The sixth edition of flashback starts in Turin. Works include a Magdalene by Orazio Gentileschi for whom Artemisia may have posed

The sixth edition of flashback in Turin is scheduled from November 1 to 4, 2018: confirmed again for this year, after the record edition of 2017, the venue in the central foyer of Pala Alpitour. This year, flashback, directed by Stefania Poddighe and Ginevra Pucci, decided to involve exhibitors and audience in a reflection that starts from The Shores of Another Sea, the science fiction book by Chad Oliver, writer and anthropologist. The science fiction story takes place in Africa, where the author constructs a situation in which relationships between different worlds are constantly being redefined, a story that leads toward a dialogue between different forms of civilization, between different worlds, between different species.Around this reflection moves the flashback program, which begins immediately with this year’s novelty: the sixth edition in fact does not only “wear” the color of 2018, a rarefied aquamarine, but is described by a work specially created by artist Francesco Valeri. The artist, after having taken part in the “condominium-opera viva” project in Via Cuneo 5bis in the Aurora neighborhood (a project created with the intention of emphasizing the social, cultural and temporal mixité of Turin’s suburbs), returns the elsewhere to the center, brings back to the exhibition spaces the experience of mixing and diversity that animates the encounter between different cultures. At the fair, Francesco Valeri creates, live, a 60-square-meter wall painting that embraces the event, catapulting it into a dimension beyond time. For the artist, the role and function of art is to bypass and cross spatiotemporal dimensions, to intersect and connect levels, and to reactivate the “mechanism of thought.” Particularly fitting reasoning for an event that has its particularity in the display of ancient works and works of today according to the assumption that all art is contemporary.

The presence of important ancient and modern art galleries is confirmed again this year. Some previews of the 2018 edition of flashback: the Giamblanco Gallery presents a new selection of important paintings from the 17th and 19th centuries, among which the unpublished canvas by Mattia Preti (Taverna, 1613 - Valletta, 1699) depicting St. James the Greater and attributable to the artist’s Roman period, around the fourth decade of the 17th century, when the artist dwelt on the careful study of the works of Caravaggio and his heirs, deserves special attention. Also under the banner of rarity, the Flavio Pozzallo gallery presents the polychrome terracotta with a Madonna of Milk and Angels, which, besides being an extremely original work, is one of the earliest attestations in the use of the “new” terracotta technique in Lombard sculpture in the second quarter of the 15th century. The same gallery, together with Benappi Arte antica e moderna, presents a work of extreme importance for the history of Vercelli and Piedmontese art: a double-sided painting by Eleazaro Oldoni (Vercelli, news from 1478 to 1517) until now catalogued as anonymous. Finally, among the galleries of ancient art of note, Maison d’Art in Monte Carlo, an important new entry with a Mary Magdalene by Orazio Gentileschi (Pisa, 1563 - London, 1639), having as its exceptional model presumably his daughter Artemisia (Rome, 1593 - Naples 1654), datable to the early decades of the 1600s, “a living work” defined by seventeenth-century art historian Francesco Scannelli, a work “which could not prove more true flesh when it was alive.”

The modern, on the other hand, is excellently represented by the Galleria dello Scudo with Arturo Martini ’s (Treviso, 1889 - Milan, 1947) majestic Maternity in Finale stone, absent from exhibitions since 1961 and, for those in search of curiosities, weighing 500 kg. Finally, a special focus on works dedicated to the sea and travel, thus particularly akin to the 2018 flashback project, is highlighted in both the important project of Galleria Russo, which places women’s faces by Medardo Rosso (Turin, 1858 - Milan, 1928) and Umberto Boccioni (Reggio Calabria, 1882 - Verona, 1916) with Arturo Martini’sUragano, a terracotta sculpture depicting a sailor struggling with the fury of the sea, and by that of the Mazzoleni Gallery: a sensational Untitled oil painting by Alberto Savinio (Athens, 1891 - Rome, 1952) from 1930 that shows us landing on The Shores of Another Sea. Travel, and in particular the myth of the Argonauts, is indeed a theme dear to Savinio: 50 heroes under the leadership of Jason make an adventurous journey aboard the ship Argo in search of the Golden Fleece, thus discovering new worlds and new opportunities.

