Events

Past Event

Premio New York: Artists Salvatore Arancio and Alice Cattaneo

December 7, 2009 - December 10, 2009
6:00 PM
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Scholarship program for emerging Italian artists; co-sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Cultural Institute of New York (At the International Studio & Curatorial Program [ISCP] in Brooklyn). Co-sponsored by the Italian Ministry

The Italian Cultural Institute of New York, together with the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Directorate General for Cultural Promotion and Cooperation) are proud to sponsor the Premio New York (New York Prize), a residency program for emerging Italian artists. Winners of the seventh edition of the Premio New York are Salvatore Arancio and Alice Cattaneo. The artists are in residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, NY.

Alice Cattaneo examines the kaleidoscopic reality of New York focusing on the idea of the fragment as both an imaginary space and a projection of reality. The artist uses the urban landscape as a vulnerable context in which to locate connections between experienced and imagined situations. This research, and the artist’s experimentation with materials and actions with unpredictable outcomes, results in a series of constructed spatial situations temporarily inhabiting the space of the gallery. 

Cattaneo studied at the Glasgow School of Art and at the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent solo exhibitions include: Galleria Suzy Shammah, Milan (2008); MADRE Museum, Naples (2008); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2007); and Analix Forever, Geneva (2006). Recent group exhibitions include Italics, Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution, 1968-2008, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, and MOCA, Chicago (2009) and Fragile, Terres d’Empathie, Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne (2009).

Salvatore Arancio’s main interest lies in the potential of images. Departing from their literal meaning, he creates new juxtapositions that are both beautifully evocative and deeply disquieting. Working across a range of media such as photo-etchings, collage, animation and video, he looks to nature and science for his sources of inspiration, while unsettling any hint of the sublime by re-framing the images and the viewer’s experience. His constructed landscapes contain a sense of both the familiar and the unknown that enhances their symbolic readings and implications. During his stay in New York Arancio has focused his research on the study of the archives related to the New York World's Fair of 1939 and its machine-age Utopian visions, combining them with the rigorous aesthetic of Berenice Abbott' s scientific "Super Sight" photographs (from the Photography Collection of The New York Public Library's Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs). 

Arancio’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions including “I giovani che visitano le nostre rovine non vi vedono che uno stile,” at GAM, Turin, (2009), Prague Biennale 4, Karlin Hall, Prague (2009), Nul, Foxy Production, New York (2008) No Room For the Groom: An Exhibition with Douglas Sirk, Herald St, London (2007) among others.