The winners of the eleventh edition of the COMBAT PRIZE

The eleventh edition of the COMBAT PRIZE ended on Saturday, 31 October when the judges announced the winners. The international contemporary art competition was created by the Blob Art cultural association with the City of Livorno, and is made possible thanks to a grant from the Fondazione Livorno and the support of the publisher, Sillabe.

The judging panel - Andrea Bruciati, CAMPOBASE, Francesca Baboni, Kiki Mazzucchelli, Lorenzo Balbi, and Stefano Taddei – selected Davide Serpetti’s “The Pure and the Damned” as the winner in the Painting Section. The motivation for their decision reads:  for having developed a painting technique with a fluidity that, in some ways, recalls Matisse’s compositional qualities, adding to it and successfully blending line and colour.
 Honourable Mention to Francis Offman.

The Pure And The Damned olio, acrilico e spray acrilico su tela, 193 x 140 cm

The winner in the Photography Section is Thilo Seidel with "DSC9910 REGARDS SANS LIMITES", for his ability to study the concept of space through a sophisticated use of photography, highlighting the contradictions between within and without, presence and  absence of human activities while, at the same time questioning the perceptions of the viewers who, even when facing a known environment, find themselves experiencing a desolate and unusual context that is suspended in time. Honourable Mention to Roberta Segata.

DSC9910 REGARDS SANS LIMITES, archival pigment print, 80 x 60 cm

Stefan Milosavljevic is the winner in the Drawing Section with "Interrupted Rainbow" for having questioned the axial arrangements of drawing that are the basis of the colour band through an action that is private, intrusive, curiously organic and, for this reason, perhaps corrosive. Honourable Mention to Giulia Dall’Olio.

Interrupted Rainbow, testosterone e pennarello su carta, 42 x 59,4 cm

The judges declared Paolo Bufalini with “Senza Titolo” as the winner of the Sculpture/Installation Section for having summarized the tensions of the relations between the human and animal worlds – a topic that is present and debated in today’s world - in a direct, ironic, and striking sculpture. Honourable Mention to Paolo Peroni.

Senza titolo, serpente tassidermizzato, cappello 120x20x25cm

For the Video Section, the panel decided that the prize be shared by Giovanni Chiamenti for "Overlaid Symbiosis" and Valentino Russo with “Videograms of a revolution rip mark fisher”. The motivations as follows: to Giovanni Chiamenti for his ability to combine experimentation on format and means of viewing with reflections on human agency in an ecological perspective developing a complex, multi-focal approach that brings out the osmotic relationships among the materialities dealt with in the video. To Valentino Russo for the questions raised about capitalism: the lack of happiness only triggers a continuous desire to acquire and possess. Beauty shifts to objects that giving them an appeal that is irresistible to most. From the parlours of expensive homes, the artist presents the battle to grab the super-gadgets. Wealth and poverty become the children of the same human wretchedness. Honourable Mention to Iocose.

As to the special awards, the “SAC spazio arte contemporanea”prize, for the creation of a site-specific project and a dedicated publication in the forthcoming 2021 SAC programme, went to Luisa Me for her markedly personal way of painting and her attention to sharp, disturbing depiction that is free of all compromises.

Touch me to stop growing, olio e acrilico su tela, 190 x 150 cm

The under-35 winner of the ART TRACKER prize that gives the artist  the opportunity to participate in the Lucca Art Fair 2020 with a new curatorial project is Agnese Spolverini, for her ability to create multisensory settings characterized by an imaginary permeated with fluidity and hybridizations that work on different levels at once to trigger ambiguous feelings.

Untitled (crumpled), veneziana, tappeti, led, audio (10’22’’)

Finally, the Poliart Award, went to  Giulia Maiorano, for her innate ability to create conceptual short circuits between the object depicted and its defining meaning; for innovative creativity that makes her work intriguing, for her ease in going beyond the boundary between objectivity and metaphorical vision, and for her use of materials that render the apparently invisible visible. Poliart, the leading makers of polystyrene foam will support the production of a new work by the artist.

