Walls, wall art

Inauguration Ceremony: 8 June 12.00

From 8 June to the end of September the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation will be hosting an international event in the charming open space of the Venice Arsenal, organized in collaboration with Consorzio Venezia Nuova and Thetis. The event consists of an exhibition of Street Art, the visual culture of young generations.

Walls – Wall art will include the site-specific works of three international artists: the French JR, the Italian 108, and the German Daim, all of whom will be working directly on the scaffolding of the buildings in the Venice shipyard starting in June of this year. Each artist will be working on a wall of wood, laid upon the shipyard buildings and covering the facades of the Tese della Novissima complex.

The terms “urban writing”, “graffiti art”, and “aerosol art” began to appear more than thirty years ago. Today, however, Street Art is a world-wide phenomenon; a complex and diversified one in that it adds stencil (printed images), posters, and stickers to traditional techniques. The phenomenon first took off in New York City, but today this art form can best be seen in cities like Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and, in Italy, Turin, Rome and Milan, as well as hundreds of smaller urban centres.

If in the past Street Art was considered as a way of personalizing and enclosing a territory, neighbourhood, or particular area, today contemporary art along with design, graphic arts, fashion and music, draw upon this culture, finding constant inspiration for the renewal of their own languages.

Thus it is no coincidence that such world renown artists as Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, as well as more recent names like Barry Mc Gee and Banksy, all of whom have traversed the world of Street Art, have shown their work in the most important museums and exhibitions in contemporary art.

The Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation has been dedicated to promoting young artists ever since it was founded. In this way the Walls project is in perfect synchrony with the institution’s mission, one which sets it apart from many other art institutions in Italy.

The Foundation strives to promote an urban space art that originates from a project and from mutual respect for other places.

During the last Venice Biennale of Art in 2005, the well-known architect Yona Friedman inaugurated the activities of the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation by covering a work site construction with a large design project printed on PVC material. Following this, works by young artists were created on wooden partitions of work sites located in Venice’s historical centre, and the exhibition Walls in the Galleria di Piazza San Marco was organized, exhibiting the works of two internationally renown artists, Nic Hess and Federico Herrero. The BLM plans to continue in this direction and will do so this year with the generous contribution from the Venice Water Works Magistrate of providing the scaffolding for the facades of the Tese complex.

The event will mark a new phase for this part of the city: opening up the vast areas of the Arsenal, the oldest in Europe, which is finally being revived after years of abandonment.

Participating artists:

108 One of the most original Italian artists in the field of Street Art, 108 has moved from working in traditional graffiti art to painting large and mysterious figures that invade public spaces. http://www.108art.tk

JR is a well-known French artist who specializes in photography and stencil. Recently he has gained great recognition for his images interpreting and documenting the architectural landscape and social environment of Paris suburbs. http://www.jr-art.net/

Daim Daim, a German artist, is best-known for working in the traditional technique of graffiti art. He specializes in the deconstruction of three-dimensional structures that explode and create dynamic space. http://www.daimgallery.com/

Walls, wall art
Ort: Tese della Novissima - Arsenale
Kurator: Stefano Coletto
mit 108 , JR , Mirko Reisser (DAIM)