At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone, a site-specific installation by Domenico Antonio Mancini in dialogue with Schifano

At MAC - Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Lissone, REPLAY - Context-specific installations and encounters on contemporary museology, the project curated by Francesca Guerisoli launched last November that aims to stimulate a debate on the idea of museum, collection, fruition and cultural mediation starting from the historical collection of Premio Lissone, is back.

In this context, from November 16, 2022 to January 29, 2023, the museum will present N 0, asite-specific installation by artist Domenico Antonio Mancini (Naples, 1980) that intends to play on the idea of masking and consequent unmasking of the historic Premio Lissone collection, placing it at the center of new attention. The work also aims to make people reflect on general questions about life, the role of contemporary art museums today and their relationship with the public.

For this project, Domenico Antonio Mancini chooses to start from the specificity of the place: Lissone, the museum, the Prize and its setting. The Gino Meloni Room shows a selection of works from MAC’s permanent collection, thirty-four paintings set up in a picture gallery style: the works occupy the entire back wall of the room and the two adjacent side walls, without textual indications. Mancini’s installation takes its cue from these physical characteristics to become a tool for analyzing the relationship between the collection and the space in which it is set up, the ways in which the public enters into relationship with the works, and the relationship between them. N 0 thus intends to reflect on the setting up of the work and its identification, the object on display and its description.

In its visual dimension, N 0 offers MAC audiences an unprecedented and familiar view of the Gino Meloni Room: visitors are immersed in a renewed environment starting with the fixed walls of the room, modified for the occasion and functional for the future remounting of the permanent collection. Of the thirty-four canvases from the historic Premio Lissone, only one is visible for the entire duration of the exhibition, which becomes an integral part of Mancini’s installation: Cartello n. 20 (1960) by Mario Schifano, Premio Acquisto of the XII Premio Lissone (1961). They take the place of the other thirty-three canvases, of the same dimensions, made by the artist.

Cartello n. 20, chosen by Mancini, is a painting on wrapping paper in shades of orange that bears the inscription “N 20” in black and is part of Schifano’s cycle of monochrome works.

Leveraging the abstract and absolute nature of the monochrome, Mancini carries forward his reflection on the pictorial language that in absolute black seems to absorb the most advanced research of twentieth-century abstract painting. Beyond the absolute synthesis on the pictorial plane expressed by the black monochrome, for Mancini there is the space of the installation inhabited by the history of the Prize and its multiple audiences. Mancini’s installation focuses the audience’s attention on this single work of the Prize, isolating it, framing it conceptually and formally, in order to propose for the visitors’ reflection the intangible elements that are found in the museum space harbor, such as individual histories, institutional history, and even the experiences of those who enter the exhibition space. In Mancini’s installation, each canvas bears a number as a clear reference to the caption, a device for identifying the work, which becomes the center of observation and the focus of the message.

During the exhibition period of N 0, two public meetings will be held with experts from the contemporary art world: the first on Wednesday, Nov. 30, at 7 p.m., with Riccardo Venturi, art historian, professor at the Sorbonne in Paris as well as author of an essay on Mario Schifano’s monochromes. The second will be held on Thursday, Dec. 15, at 7 p.m., with Caterina Riva, artistic director of MACTE in Termoli.

For info: https://www.comune.lissone.mb.it/museo-arte-contemporanea

Hours: Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Thursday from 4 to 11 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon and 3 to 7 p.m.

Image: Domenico Antonio Mancini, N 0. © Domenico Antonio Mancini

At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone, a site-specific installation by Domenico Antonio Mancini in dialogue with Schifano

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