Lingule lingule lingule, sculture di sapone, fonoassorbente e struttura metallica, 100 x 100 x 25 cm

The “targa Paolo Ristori” award, in memory of the late member of the Associazione Culturale Blob Art, went to Marco Dolfi for “Fiori” for the coherence of his research, study of the drawing medium and for constantly having questioned his way of creating art throughout his career, thus embodying the true spirit of the Combat Prize.

- Redazione

Info: Associazione Culturale Blob ART via Luigi Boccherini, 22 - Livorno - Italy

T +390586881165

ufficiostampa@premiocombat.it

www.premiocombat.it

Art Tracker, discovering new talents. Interview with Clarissa Baldassarri.

Clarissa Baldassarri was born in Civitanova Marche in 1994. In 2013 she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata where she graduated in Decoration. In 2017 she decided to move to Naples, where she is now completing the Specialistic Biennium in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts. In the same year she started working with the GMCG gallery in Livorno which exhibited her solo show "Eikòna". In 2019 she was one of the three recipients of the Combat Prize in the Art Tracker section that led her to participate in a collective exhibition, together with Anna Marzuttini and Giorgia Valli, at Lucca Art Fair 2020.

Sound data logger. installazione site specific Le Scalze, Napoli, 2020 Photo credit: Iolanda Pazzanese

How would you define your artistic practice and what are the issues you investigate?

It is difficult to give an absolute definition to my artistic practice. What I follow, rather than a well-defined modus operandi, is the dimension of listening. I think this is the right word. I always try to understand the message I want to communicate first, then the means and roads change accordingly. A guiding thread certainly lies in the voice that I try to listen to and which up to now has always led me to investigate beyond the surface of things, beyond what we see, hear or touch.

I have a call to the invisible and the imperceptible and what I try to do is to restore a physical, real dimension to what normally escapes, disappears.

When did you decide that you would have been an artist?

I didn't decide. It was an almost necessary path. Art was a necessity, a way to be undertaken in order to transform into something else what I was unable to keep inside of me. A cleansing ritual started about five years ago when I started having problems with my eyesight. That was the moment when I started to wonder about the reality that surrounded me, and about the desire to tell what I felt. Seeing beyond the physical dimension of things was an obligatory path, a feeling too strong that found freedom of expression in the image, regardless of the final form.

Appunti Carte Tintoretto. Installazione site specific Le Scalze, Napoli, 2020 - Photo credit: Iolanda Pazzanese

You have just finished your studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples: how has this specific context influenced the definition of your work?

More than the Academy itself, what influenced my work the most was the city of Naples. I moved to this city after attending the three-year period in Decoration in Macerata and they were completely different experiences. Here the weight of the urban context is felt and breathed in everything. It is impossible not to be overwhelmed.

Transferring here was a precise choice, Naples had been calling me for some time and after three years I can say that I found what I was looking for. The dimension of the sacred and the profane, human contact, the spirit of sharing, the dialogue that overcomes barriers. These are aspects that I wanted to know and are a visible trace in my latest works.

Ausiliare. Installazione site specific Le Scalze, Napoli, 2020 Photo credit: Iolanda Pazzanese

We started this interview in early February but then our world changed radically. How are you facing the current pandemic crisis and how has this emergency affected your practice?

Exactly, it was a great change and only with time we will be able to understand its real effects.

I certainly cannot say that I have lived badly my quarantine. Indeed, it was a period of long reflections where I felt freed from the frenetic rhythms of the clock and I was able to reconnect with my inner time. Paradoxically, I think that this physical distance made us experience another way of getting closer to each other, which crosses all borders, and it happened precisely because we all experienced the same temporal condition; that time that Peter Handke wanted to communicate through the concept of duration.

I developed new ideas during this period which touch on these aspects, but they still need further elaboration.

On the other hand, I was initially shocked by the sudden silence that fell on my city. Just before the lockdown I had just inaugurated the exhibition “Ausiliare”, in the Scalze church of Naples, curated by Marianna Agliotte and Rosaria Iazzetta. In the exhibition I dealt with the theme of listening in relation to the position that a person occupies in a given space and time, enhancing the concept of silence. Being in the position of really feeling these surreal sensations was like living a lucid dream.

