CON-TEMPORARY Art Observatorium

CON-TEMPORARY Art Observatorium - EXHIBITION SEASON 2024

Accepted works: videos (moving pictures, performance, etc) and still pictures (photography and all visual arts.)
Venue: CTAO Gallery - Lavagna, Italian Riviera, Northern Italy
Duration: three weeks each group exhibition

CTAO's exhibition season 2024 continues featuring TWO more different thematic group exhibitions of contemporary art:

1) Conceptual Matters - Group exhibition about concepts and meanings
2) Primal Noesis - Group exhibition about primitivism and wisdom

1) >>> Conceptual Matters <<<

Theme: The exhibition aims to offer a panorama on the actual developments and the evolution of Conceptualism, how it is being interpreted by contemporary artists, analysing how the concept is crucial for a work in a society dominated by information.
Somebody may comment that all art has always been conceptual, since a work is born in any case from the author's will of creating it and how; but this consideration can be easily objected if we consider Surrealist Automatism, abstraction, asemic writing and other genres of unconscious expressions that involve the estrangement from conceptualism and reasoning. Therefore, this exhibition focus on the primacy of human conscience: the idea, expressed in a direct way or conveyed by the form.

Tags: idea, concept, representation, expression, principle, aphorism, writing, inscription, illustration, sarcasm, seriousness, exhortation, absolute, pictogram, cartoon, poetry, satire, symbolism, semiotics, thought, logic, lewitt, kosuth, duchamp, arte povera, minimalism, pop, dada, meme, content, objectivity, evidence, reality, model, example, critique, society, scheme, instruction, communication, plan, decision, will, word, activism, analysis, documentation, interdisciplinary, performance, demonstration, obviousness, assumption, theory, form, explanation, description, captions, title, narration, experience, comprehension, question, summary, centrality, importance, value, authority, altruism, etc.

2) >>> Primal Noesis <<<

Theme: An exhibition to figure the possibility of a return to harmony with nature, its cycles and its primal demands, yet keeping knowledge, ethics and virtue. History gave us examples of peaceful primitive civilisations that developed a cognition of cosmos and a morality much more than the current "Homo technologicus" who too often abuses of enormous potentialities in obtuse, flawed, pauperising or aggressive ways.
Dispelling the stereotype whereby a wild way of life would be symptom of abjection or backwardness, the exhibition highlights how intelligence belongs to an inner noble soul and not to the appearance, and that knowledge is searching for the essence of things, so they are often expressed in an unsophisticated but archetypal way.

Tags: conceptual, tribal, sign, symbol, graffiti, primitivism, peace, intelligence, archetype, totem, petroglyph, gnosis, philosophy, respect, naturalism, environment, adjustment, life, wildness, essence, minimalism, frugality, cosmos, knowledge, inspiration, virtue, nobility, civilisation, wisdom, justice, archaeology, antiquity, rurality, rustic, bucolic, country, retro, survival, erudition, raw, naked, simplicity, ingenuity, infantilism, naive, normality, humbleness, synthesis, foundations, spirituality, physicality, dexterity, drawing, expression, needs, imagination, dimension, ecology, economy, polis, conscience, meaning, form, representation, etc.

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