Art in the Square is the annual event of Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, a public celebration of the artistic achievements of our students, featuring an exciting range of artworks selected by a panel of experts, including paintings, drawings, printmaking, sculptures, mixed media works, photography, graphic design, architecture, interior design, jewelry, fashion design, dance choreography, and acting performances.
Featuring works and live performances by students of:
FINE ART – GRAPHIC DESIGN – PHOTOGRAPHY
ARCHITECTURE – INTERIOR DESIGN
JEWELRY – FASHION DESIGN
FILM – MEDIA – PERFORMING ARTS
PROGRAM
Via dell’Alloro 14r, Via del Melarancio 6r, Via del Giglio 4, LdM Premises FINE ART EXHIBITION 11:00am – 5:00pm
Fondazione Zeffirelli, Piazza San Firenze ARCHITECTURE, INTERIOR DESIGN, GRAPHIC DESIGN AND PHOTOGRAPHY 11:00am – 5:00pm
Via del Melarancio 6r RESTORATION Lab Restoration students work on original artworks 11:00am – 2:30pm
Via dell’Alloro 14r STREET ART WORKSHOP WITH EXIT ENTER AND LdM STUDENTS 1:30pm – 4:00pm Artemisia Classroom
SHORT FILM & ANIMATION 11:00am – 6:00pm First floor, Classroom Marconi
FASHION DESIGN EXHIBITION 11:00am – 6:00pm First floor, Front Building* *Make a right after the concierge, walk up the stairs and enter the glass door on the right.
Via Faenza 43 DANCE RECITAL AND THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE
from Dante Aligheri’s Inferno
4:00pm – 5.00pm Church of San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini
About THE BATHERS: Francesco Lauretta is an artist and a painter. He paints every single day as if wanting to prove incorrect those who judged the medium as outdated. Painting continues and will continue to exist in its countless declinations. Sometimes Lauretta appears as an innovator, who wishes to reinvent painting. If, on one hand he cultivates a profound recognition and understanding of the masters, on the other hand Lauretta enjoys the expressive power of iconoclasm.
At Lorenzo de’ Medici Gallery Francesco Lauretta will present his series of paintings dedicated to one of the most iconic motifs in art history, The Bathers.
Special event:a special event will be held in the LdM Gallery, a talk with the artist, Francesco Lauretta and a special edition of Santa Rosa free school of drawing for LdM students. The Free Scuola di Santa Rosa was founded in Florence in 2017, as an initiative by Francesco Lauretta and fellow painter Luigi Presicce.
On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays during the opening hours the gallery interns will be available for special exhibition tours connecting the works on show with the famous motives of the bathers in art history.
Francesco Lauretta, born in 1964, experiments with installation, performance and video. In 2003 he began to work on a redefinition of painting as a form of expression and of the artist as an existential condition, exploring techniques, processes, formal results, deviations, limits and eventual failures. Since 2010 he has worked on “I racconti funesti”, a series of allegories where he uses writing as a tool to make sense of his process. He recently began working on a project on freedom and invention comprehending painting as the foundation of immense and possible worlds. In October 2017 he and Luigi Presicce came up with the idea of Scuola di Santa Rosa, a free school of drawing in Florence. His most recent solo exhibitions have been held at MAC in Lissone, Tenuta dello Scompiglio in
Vorno (Lu), Fondazione Rossini in Briosco (MB), Galleria Giovanni Bonelli in Milan, and Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Palermo. His numerous group exhibitions in Italy and abroad include Paso Doble at Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Casa Masaccio in San Giovanni Valdarno, Palazzo Riso in Palermo, Frigoriferi Milanesi in Milan and Macy Art Gallery in New York. As well as this he has worked on special projects with artists’ collectives and curators.
March 16th, from 5 to 8PM LdM Gallery,Via de’ Pucci 4
After the opening, the exhibition will stay open until Friday, April 7th,
Mon 10AM-2PM/4:30-7PM, Tue to Fri 4-7PM
The LdM Gallery is a project by Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, an interdisciplinary space where academic research and artistic experimentation meet within a professional setting.