Visone mostra Eikona Altarino 1° e Altarino 2°. gmcg gallery, Livorno, 2018 Photo credit: Francesco Levy

- CampoBase Team (Irene Angenica, Bianca Buccioli, Emanuele Carlenzi, Gabriella Dal Lago, Ginevra Ludovici, Federica Torgano, Stefano Volpato)

LUCCA ART FAIR - ART TRACKER

November 27 - 29 - 2020

Casermetta San Frediano, via delle Mura Urbane - 55100 Lucca

T +39 3311303702

E info@luccaartfair.it

W https://en.luccaartfair.com/

Opening times Friday 27 November, 5.30 pm to 8 pm

Saturday 28 November, 10 am to 8 pm

Sunday 29 November, 10 am to 8 pm

Tate Britain celebrates Aubrey Beardsley, icon of english Dandysm

Tate Britain’s major new exhibition celebrates the brief career of Aubrey Beardsley. This is the largest display of his original drawings in over 50 years and the first exhibition of his work at Tate since 1923.

Frederick Evans 1853-1943 Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley 1893 - Wilson Centre for Photography

Beardsley (1872-98) became one of the enfants terribles of fin-de-siècle London, best remembered for illustrating Oscar Wilde’s controversial play Salomé. His opulent imagery anticipated the elegance of Art Nouveau but also alighted on the subversive and erotic aspects of life and legend, shocking audiences with a bizarre sense of humour and fascination with the grotesque. Beardsley was prolific, producing hundreds of illustrations for books, periodicals and posters in a career spanning just under seven years. Line block printing enabled his distinct black-and-white works to be easily reproduced and widely circulated, winning notoriety and admirers around the world, but the original pen and ink drawings are rarely seen. Tate Britain exhibits a huge array of these drawings, revealing his unrivalled skill as a draughtsman in exquisite detail.

The Slippers of Cinderella 1894 Ink and watercolour on paper Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press

The exhibition highlights each of the key commissions that defined Beardsley’s career as an illustrator, notably Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur 1893-4, Wilde’s Salomé 1893 and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock 1896, of which five of the original drawings are shown together for the first time. As art director of the daring literary quarterly The Yellow Book, the artist also created seminal graphic works that came to define the decadence of the era and scandalised public opinion. Bound editions and plates are displayed alongside subsequent works from The Savoy and illustrations for Volpone1898 and Lysistrata1896, in which Beardsley further explored his fascination with eroticism and the absurd.

Beardsley’s imagination was fuelled by diverse cultural influences, from ancient Greek vases and Japanese woodblock prints, to illicit French literature and the Rococo. He also responded to his contemporaries such as Gustave Moreau, Edward Burne-Jones and Toulouse Lautrec, whose works are shown at Tate Britain to provide context for Beardsley’s individual mode of expression. A room in the exhibition is dedicated to portraits of Beardsley and the artist’s wider circle, presenting him at the heart of the arts scene in London in the 1890’s despite the frequent confinement of his rapidly declining health. As notorious for his complex persona as he was for his work, the artist had a preoccupation with his own image, relayed throughout the exhibition by striking self-portraits and depictions by the likes of Walter Sickert and Jacques-Emile Blanche.

The Yellow Book Volume I 1894 Bound volume Stephen Calloway Photo: © Tate

Additional highlights include a selection of Beardsley’s bold poster designs and his only oil painting. Charles Bryant and Alla Nazimova’s remarkable 1923 film Salomé is also screened in a gallery adjacent to Beardsley’s illustrations, showcasing the costume and set designs they inspired. The exhibition closes with an overview of Beardsley’s legacy from Art Nouveau to the present day, including Picasso‘s Portrait of Marie Derval 1901 and Klaus Voormann’s iconic artwork for the cover of Revolver 1966 by the Beatles.

Aubrey Beardsley is organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, with the generous support of the V&A, private lenders and other public institutions. It is curated by Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, Curator of British Art 1850-1915, and Stephen Calloway with Alice Insley, Assistant Curator, Historic British Art.

Illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salome 1893 - The Climax Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway Photo: © Tate

- Editorial Staff

Aubrey Beardsley, Tate Britain

4 March – 25 May 2020 Supported by the Aubrey Beardsley Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Americas Foundation and Tate Members Open daily 10.00 – 18.00 For public information call +44(0)20 7887 8888,

visit tate.org.uk or follow @Tate