ARTE FIERA OBSERVATORY

Paola Ugolini
photo

Paola Ugolini lives and works in Rome.
She is an Art critic and independent curator. She writes regularly for Exibart. Since the late eighties she has been curating various shows and artistic projects based mostly on the work of female artists, Video-Art, Body Art, Performance Art and the relationship between Art and Feminism. Since 2015 she is guest curator at Richard Saltoun Gallery in London. Paola Ugolini is screening curator at CortoArteCircuito, since 2018 is Art Advisor at the Museo 900 in Florence.
Paola Ugolini has been one of the protagonists of PLAYLIST, scheduled on our website January 21-24.


I have countless memories of Arte Fiera, of January’s frigid temperatures in Emilia, and of snow-covered Bologna. For example, when I had just received my degree in the late ‘80s, my aunt Milena Ugolini (an important collector and at the time still a gallerist) asked me to help her at her stand. I recall that we set up a beautiful solo show of red and white shaped canvasses by Enrico Castellani whose prices (compared to now) were ridiculously low and that, incredibly, no one bought. Today they would sell like hot cakes.

But my most vivid memory is from Arte Fiera 1991: the extraordinary group show curated by and with texts by Renato Barilli, Jan Avgikos, Josè Lebrero Stals, F.C. Prodhon, Dede Auregli, and Roberto Daolio, entitled ANNI 90. The show presented the works of 120 artists at three separate locations: the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna (back then an out-of-the-way space near the Fair), the metaphysical “Le Navi” in Cattolica, a former children’s camp (a fascinating torpedo-shaped building that protrudes onto the beach), and an abandoned school belonging to the City Museums of Rimini. The works were divided as follows: the Galleria d'Arte Moderna was given only works to be hung on or leaned against the walls, whereas Cattolica and Rimini were given only 3-dimensional works.

The show exhibited works by many young artists from all over the world, including the young Maurizio Cattelan, with his unforgettable interactive Stadium: an enormous table football game with 11 positions per side instead of the usual 4. For the occasion, Cattelan had invited two real teams: 11 Italians from the Cesena team on one side, and the A.C. Forniture Sud, which he himself had formed in 1991 and was composed of Senegalese workers living in Italy, on the other. In the artist’s words, “I thought about what the most popular thing in Italy was, and used football to convey, by means of a very simple principle, the emerging phenomenon of immigration from outside the EC. I had them play matches where I was the coach and the president of the team. The idea of making a very long table football game (Stadium, 1991), where my entire team of immigrants could challenge a team of Italians, came after the invitation to participate in the group show Anni 90.” The show also presented some large-scale portraits of anonymous young people, shot close-up, by the German photographer Thomas Ruff. It makes me very happy to know after so many years that I was impressed by the works of two artists who have been enormously successful throughout the world.

Also in 1991, at Villa delle Rose (which at the time was an annex of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna), I recall a wonderful solo show of works by Luigi Ontani, with sculptures and two-dimensional pieces that dialogued perfectly with that 18th-century space. What I remember most clearly was a glass sculpture, a lamp, with a typical Ontani title: Mayadusa (1990). The work, which he called a “light sculpture,” was made entirely of Murano glass and had a variety of highly eclectic elements, such as alder leaves, snakes with a forked tongue, animal legs, human arms and face, and referred to the oneiric world of fables and myth. I saw it again years later, hanging from the ceiling in the home of important Italian collectors. It gave me great pleasure to see it in a home, even if – just for a second – I was sorry it wasn’t mine.

Stadium

Maurizio Cattelan, Stadium, 1991, performance at Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Bologna
Courtesy Archivio Maurizio Cattelan