The work of Giulia Seri refers to life from the entirely humane point of view emphasizing the suffering over the transience of existence. Her emotional, fragile and expressive figures are related to mythological references that uncover the fragility of human existence and its relation to death or better, the search for eternity functioning as ex voto, prayers, magic spells. The delicacy of materials and tones the artists uses contrast with the painful of the content referring to pain, death and fragility of flesh.
At the LdM Gallery, Giulia will present Amduat (On the other side for ancient Egyptians) her watercolors, prints and sculptures made of bread, wax, fabric and ceramics.
After the opening on Wednesday February 22nd, the exhibition will stay open until Friday March 10th,
Special event/Artist Talk: Wednesday March 1st from 5 to 7 pm: a talk between Giulia Seri, artist, Valentina Santini, egyptologist CAMNES, Spela Zidar, art curator.
About AMDUAT:
Giulia Seri’s refers to life from the entirely humane point of view emphasizing the suffering over the transience of existence. Her emotional, fragile and expressive figures are related to mythological references that uncover the fragility of human existence and its relation to death or better, the search for eternity functioning as ex voto, prayers, magic spells. The delicacy of materials and tones the artist uses, contrast with the pain of the content referring to pain, death and fragility of flesh. At the LdM Gallery, Giulia will present Amduat (On the other side for Ancient Egyptians) her watercolors, prints and sculptures made of bread, wax, fabric and ceramics.
Giulia Seri, born in Rome in 1988, lives and works in Florence since 2008.
After graduating in biology, she studied painting at the Art Students League of New York and in 2017 obtained a scholarship at the international school of graphic art “il Bisonte” in Florence. She participated in group and personal exhibitions in Italy and abroad, participated in artist residencies and obtained various national and international awards; among the most relevant the invitation to the European Triennial of Contemporary Engraving and the International Biennial of works on paper, the jury prize at the Koschatzky Art Award 2021, the selection among the featured artists at the Cramum Prize and the mention of the jury at the Combat Prize 2021. In her work Seri uses different techniques: painting, engraving, sculpture, installation.
The LdM Gallery is a project by Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, an interdisciplinary space where academic research and artistic experimentation meet within a professional setting.
This semester we have moved forward and backward through art history. We have applied techniques that have been employed for over 500 years and have utilized digital tools that are continuously transforming. We have used pigments that go back to the origins of mankind and others that have been on the market for only twenty years. We have taken painting as a vehicle in which we move across time, in which we absorb and ignore traditions, follow and break rules – we have behaved conformist and anarchist at the same time.
For example, in the construction of space in painting: We worked with the baroque space, which makes the objects and faces emerge from the illusion of a deep, dark room. We have used space to transfer the phenomenon of movement into the static medium of painting. We introduced blurring to imitate the photographic simulation of space. Finally, we used ornament and color to undermine and ironize the illusion of space.
In this way, we have been moving in a peculiar realm of freedom in art, where our representations oscillate between mimesis and construction, where we act insecurely, feel pleasure and discover something new simultaneously.
The LdM Gallery is a project by Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, an interdisciplinary space where academic research and artistic experimentation meet within a professional setting.
We are excited to host the footwear influencer and most sought after footwear innovation expertise, Nicoline van Enter. Ms. Van Enter has created solutions for leading brands ranging from start-ups to Adidas and Timberland to Kering group and Balenciaga.
The opportunity to be a part of Nicoline’s presentations is rarely connected to a student group and we are honored to have this opportunity to host Nicoline’s one hour presentation.
Wednesday Nov 16th from 11-12 pm
at the Church of San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini, via Faenza 43.
Nicoline’s approach of design innovation, environmentally friendly manufacturing and understanding the future evolution of footwear has defined how top eco-conscious footwear companies approach sustainability.
