The exhibition presents 5 important video installations of young Italian artists for the first time in a city museum in Oslo. It will be shown in the wide open spaces of the Stenerson Museum, which has allotted a whole floor to the show. The curators, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Lorella Scacco, have selected some of the best recent video installations by Italian artists who work on the international scene. The artists are Elisabetta Benassi, Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio, Rä Di Martino, Vedovamazzei and ZimmerFrei.
Elisabetta Benassi presents the video The Dark Horse of the Festival Year (2006), which the artist created in two disused buildings in Palermo (Sicily). Her research is always full of allegories and references to the twentieth-century cultural and artistic tradition and to controversial contemporary subjects. She uses videos and installations as devices for evoking strong emotional reactions and a different moral focus in the spectator.
Rä Di Martino introduces to the Norwegian public The Red Shoes (2007), a short, poetic video inspired by cinematography. The artist prefers the use of the video through a cinematic language: she works with professional actors and constructs small stories, with paradoxical implications, close to the aesthetics of the independent cinema.
Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio presents, for the first time abroad, the video Tableaux Vivant (2007), which shows a group of martial arts athletes interacting with the visitors to a museum. In some sequences the wrestlers seem to become plastic sculptures in the context of the museum, while expressing anger and protest towards the outside world.
Vedovamazzei is an artistic duo made up of Stella Scala and Simeone Crispino. Their research centres on the need to look beyond appearances at the iconographical origins and symbolic meaning of objects, while the absurd aspect of the works prompts the viewer to reflect on the senseless rigidity of conventions. The two artists will presents the film Route 66 entirely shot with a mobile phone.
ZimmerFrei is a trio comprising Anna de Manincor, Anna Rispoli and Massimo Carozzi, which brings to the visual arts experiences deriving from the cinema, music and the theatre. They show the video Teenage Lightning (2006), a road movie reduced to essentials, where the journey consists in nothing more than the road and the landscape passing by outside the windows.
The exhibition is supported and promoted by the Stenersen Museum and the Italian Institute of Culture in Oslo, under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The catalogue, published by Produzioni Nero, will include photographs of the exhibition, a text by the curators and an introduction by Sergio Scapin, Director of the Italian Institute of Culture.

THE STENERSEN MUSEUM

The Stenersen Museum is located in the heart of the capital and is part of the City of Oslo’s Art Collections. It houses three private art collections, which were donated to the city by the Rolf E. Stenersen Collection, the Amaldus Nielsen Collection and the Ludvig O. Ravensberg Collection. The museum’s exhibition space totals about 1800 square metres, spread over three floors. The Museum organises exhibitions of Norwegian and international art, specialising mainly in the contemporary period.
Address:
The Stenersen Museum
PO Box 1965 Vika
N-0125 Oslo Norway
Phone +47 23 49 36 00 Fax +47 23 49 36 10
Web www.stenersen.museum.no
The Museum’s address is:
Munkedamsveien 15
The main entrance is from the Concert Hall terrace.
Getting here:
About 5 minutes’ walk from the National Theatre, Oslo Town Hall or Aker Brygge.
Gallery hours:
Daily 11–17, Tuesdays and Thursdays 11–19; closed on Mondays.

ARTISTS

ELISABETTA BENASSI was born in 1966 in Rome, where she lives and works. Selected solo exhibitions: 2007- Site Specific #2, Dopo L’uragano Jorge, Museo Man, Nuoro; 2006 – “3” Magazzino d’Arte Moderna, Rome; 2004 – MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome;
Selected Group Exhibitions: 2007- annisettanta il decennio lungo del secolo breve, Triennale di Milano, Milan; APT, International Video Art Exhibition, Today Art Museum, Peking; Luce di pietra, Palazzo Farnese, Rome; 2006 – Highlights from the KunstFilmBiennale Köln in Berlin, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; 2005- Prospectif Cinéma, Musèe National d’Art Moderne Centre George Pompidou, Paris ; 2004- I nuovi mostri: Una storia italiana, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, Venice; 2003- I Moderni/The Moderns, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli . 2002- Manifesta 4, Frankfurt am Main 2001- II Berlin Biennale, Berlin; 2000- Special Projects, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre, New York; Unreal Presence, SMART Project Space, Amsterdam.

LORENZO SCOTTO DI LUZIO was born in 1972 in Pozzuoli, Naples. He lives and works in Berlin.
Selected solo exhibitions: 2007 – MADRE, Museo d’Arte Donna Regina, Naples; 2004- Mondo Fantastico, Galleria Fonti, Naples; 2003 – Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio interpreta Luigi Tenco, Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea, Milan; 2001- Cool Memories, Galleria T293, Naples; 2000 – Understatement, ES, Turin; Istanteternane, Jangva Gallery, Helsinki. Selected Group Exhibitions: 2007- Ironia domestica, Museion, Bolzano; 2006 – Italy Made in Art: now – Arti contemporanee e Disegno industriale, Museum of Contemporary Art di Shanghai, Cina; Fatto in casa, Castel San Pietro, Bologna; Filmen Opera, Castel San Elmo, Napoli; 2005 – La dolce crisi, Villa Manin, Codroipo, Udine; 2004 – Unimovie 8, moving image container, MuseoLab ex-manifattura tabacchi, Città Sant’Angelo, Pescara; 2003 – Assenze/Presenze. Una nuova generazione di artisti italiani, Le Botanique, Bruxelles.

