Banksy and the others: street art on display at Desenzano del Garda Castle

The exhibition Banksy is Who Banksy Does! An unconventional Street Art Exhibition, hosted at the Desenzano del Garda Castle and curated by Michele Ciolino and Matteo Vanzan, scheduled from April 10 to July 17. Organized by theDesenzano del Garda City Council Culture Department and produced byVicenza-based agency MV Eventi and supported by media partner Arte In, the Banksy is Who Banksy Does! An unconventional Street Art Exhibition will feature not only the celebrated Bristol artist, but also some of the major players in the international Street Art scene such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Obey, Space Invader, Ron English, Anthony Lister, Mason Storm, Mark Dean Veca, Martin Whatson, Donald Baechler, Paul Kostabi, D*Face, KayOne, MR. Wany, Sandra Chevrier, Icy and sot, Hama Woods, Vhils, Ben Eine, Solomostry, Thetan One, Slog 175, Skaione, Cizerocentodieci, Evyrein. About 50 works from private Italian collections and from the artists themselves in an alternation of works on canvas, wood, paper, sculpture, signed silkscreens, posters and memorabilia selected after more than two years of research.

With ever-changing content, ever-changing forms, Street Art is both alternative and mainstream and has become, at least since the 1980s, an institutionalized language precisely because of an art system that engulfs everything. New York’s most renowned galleries began to take an interest in those who, as yet, were not considered artists, but who soon, and thanks to systems of cultural promotion, became stars in their own right, primarily Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The Bristol artist represents the tip of an iceberg whose origins began in the subways of the United States in the first half of the 1960s and expanded more and more in the mid-1970s. It was thanks to the student and social protests of ’68 that the birth of that counterculture was sanctioned, a symptom of the renewal of styles, languages and forms of expression from Post-Minimalism to Street Art. That carved on the walls is a necessary message to express one’s dissent, to reappropriate those spaces, defined as non-places, whose genuineness does not have to endure the constraints of official circuits.Thus was born a generational chorus that, speaking directly to the public, brings art back to a new dimension of meaning: it creates it without ever being subjected to it. The Desenzano exhibition intends to retrace this history.

Councillor for Cultural Policies, Francesca Cerini, declares that “to be able to host within the walls of our Medieval Castle an exhibition of this caliber is an honor and a burden for me. The works of Banksy and international Street Art that will be exhibited in the review that will last more than three months, represent that direct and unfiltered message that was still missing in our territory: a profound and often disturbing, but universal message that will be able to attract a diverse audience. Thanks are in order for, Matteo Vanzan and Michele Ciolino, who made it possible to realize and organize this exhibition safely.”

“The exhibition,” explains Matteo Vanzan of MV Eventi, “is structured to be a reflection on the Banksy phenomenon, rather than being a Banksy exhibition. We want to ask the visitor a series of questions not only through the works on display, but especially along an educational and emotional path made of films, blow-ups and critical texts. Street Art is indomitable, fascinating, mysterious and in many ways still shrouded in mystery. It is art without borders and extended to every corner of the planet to gather the voices of a humanity in continuous expressive emergence. This exhibition wants to ask, today, what Street Art is: where it was born, who are its main protagonists who have come to international prominence and what is today the power of the wall, a concrete and tangible support on which artists from all over the planet weave social messages that reach us with unprecedented force. The time of the metropolitan world so dear to Taki 183 seems to be over, but not that of the underground world and alternative circuits. Like painting in good cool, wall works today take on an allegorical meaning that must be contextualized with contemporary society without ever forgetting that, as Banksy reminds us, invisibility is a superpower.”

Also, from June 4 to July 3, 2022, the Gian Battista Bosio Civic Gallery will present Alethéia: the search for truth through knowledge, a cross-disciplinary exhibition that will feature the works of seven contemporary artists: Guido Airoldi, Angelo Alessandrini, Giorgio Dalla Costa, Daniele Nalin, Manlio Onorato, Donatella Pasin and Maurizio Taioli. The works of these artists represent a cross-section of Italian painting that, from the ecstasy of abstract expressionism to the silences of psychic introspection, lead us to reflect on the deeper meaning of being an artist today. The works of the selected artists have been exhibited in Italian and foreign museums of renowned cultural importance, such as the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, and the Galleria d’arte moderna in Turin, and, in the Desenzano del Garda event, they will present works of painting and sculpture.

The exhibition Banksy is Who Banksy Does! An unconventional Street Art Exhibition can be visited until July 17, 2022.

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Ticket price: full 10 euros, reduced 8 euros, free under 10 years old. Guided tour at a cost of 3 euros per person (minimum group of 20 people). For all information you can email cultura@comune.desenzano.brescia.it or desenzanocastello@gmail.com.

Banksy and the others: street art on display at Desenzano del Garda Castle

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