Footwear careers are not only for designers. Nicoline came to footwear from her background of engineering, journalism and marketing. She will explain how each person directly connects within the footwear arena and also shares what the footwear industry needs most.
Listen to how trends are conceived in the footwear industry, new approaches of development systems and the possibilities of biotech, 3d printing, automated design, modular shoes and innovative materials, will change the way we know footwear today.
Come ready with questions and to be forever changed on what you once knew about the footwear industry.
Nicoline van Enter has 30 years+ of experience in the shoe industry. She is the founder and creative director of the Footwearists, the international platform for footwear innovation. Sharing insight into the biotechnology, the importance of construction, and what the footwear future and meaningful innovation holds for people and the planet.
LdM – Lorenzo de’ Medici Istitute Gallery is happy to present the exhibition RESTLESS TRACES: Leaves by USA artist Shelley Jordon.
Jordon’s work begins with painting that is transformed by the artist in installation, animation, animated installations and lately also glass sculpture. Experimenting with different materials, enables the artist to create fluid, moving works that expand through time and different artistic media creating immersive experiences that dissolve boundaries between interior and exterior worlds and allow for exploration and cross pollination of ideas and disciplines.
This exhibition will include recent paintings and hand-painted animations from De-Compostions series, larger mixed-media paintings on BFK paper, that depict leaves in a state of rotting and decay, that investigate the passage of time and cycles of life. The animations are accompanied by original sound/music by composer Kurt Rohde. Jordon will also show some of her very recent experimentation with glass sculpture.
Small-scale watercolors painted from life allow for close observation and the opportunity to record the nuance and particularity of each specimen.
In addition to the video projection and works of art, during the opening the artist will create experimental works on paper inspired by local vegetation, demonstrating to those present the artistic technique with which she usually creates her works. The public is invited to attend the gallery from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm on the day of the inaugural event. After the demonstration, Shelley Jordon will hold an artist conference from 4 to 5 pm, illustrating her artistic career.
SHELLEY JORDON
Shelley Jordon was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and now living in Portland, Oregon. A painter and moving-image artist, she uses traditional drawing and painting media applied to two dimensional artwork, animation and installation to express the complex nature of memory; physical and emotional, collective and personal.
Her solo exhibitions include; The Ildiko Butler Gallery, Fordham University at Lincoln Center, New York City, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, the Whitebox Gallery Portland, OR and the Frye Museum, in Seattle, WA. Jordon holds an MFA from Brooklyn College of the City of New York, a BFA from The School of Visual Arts in NYC, and is a Professor of Art at Oregon State University and frequently lives and teaches in Siena, Italy.
TUTANKHAMUN is perceived as a collective element by the whole of humanity, and not only by a single cultural group. It is part of the world’s cultural identity, something coated with an imaginary functionality and beauty, which refers to the image we project in the past, able to communicate with the present. His name evokes a series of usual stereotypical mental images: the artistic peak reached by his excellent funeral mask; life passed in one of the most intriguing periods at the diplomatic level (close relations with other cultures of the Near East); and at the spiritual level (speculations on the figure of the god Aton).
Furthermore, the not yet clear relationship with the pharaoh Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten, the premature death and dynastic problems that occurred with the accession to the throne by figures not related to the dynasty (Ay and Horemheb), the small tomb compared to a rich funerary equipment, and, unfortunately, the so-called “curse”. However, there is much more in the figure and history of this king. So, after a century it is necessary to “Rediscover Tutankhamun”.
Photographs by Paolo Bondielli (MediterraneoAntico).
The LdM Gallery is a project by Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, an interdisciplinary space where academic research and artistic experimentation meet within a professional setting.
On Tuesday, October 18th, at the Church of San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini, at 6PM, Isabel Carrasco will present her book “Frogmen. Primi belati de street art a Firenze”.
The presentation will be the occasion to discuss about the Street Art in Florence, and the talented artists who animated the Florentine artistic scenario, in particular Aroldo Marinai.
