problems, and expressive solutions, of the last, and the newest, contemporary art. The many you can see here are indeed the few in an unexpectedly crowded and hard-working world of young creators. Of course, we have tried to show today's best artists; but other meetings will be needed, if we had to keep up with tomorrow's changes.

Rosa Anna Musumeci