An Idea of Beauty, on view at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS) at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, sets out to explore the work of eight contemporary international artists – Vanessa Beecroft, Chiara Camoni, Andreas Gefeller, Alicja Kwade, Jean-Luc Mylayne, Isabel Rocamora, Anri Sala and Wilhelm Sasnal – and will encourage visitors to reconsider the concept of beauty and to question not only the ‘need’ for it but also its function, value and purpose.

Today’s world is heir to an historical and philosophical process that has separated art from beauty, in the sense of a world vision incapable of expressing the complexity and inconsistency of the modern era. At the same time, the term ‘beauty’ in daily use has become more trivialised and debased, and is often used as a synonym for appreciation (like/don't like) or as the mark of a hedonistic and superficial approach typical of today's trend towards extreme aestheticisation.

In order to rediscover an idea of beauty, we need to adopt a different approach to our sense of reality, to our search for a value, a spiritual moment or to explore an intellectual intuition in greater depth. Thus beauty arises anew from our ability to look at it differently, to grasp and recognise it even in a mundane object, moment or gesture.

Visitors to the exhibition will be confronted with works of art soliciting their physical and emotional participation. Through their work the artists seek to highlight the subjectivity with which a person views art, triggering individual responses that can become a tool for forging new connections with other people and with the world at large. On the one hand, they address and revisit such traditional artistic techniques and genres as the themes of landscape and the human figure while, on the other, it is almost as though they are attempting to listen to nature, capturing its moments and its fragments, or reflecting on the power of beauty in its social dimension or in the power to transform that it exercises on each and every one of us.

The work of a master of contemporary painting such as Wilhelm Sasnal (Poland, 1972) testifies to an artistic output focusing on the value of the painted image. Almost as though he were seeking to be a painter of historical pictures in the contemporary world, Sasnal addresses strongly heterogeneous themes and content ranging from intimate images pregnant with the emotional quality of his family life, to depictions and compositions of abstract nature, and the development of subject matter and models drawn from art history and from the modern mass media.

Chiara Camoni (Italy, 1974) offers a reflection on our ability to discover beauty through ‘encounters’ with everyday people and things. Her video-installation entitled Mefite relates the experience of the Ansanto Valley, a place of death and beauty, an environment as atmospheric and alluring as it is death-ridden and destructive. In Mosaico, the artist uses marble offcuts for an installation that becomes a kind of anti-monument in which she pits the ephemeral nature of the human effort against the eternal cycle of nature. Her drawings in the Capolavori and Amanuense series, on the other hand, are the result of her work with her ageing grandmother, Ines Bassanetti. Every day Chiara asks Ines for a different drawing: copies of major works from art history or the transcription of philosophical texts bear witness to the development of an art that becomes a lifestyle, in a process of mutual growth and enrichment.

Man's relationship with nature is also crucial for photographer Jean-Luc Mylayne (France, 1946). The leading players in his works are invariably birds, captured in images that are seemingly spontaneous. In fact, they are the result of a meticulous and erudite study of nature and its rhythms, coupled with an expert construction of points of view and a skilled use of focus. Thus his photographs offer an in-depth philosophical reflection on man's relationship with nature, prompting us to reflect on the eye's ability not only to discover beauty but also to build it.

The often discreet and minimalist work of Alicja Kwade (Germany/Poland, 1979) can subvert gravity, turn stones into jewels, liquefy a solid object or material, hybridise organic and inorganic elements and create unexpected symmetries or consonances. The artist plays with her audience's perception and imagination, seeking to reactivate our gaze and forcing us to rethink our way of looking at reality and to discover the hidden meaning and beauty within it that we may fail to grasp.

In Japan Series, photographer Andreas Gefeller (Germany, 1970) merges digital manipulation with the artistic tradition of Japanese calligraphy. Such ordinary items as lamp posts, street lights or farm plantations are shot from unusual viewpoints and processed in the post-production phase. These photographs force us to rethink our customary relationship with reality, to re-imagine the world we know, discovering ties, images and hidden designs that are potentially always there before our very eyes.

In this exhibition Vanessa Beecroft (Italy, 1969) offers an example of the rich development of her artistic career. She declines the construction of her tableaux vivants, populated with her celebrated reclining female nudes, in a variety of different media: performance art, video art, photography and sculpture. The theme of the female body, echoes of Classical sculpture and the contrast between different moments in time are just some of the elements that come together in a reflection on the relationship between a work or art and its audience and on the expectation of, and search for, beauty in art and in the world.

Isabel Rocamora (United Kingdom/Spain, 1968) addresses the relationship between the body, space and identity in accordance with a personal form of expression taking its cue from performance art. In her video-installation entitled Body of War, the artist creates a choreography based on a hand-to-hand fight between two pairs of British soldiers. The destructuring of the rhythm of their movements, the close-up shots of their bodies or the wide-angle shots of the landscape and the lyrical nature of the soundtrack all involve the spectator in a strongly physical experience which transforms these gestures of mechanical and inhuman violence into a sublime dance.

The work of Anri Sala (Albania, 1974) explores social, cultural and political issues found in contemporary society, often setting out from individual points of view to create symbols or narratives that take on a collective value. His video Dammi i colori, which is also part of the Tate Modern collection in London, records the transformation of the city of Tirana in the wake of an initiative promoted by artist Edi Rama, who became mayor of the Albanian capital in 2000. The artist and mayor became the proponent of a controversial rebellion made of colours and vitality with which to counter the city's grey social and urban decay. Thus Sala prompts us to reflect on the real or utopian strength of art in creating a collective and social beauty capable of transforming the daily life of an entire community.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published in Italian and English by Mandragora, with essays by Franziska Nori (Director of the CCCS), Elaine Scarry (Professor of Aesthetics, Harvard University), James Hillman (psychoanalyst and philosopher) and Gianluca Garelli (Professor of Aesthetics, Florence University).

An Idea of Beauty will show concurrently with the exhibition The Springtime of the Renaissance. Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400-1460 at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, from 23 March to 18 August 2013.

Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS)
Palazzo Strozzi
Florence 50123 Italy
Ph. +39 055 2645155
www.strozzina.org
www.palazzostrozzi.org

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 to 20.00
Thursday 10.00 to 23.00
Monday closed

Admission
(ticket valid one month): € 5.00
€ 4.00 concessions (university students and other concessions)
€ 3.00 schools
Thursday, admission free from 18.00 to 23.00
Combined ticket with The Springtime of the Renaissance. Sculpture and the Arts in Florence; 1400-1460: € 12.50; concessions € 10.00; schools € 5.00