During September and November 1979, Aroldo Marinai (Florence, 1941) was stenciling the silhouette of a diver around the center of Florence. With that action, Marinai was likely the first to bring to his city a notion of the street art culture he had been exposed to during his recent stay in New York. In addition, he decided to take the action to a further level by documenting the process with photographs, a sort of written diary, and an exhibition that included a performance. The whole project was published as a short-run booklet entitled: Frogmen: Un segno sui muri come per caso in 1980. The book has been recently re-published as Frogmen. Primi belati de street art a Firenze, 2021.
The book re-edition is put Frogmen in the context of Florentine and European street interventions revealing the key role of Italy in the time-line of independent practices in public space. This conference aims to analyze the project Frogmen as well as to broadly discuss the particularities of Florentine street art. This project is the result of two Marist College – Istituto Lorenzo de´ Medici summer-research scholarships (2018 and 2019). And of a Fall 2020 semester collaboration with LdM Gallery.
ISABEL CARRASCO
Mª Isabel Carrasco holds a PhD in Philosophy by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She works as a Program Director for Marist College Spain and as a Professor in Boston University Madrid program. Her research activity touches upon the relationship between image and writing in contemporary art, focusing on mural writing (graffiti), calligraphy, and independent visual art interacting in public space.
Some of her last publications are: Frogmen. Primi Belati di Street art a Firenze (co-authored book). Florence, 2021. “Love before Tinder. Popular Graffiti in Torrenueva (Ciudad Real)” (article), Lisbon 2022, “El juego entre la escritura y la imagen. Graffiti en los años 70 en Nueva York” (book chapter), Madrid, 2022. Isabel also practices classical and modern calligraphy since 2012.
Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 masterpiece of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has much it can teach us today. Lingering in the space between extremes, he reveals the way light is shrouded by darkness, and love is sprung from hate. Zeffirelli handles these sharp contrasts deftly as he exposes the knife’s edge that separates reason from passion, and grief from love. A story that was relevant 400 years ago, 60 years ago, and today.
Zeffirelli knows how to take us into the heart of suffering, and then to transcend it. Even in the thralls of despair, he finds the intense beauty of the human condition. This is his power. Beauty and pathos carry the story between violent and loving extremes. Even at the most agonizing moments of darkness, Zeffirelli illuminates the characters with love.
Through this exhibition, the most memorable scenes from the Academy-acclaimed film: the Capulet masquerade, the private meeting on the balcony, and finally, the heartbreaking demise of Romeo and Juliet in the Capulet crypt. Contrasting spaces welcome visitors into the arms of young love and joy, and leaves them with the solace of our own mortality. This groundbreaking event showcases universal themes of love, peace, and the struggle to fight for unity.
Opening on Tuesday, March 22 at 5.30pm.
The exhibition will run until Friday, April 8
The Gallery will be open on Wednesdays and Fridays from 4.30 – 7.00pm and Saturdays from 10.30am – 1.00pm.
LdM Gallery, via de’ Pucci 4
The exhibition Baptistry_A is intended to be an homage to one of the symbolic monuments of Florence, the “beautiful San Giovanni”, as defined by Dante Alighieri, “the most beautiful monument of the world”, as declared by the architect Le Corbusier.
Inspired by the view of the Baptistry from the uncommon prospective from up above, specifically from the windows of the studio that once belonged to the painter, Silvio Loffredo, to whom the exhibition is dedicated, Baptistry_A originates from the collaboration of two visual artists, Pietro Schillaci and Roberto Pupo, and with the curatorship of the eclectic Fabio Norcini.
In an alienated atmosphere, the Baptistry takes shape through fluid, fluctuating, and uncommon imagery, accompanied by music which has been specially composed by Stefano Davidson.
The symbol returns to life.
