A TRIENNAL ART PROJECT IN FLORENCE: HORIZONS 2003 After a restoration of five years, the Forte di San Giorgio, better known as Forte Belvedere, is finally reopened and given back to the citizenship with a great extension of contemporary art entitled Belvedere dell'Arte/Orizzonti (Horizons). The Fortress, with a poligonale plant designed by Bernardo Buontalenti to defend Florence and the Medici's riches, offers one of the more evocative and spectacular panoramas of the city. The former military building today property of the Municipality of Florence, res-establish a dialogue with the contemporary art already started in 1972 when, for the firt time, the sculptures of Henry Moore took part like archetypal presences to reinterpretate the fascinating skyline of Florence. The extension Belvedere dell'Arte/Orizzonti, first appointment of a triennial project, cured by the critics Achille Bonito Oliva and Sergio Risaliti, search to create a zone of cross-sectional contact between the formal values and the thematics of the Renaissance Art, and the restless requests expressed from the contemporary artist. Dedicated to the American photography and the sculpture, Horizons constitute a polyphonic comparison between different contemporary languages, a point of escape of the imaginary between past and future. The installations and the sculptures placed in the austere elegance of the garden of the Forte Belvedere, seem to engage a risen of challenge to the immobility of the surrounding landscape: we find the reproduction of a Piazza d'Italia by Massimo Bartolini, camouflaged in the atmosphere but raised from earth, a suspended assemblage of scraps of airplane by Nancy Rubins, a metallic spiral of the same measure of the Brunelleschi's Cupola, realized by Mario Merz through the numbers of Fibonacci, and still the poetics sonorous cane field in metal of Marco Bagnoli, the dramatic bronze tree of Giuseppe Penone, an incised circular mirror by Giulio Paolini and the dark shining of the enigmatic marble oval realized by Anish Kapoor. Three imposing vaguely anthropomorhic sculptures of Tony Cragg almost watched the entrance of the Palazzina covered under the ceiling from a frame of phrases written by Maurizio Nannucci with neon lights diffusing a colorful atmosphere (blue and red) that is intensified in the evening. The exhibit also includes DensitySpectrumZone 2.1 by Loris Cecchini and the outdoor installations by Marisa Merz and Timet. Inside the Palazzina the crushed horizon of the America polymorph planet is condensed in the images of the world of Nan Goldin: the diary of a trasgressive and suffering marginal humanity grappling with the sexual ambiguity, drugs, the AIDS. An other artist, Lauren Greenfield, confronts the anxieties and the anguish of young womens often protagonists of self-destructive behaviors. And then the America of the benzine distributors, juke-boxes and the automobiles photographed by Robert Frank, new icons that have taken the place of the wild natural horizons in the collective imaginary. The exhibition also includes the artworks of William Eggleston that, exposing its photocolor at the MOMA of New York in 1976, sanctioned the admission of the photography as an artistic medium. And finally America the forty-five big portraits made by Andres Serrano after the tragedy of September 11th. The exhibit seems to make a step behind into provocation: no more incursions between sacred and profane or catalogues of sexual perversions, but a gallery of personages who intercross themselves in the roads of New York, from the rabbi to the bunny girl, from the policeman to the Chinese cook, from the African clergyman to the bank employee, emblematic or common faces transformed by the artist in powerful silent witnesses. The triennal project of Belvedere dell'Arte, after Horizons has planned Infiniti (Infinites) for the 2004 and Tradimenti (Betrayals) for 2005. Belvedere dell'Arte / Orizzonti Forte Belvedere, Firenze 7 luglio - 26 ottobre 2003 Progetto: Achille Bonito Oliva Curatori: Achille Bonito Oliva, Sergio Risaliti Catalogo SKIRA Ufficio stampa: Susanna Holm, C.S.C. Sigma - Firenze tel. +39 055 2469600 fax +39 055 244145 e-mail: cscsigma@tin.it Ufficio stampa: Ilaria Gianoli tel. fax +39 02 514406 e-mail: ilariagianoli@tin.it

Text by:  Gabriella Masiello  I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. In cooperation with: M.Angeles Fernández Alvarez TOP