[responsive] [/responsive] [tabgroup][tab title=”PRESENTATION”]Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival presents the first edition of VISIO – Residency Program, a short-term residency for artists working with moving images (Florence, 3 – 16 November 2014).
The VISIO Residency Program is the first of a series of projects that will involve former participants of VISIO European Workshop on Artists’ Moving Images, the Workshop for young artists organized every year by Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival.
The selection committee composed by Leonardo Bigazzi, VISIO project curator, Silvia Lucchesi, director Lo Schermo dell’Arte and Domenico Montano, patron of the VISIO Residency Program and owner of the Restaurant Alle Murate, have invited for this first edition of the program the French artist Jean-Baptiste Maitre, selected from a shortlist of six participants in the previous editions of the VISIO.
The selected artist is invited for two weeks in Florence and commissioned a site-specific work for the entrance space of the Palazzo dell’Arte dei Giudici e Notai, a 14th century building located in the city centre. The building, after a carefully conducted restoration, is today both a Museum and the “home” of the Restaurant Alle Murate.
Beside this new commission, supported with a production grant of 2000 euro, a single-channel video of the artist will be screened in the cellar of the building, where a roman archaeological site, dating back to the Ist century, has been discovered during the restoration. The works will be presented during a reception on the opening night of Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival and will be on view for one month. During the Residency the artist will also have the possibility to participate to several screenings, seminars and meetings of the VISIO Workshop and to follow the Festival official program. Individual meetings with curators and other professionals will also be scheduled in order to further develop the artist’s professional network.
VISIO – Residency Program is a project curated by Leonardo Bigazzi and it is possible thanks to the passion of Domenico Montano and the generous support of Ristorante Alle Murate.
[/tab]
[tab title=”SPACE”]The Palazzo dell’Arte dei Giudici e Notai (Guild of Judges and Notaries), was built in the first half of the 14th century next to an old tower dating back to the 11th century that was included in the structure of the building. The Palazzo contains a very important cycle of frescos, with the centre of the vaulted ceiling covered with a magnificent circular representation of the medieval Florence surrounded by its walls, the Arno river and the crests of the commune of Florence, the fleurs-de-lis, the Guelph eagle and the cross. Other frescoes highlight Florence’s humanists and poets such as the earliest confirmed portraits of Dante and Boccaccio as well as a portrait of Francesco Petrarca.
In the cellar, archaeological excavations have discovered structures dated from the 1st to the 11th century.
The building, after a carefully conducted restoration, is today both a Museum and the “home” of the Restaurant Alle Murate.
More information can be found at:
Palazzo dell’Arte dei Giudici e Notai
Ristorante Alle Murate
[/tab]
[tab title=”ARTIST”]Jean-Baptiste Maitre (1978, France), works in Paris and Amsterdam.
Maitre develops works creating relationships between painting, cinema and sculpture in order to reinvent the way audiences gain access to information.
His recent production constitute the attempt of the artist to create a different cinema as a tool to meditate on early XXIth century public events, such as the looting of the Iraq Museum of Baghdad on april 9th 2003. Maitre’s meditative cinema technique is inspired by 1960s filmmaker Paul Sharit’s logic of frozen film frames, and 1940s film maker Len Lye’s aesthetic. Abstract patterns are created through chance based brushstrokes compositions as well as patterns inspired by industrial gear wheels (Chevron Patterns) and the representation of circles in Buddhist culture.
Recent shows include It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it, Manifesta Foundation, Amsterdam; CODEX, Wattis Institute for contemporary Arts, San Francisco; Stripe Paintings, La Salle De Bain art center, Lyon; This is what I meant, P/////AKT, Amsterdam; and Post-Sculpture with Bruce McClean, Galerie 1m3, Lausanne.
[/tab]
[/tabgroup]