RÄ DI MARTINO – Born in 1975, Rome. Studied and worked in London, 1997-2004. Lives and works in New York.
Solo exhibitions: Monitor Gallery , Rome (2005 and 2003). Selected group exhibitions: 2007 – Mondo Fantastico, PS1, New York; The world is yours, Oliver Kamm, New York; 52nd Venice Biennale, Slovenian Pavillion, Venice; Carte Blanche, Elizabeth Dee Gallery; TV Dinners, LMACK projects, New York; DB Collection Italy, Deutsche Bank, Milan; 2006 – Setting The Scene, MACRO & Discoteca di Stato, Rome; The Mind/Body Problem, Artists Space, New York; Busan Biennal, Café2, Busan, Korea; 2005 – T1 TriennaleTorinoTreMusei, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation & Castello di Rivoli, Turin; 2004 – Surely We Will Be Confused, Fondazione Ratti, Como; VideoZone 2°, Intern. l VideoArt Biennal, Tel Aviv; All Tomorrow’s Déjà Vu, Video Mundi Festival, Chicago 2003 – Cosmos Biennale Young Artists of Europe & the Mediterranean, Athens; Beck’s Futures Student Film Award, ICA, London.

VEDOVAMAZZEI Group founded in 1990 by Simeone Crispino, born in 1962, and Maristella Scala, born in 1964; they live and work in Milan.
Selected solo exhibitions: 2007-Raphael The Western/vedovamazzei, Galleria Borghese, Rome; 2006- “Greatest hits vedovamazzei”, MADRE – Museo d’Arte Donna Regina, Naples; Magazzino d’Arte Moderna, Rome; 2004 – Vedovamazzei, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin; 2005-Di Marino Arte Contemporanea, Naples; 2002- Caveau, Palazzo delle Papesse – Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena. Selected Group Exhibitions: 2007- Fit To Print, Gagosian Gallery, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; 2006 Giardino. Luoghi della piccola realtà, PAN – Palazzo della Arti Napoli, Naples; 2004 – Settlements, s’approprier un lieu, Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Metropole, Saint-Etienne; 2002–3eme Biennale de Montreal, Montreal; 2001-Panorama Film & Video: Clash or Jam, KINOmobiel, Museum Gardens, Utrecht.

ZIMMERFREI is a group of artists founded in 1999 and based in Bologna, Italy.Its members are Anna de Manincor (18/08/1972), performer and video artist, Anna Rispoli (20/08/1974), performer and theatre director and Massimo Carozzi (04/08/1967), sound designer.
Selected solo exhibitions: 2007- Memoria Esterna [External Memory], C/O careof, Milan; MAN Museum, Nuoro; 2006 Perchè siamo venuti [why we came], Monitor video&contemporary art, Rome; 2005 Panorama Bologna, Voltone del Podestà, Palazzo Re Enzo, Bologna;2004: Panorama, Monitor video&contemporary art, Rome; 2002: N.K. – Never Keep Souvenirs of a Murder , InterAccess Gallery (Richmond 401), Toronto. Selected Group Exhibitions: 2007- Hallucination, Mass, Seoul, Korea; Almost Cinema, Vooruit Arts Centre, Ghent ; Neverending Cinema/Cinema infinito, Galleria civica di arte contemporanea, Trento; Artesto, Triennale, Milan; 2005 Reaction, [collateral event] 51° Venice Biennale; 2003: Sogni e conflitti, 50° Venice Biennale, Sezione La Zona, Giardini di Castello, Venice.

CURATORS

BARTOLOMEO PIETROMARCHI is an art critic. He has curated numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including Gravità zero at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2001), Subreal at Smart Project Space, Amsterdam (2003), and NowHere Europe at the Venice Biennial (2005) and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2006); he also curated the international project Trans:it. Moving culture through Europe (2003-2005), various locations, and the show Not Afraid of the Dark , Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2007). His publications include Prototipi (with S. Chiodi), 1st ed. 2002; Il luogo (non) comune. Arte, spazio pubblico ed estetica urbana in Europa (in Italian and English) (Barcelona: Actar, 2005) and, with Flaminia Gennari, Immaginare Corviale (Bruno Mondadori, 2006). He has made three documentaries on artists’ interventions in public spaces in Europe and edited the television programme Factory for Sky Cult Network. From 2002 al 2007 he was Secretary General of the Fondazione Adriano Olivetti.

LORELLA SCACCO is an art critic, journalist and independent curator of cultural events. She has a degree in the history of contemporary art and aesthetics and is a member of SIE, the Italian Aesthetics Society. She has curated exhibitions and edited catalogues for contemporary art exhibitions in public and private spaces in Italy and abroad, such as Artext, La Triennale, Milan (2006) and Mobile Journey, at the 52nd Venice Biennial located at the Venice International University, Venice (2007). She contributes to specialized art magazines. She is an expert in the contemporary art of Nordic countries and in new media art. She is the author of Estetica mediale. Da Jean Baudrillard a Derrick de Kerckhove published by Guerini (Milan, 2004).

INFORMATION

• Title: THE HOT SEASON – Italian Art Now
• Artists: Elisabetta Benassi, Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio, Rä Di Martino, Vedovamazzei, ZimmerFrei
• Curators: Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Lorella Scacco
• Location: Stenersen Museum – City Museum for Contemporary Art
  Munkedamsveien 15 N-0125 Oslo – Norway www.stenersen.museum.no
• Opening: 17th of January 2008 Period: 17th of January / 5th of March 2008
• Catalogue: Produzioni Nero, Rome
• Patronage: Italian Institute of Culture in Oslo, Italian Ministry of the Culture
• In collaboration with: Monitor video&contemporary art, Rome The Family, Rome

More resources

• http://www.stenersen.museum.no/en/documents/Italianartnow.pdf