Milan: When The Artist Is Not Present by Collective Aesthetics
On a fine Friday night in Milan, Wander Art Space walked into what we expected to be an art exhibition in the city’s burgeoning Scalo Lambrate district. When The Artist Is Not Present – a ‘curatorial research’ by Pelin Zeytinci of Milan-based REA Fair and Artsted.com – claims to be anything but. “If this was an exhibition, then where is the artwork?” - ponders the brochure we receive at the entrance. We get our answer immediately: “When the artist is not present, the artist is you”. Indeed, we are exposed to a quasi-empty space with lounge area in the middle of it, with posters all over the walls accompanied by spray paint bottles humbly waiting by them. One might find themselves lost at first - how do I move and function within this environment?
And so, the exhibition space reimagined suddenly becomes a place to co-create, discuss and share ideas - it almost feels like one of those interactive gallery visits kids are taken to nowadays (which we as adults are incredibly jealous of). When The Artist Is Not Present does not simply challenge the concept of the exhibition space, but transforms it into a deconstructed setting, where guests are not just walking among still-life relics as is often the case, but are invited to get very hands-on and involved in art creation.
Once the space is demystified in art, once modern art ceases to present itself as untouchable, aloof and overly curated, it opens up the room – literally and figuratively – for a challenging conversation we found ourselves engaging in: is it only a valid artistic experience when the artwork is tangible? We sure hope not.
But that’s not all that is on display in Scalo Lambrate this month. When The Artist Is Not Present is part of Collective Aesthetics – Artsted’s first on-site project that will be available to the public throughout all of May. Through a series of interactive workshops, talks and solo exhibitions starring artists Marco Calzolari, Vincenzo Zancana and Nicolas Crocetti – all selling on Artsted – Collective Aesthetics, according to Zeytinci, observes “the relationship between man and what he relates to: man-nature, man-environment, man-object, man-machine”.
Artsted.com is a digital marketplace that employs artificial intelligence to estimate future’s blue-chip artists, and thus encourage investing into living artists – a closely held belief at Wander Art Space.