Confirming flashback’s contemporary commitment at the Pala Alpitour, the various sections will also be developed: exhibition, lab, sound, storytelling, talk, video and the special project Opera Viva, the six posters of the urban art project conceived by Alessandro Bulgini and curated by Christian Caliandro that marked the countdown to the fair starting in May. Three of the six works on display in the Piazza Bottesini rotunda in Barriera di Milano are by artists selected by the jury of the Open Call launched at the beginning of the year, composed of Bulgini and Caliandro themselves and Umberto Allemandi, Pietro Gaglianò, Luigi Ratclif and Roxy in the Box. In addition to the works therefore by Irene Pittatore, Virginia Zanetti and Francesca Sandroni, the works by Laboratorio Saccardi, Lucia Veronesi and the concluding one by Alessandro Bulgini are also a reflection on diversity and mixing, on what and how art can positively intervene in this context.

There will be two flashback exhibitions this year: the giant wall painting by Francesco Valeri, created, as anticipated, live during the days of the fair, and a project by Gian Enzo Sperone with three works by Tony Matelli that erase reality and open an imaginary world located in a faraway place.The sixth edition of flashback intends to confirm all the intentions with which the fair was founded and has grown; in fact, the constant work of the directors has “convinced and involved more and more gallerists,” reads the event’s presentation, “offering the public a different view on the history of art, but also on the history of today; a more versatile and less rigid approach that has allowed an ever-growing public to enjoy works of art no longer perceived as distant from itself - for temporal or cultural reasons - but finally ’lived’ as a concrete experience in the here and now. This syncretism is what has allowed flashback to grow exponentially over the years and is what distinguishes a project, born under the banner of a cultural challenge that is renewed annually and inspired by life. And since this year’s theme is diversity, it will therefore be interesting to cross together The Shores of Another Sea connecting in depth different time zones: the ancient, the modern and the contemporary in its making.”

“In the days in which Turin becomes the protagonist of contemporary art dimensions,” says Antonella Parigi, councillor for Culture and Tourism of the Piedmont Region, “flashback All art is contemporary stands out for its intelligently calibrated mix between culture and the market and, with a formula that is now well-established, will certainly know how to strengthen the success of past editions, confirming art as one of the strategic axes around which the cultural offer of Turin and Piedmont moves.A context within which the event goes to complete the rich proposal of the period, thanks to the original look it offers on a more traditional artistic sector but which continues to be dynamic and frequented.” So too does the City of Turin, through the words of Councillor for Culture Francesca Leon: “Flashback, a high-quality event among the art fairs that our city hosts, is back, and traces again this year - together with the guest galleries, artists and their projects - a path on art through the ancient, the modern and the contemporary. The event continues to act as an amplifier for art and urban art projects throughout the year that prompt reflection, through art, on the themes of suburbia and diversity in the encounter of different cultures and how it is an important vehicle for dialogue and glue between the community, artists and the territory.I thank the organization for the great work of dissemination and involvement of a public that, thanks to the fair and its work throughout the year, can approach art in a more immediate way starting from the places where they live their daily lives.”

Hours to visit flashback: from Thursday, Nov. 1 to Sunday, Nov. 4 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tickets: full 10 euros, reduced 8 euros (reductions provided by law), reduced 5 euros (for Abbonamento Torino Musei, Abbonamento Musei Lombardia Milano, Torino + Piemonte Contemporary Card, Touring Club Card) free Thursday, Nov. 1 for Abbonamento Torino Musei, Abbonamento Musei Lombardia Milano, Torino + Piemonte Contemporary Card, Touring Club Card, mef, and free as provided by law. For more information you can visit the flashback website. Finestre Sull’Arte is in-kind partner of flashback.

Pictured: Gentileschi’s Magdalene brought to you by Maison d’Art.

The sixth edition of flashback starts in Turin. Works include a Magdalene by Orazio Gentileschi for whom Artemisia may have posed

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