23 July – 30 October 2022
Exhibition curated by Giuseppe Frangi
Fondazione Coppola – Torrione of Vicenza
In collaboration with Casa Testori
Opening: 22 July 2022, from 6:00 PM
Fondazione Coppola, in collaboration with Casa Testori, presents “Andrea Bianconi. UPSTAIR”, an exhibition curated by Giuseppe Frangi and hosted at the Torrione of Vicenza from 23 July to 30 October 2022.
Everything begins with the performance Andrea Bianconi carried out last year, attended and shared by hundreds of people, during which he carried his “Millennium Chair” on his shoulders from the square of the Palladian Basilica up to the lantern of the Torrione of Vicenza, 40 meters above ground. He now returns to the top floor of the Torrione with an installation of 12 large drawings, conceived as a surprising corollary to that performance.
The 12 drawings in fact precede Bianconi’s action, as they represent its generative moment—the point at which the idea, embodied in the “Millennium Chair,” first took shape. This once again confirms that, from the artist’s perspective, drawing is an indispensable experience, the source of every creative process. Paper is the true cradle of the idea, and the practice of drawing is the method through which it emerges: a “crucial place for the production of meaning,” as William Kentridge has written.
The works on display are therefore much more than preparatory drawings: the obsessiveness of the mark that fills the entire surface, the expansion of scale, and the Piranesian reversal of perspectives reveal a fully performative approach on Bianconi’s part. For him, paper becomes the ground of a true artistic action, carried out almost in a trance.
The drawings represent the necessary prelude to Andrea Bianconi’s performance, but at the same time they are its surprising continuation—or rather, a powerful and visionary overgrowth. The staircases of the Torrione were the key device of the 2021 performance: the action involved a solitary ascent of the 146 steps, with the armchair on his shoulders, while the audience waited outside for the outcome, announced by the switching on of the floodlights positioned at the top.
Now the drawings present themselves as a continuation of that ascent, along staircases that become increasingly steep and impassable, and whose destination is never revealed. On the one hand, the drawings weave an even more intimate dialogue with the site, identifying and enhancing its fascinating functional and conceptual line of force represented by the staircases. On the other, they bring Andrea Bianconi’s idea to completion by removing it from our reach and projecting it in a direction that overwhelms physical space and breaks into a purely mental realm, the exclusive domain of the artist.
Venue: Fondazione Coppola – Torrione of Vicenza
Dates: 23 July – 30 October 2022
Opening hours: Friday 11:00 AM–6:00 PM; Saturday 10:00 AM–5:00 PM; Sunday 2:00 PM–6:00 PM. Last admission 30 minutes before closing time.
Admission: €5 full price; reduced for over 65; free for under 18
Information: https://www.fondazionecoppola.org/visita/
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