L’idea della mostra nasce quando la redazione della LdM Press si trasferisce, a fine primavera 2021, in quello che fu lo studio del pittore Silvio Loffredo per un periodo lunghissimo, dal 1953 al 1993. Posto all’ultimo piano del palazzo del Bigallo, le finestre e il terrazzino offrono vedute mozzafiato sul sottostante Battistero che divenne il soggetto principe del pittore parigino napoletano e fiorentino per scelta e, forse, condanna. Un luogo, dunque, di memoria, di inesauribili incanti e forti emozioni estetiche: ovvio pensare di invitarvi artisti visivi delle più diverse provenienze onde sollecitarne una “commissione-commistione” centrata sul sottostante miracolo architettonico, ma che fosse al contempo un originale omaggio al poliedrico artista che lì lavorò una vita.
Il primo ad aderire con entusiasmo al progetto è stato il fotografo Pietro Schillaci, dando vita ad una campagna quasi ossessiva, fotografando per un periodo di tempo lungo, dalla primavera all’inverno, e nelle più varie condizioni di luce, dall’alba alla notte, dentro e fuori lo studio, il magico ottagono e i suoi “riflessi”. Intuendo sin da subito il senso profondo che stava all’origine dell’operazione e stabilendo con il ‘curatore’, che scrive questi appunti di viaggio, un’empatica sintonia capace di tradurre in sorprendenti risultati ogni pur minima suggestione, Pietro ha dispiegato con ogni mezzo a sua disposizione quella sua magica capacità di captare la sconfinata mutevolezza dell’identico. Quando mi ha raccontato che la bellezza di certe sequenze di cui si accorgeva solo dopo, in studio, lo commuovevano fino alle lacrime, ho capito che non potevo trovare artista migliore: sia per la sua formazione, è laureato in architettura, ma soprattutto per la sua sensibilità quasi rabdomantica nel trovare sempre inediti e insospettabili punti di vista anche nell’arcinoto e strafotografato, era l’unico che potesse ripercorrere con l’obiettivo quello che Loffredo inseguiva con tavolozza e pennelli. Altra analogia con il lavoro di Loffredo è che in un certo senso ogni suo battistero conteneva tutti quelli che lo precedevano e che sarebbero seguiti, pur con prospettive, colori, proporzioni diversissime; e così le foto, Variazioni Goldberg scritte con la luce, teoricamente senza fine.
Non pago dell’altissimo livello già raggiunto in questo viaggio, una “battistereide” quasi ossessiva, (e sarà solo un caso che proprio Loffredo venisse malignamente definito pittore “battisterico”?), ha deciso di far salire a bordo un altro artista. Pur convinto del proprio lavoro, ma rifiutandone una messinscena da tipica mostra fotografica, già a inizio lavoro ha pensato che Roberto Pupi potesse essere il partner ideale in questo sprofondamento nel battistero: oltretutto Pupi aveva avuto Loffredo quale insegnante all’Accademia di Belle Arti. I due, il cui sodalizio ha avuto come “banco di prova” una riuscita opera (Rischi calcolati, presentata da chi scrive) si sono tirati la corsa, rincorrendo ipotesi, proposte, prove e controprove, tra sopralluoghi non solo sui set fotografici, ma anche tra le possibili sedi espositive, per trovare la migliore soluzione dell’allestimento finale.
Pupi ha una storia che parte da lontano, con proprie personali in tutto il mondo a partire dal 1989, con il significativo passaggio dalla pittura alla fotografia “anche se -come scrive Patrizia Landi- egli ha più volte sottolineato non si considera un fotografo ma bensì un pittore che utilizza la fotografia, che è interessato all’artisticità di quest’ultima, alla sua peculiarità di catturare e di fissare un’immagine”. Insomma, l’uomo giusto al posto giusto.
Il suo ingresso nel progetto ha inoltre posto prepotentemente argomenti di riflessione di ordine generale di non poco momento, quali il superamento dell’autorialita’ in una specie di ‘compartecipazione’ nella quale l’adozione-appropriazione delle immagini, quasi automatica nell’era digitale, non deve però prescindere dalla prospettiva interpretativa, obbligatoria qualora si affronti, come in questo caso, un soggetto del passato. Da qui può scaturire una nuova costruzione di senso della memoria collettiva relativa al battistero, attraverso appunto scatti multipli ma modulari, quasi parte di un puzzle continuamente variabile, le cui tessere offrono innumerevoli permutazioni, possibilità combinatorie e modulazioni volumetriche. Proprio grazie all’apporto di Roberto, alla sua sapienza tecnica e gusto, si è arrivati alla soluzione dell’allestimento definitivo: un quadrato composto da 36 quadrati posati sul pavimento. L’opera diviene così superficie fluida, nella quale le foto si increspano quasi fossero porzione di fiume che trasporta il tempo degli scatti, si muove lentamente in onde emotive che investono l’osservatore mentre ne percorre le “rive”, pervenendo a suggestivi esiti plastici, tra illusione ottica e anamorfosi. Quello che per essere visto richiede normalmente di allungare il collo, qui costringe ad abbassare lo sguardo: un ribaltamento delle abitudini al monumentale e alla sua museificazione mentale.
Tale installazione costituisce il fulcro della mostra, integrata però dalla proiezione in loop di un conturbante video-multivision, dove in rapidissimo montaggio con effetto cinematico, tra suggestioni alla Reggio e animazione quasi psichedelica, entrano in gioco un numero maggiore delle foto di Schillaci, che ha realizzato il video avvalendosi delle musiche appositamente composte ed eseguite per esso da Stefano Davidson. Un a parte la spettacolare sequenza esemplare, racchiusa in una nicchia, gioco tra transeunte nuvola e vertice del monumento, quasi a simbolizzare il metodo di lavoro schillaciano.
La mèta che ci si prefiggeva, di far rivivere (to turn on) il battistero in un’esperienza visiva totalizzante, nuova ed emozionante, capace di disincrostare gli sclerotizzati sguardi, si può dire senza falsa modestia, è raggiungibile. Baptistery_A riesce, grazie alla perfezione dei dettagli che glorifica il totale, a togliere il battistero fiorentino dal polveroso scaffale della libreria in cui giace, ormai non molto diverso da quello di un supermercato, dal momento che la cultura è ormai ridotta a merce, alla mercé di influencer e continuamente vanificata dai google e amazon di turno. Ci si accontenterebbe che il visitatore potesse infine aderire all’entusiasta affermazione di Le Corbusier, che dopo aver carezzato torno torno il Bel San Giovanni, stando a quanto racconta Michelucci, esclama: “E’ il monumento più bello del mondo”. La verifica dista solo pochi passi e consente, ci si augura, di rimirare l’ombelico di Firenze con occhi nuovi.
– Fabio Norcini
Pietro Schillaci – Siciliano, da anni a Firenze dove si è laureato in Architettura, è affermato fotografo professionista, specializzato in arte, innumerevoli i cataloghi di artisti contemporanei realizzati con sue foto. Schivo e appartato è implacabile giudice del suo lavoro. Ammette che il lavoro sul Battistero l’ha commosso.
Roberto Pupi – Livornese, vive e lavora a Firenze. Ha esposto le sue spiazzanti opere e installazioni in numerose personali in Italia e all’estero, curate da insigni critici che ne hanno rilevato l’originale e spesso ironico approccio. Con Schillaci collabora da tempi recenti e questa è la prima loro mostra di rilievo che conferma una mirabile consonanza d’intenti.
Fabio Norcini – Difficile tracciare un profilo della sua variegata attività, in campo editoriale, espositivo ecc. Ha curato e allestito mostre sia di arte che di satira un po’ in tutta Italia, in luoghi insoliti. A Firenze, dov’è nato, si ricordano le mostre al Forte Belvedere (estate 2006) Museo della Specola, al Teatro Puccini (1995/2006) e allo Studio Rosai da lui diretto fino al 2019.
