Dart – Chiostro del Bramante presents CRAZY: Madness in Contemporary Art
02.19.2022 – 01-08-2023

Curated by Danilo Eccher

21 international artists, more than 11 new site-specific installations: for the first time the works of art will invade the interior and exterior spaces of the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome, because madness can have no limits.

A perception of the world is the first sign of instability, the first contact between external reality and the brain, between physical truth and poetic creativity, between laws of optics and neurological disorders.

The 21 artists called to participate are part of this madness.

Carlos Amorales, Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir / Shoplifter, Massimo Bartolini, Gianni Colombo, Petah Coyne, Ian Davenport, Janet Echelman, Fallen Fruit / David Allen Burns and Austin Young, Lucio Fontana, Anne Hardy, Thomas Hirschhorn, Alfredo Jaar, Alfredo Pirri, Gianni Politi, Tobias Rehberger, Anri Sala, Yinka Shonibare, Sissi, Max Streicher, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu.

Madness, like art, refuses established patterns, escapes from any rigid framework, rebels against constraints, so also does Crazy, the project from Dart – Chiostro del Bramante, curated by Danilo Eccher. No ordinary and predictable path in favor of a creative explosion capable of expanding, like Ian Davenport’s pigment flowing on the stairs, and of modifying the spatial perception, like Gianni Colombo’s environment (1970). A violent shockwave that invades every accessible room, mixing and ensuring strong expressive leaps between the works, from the neon of Alfredo Jaar, also visible from the outside, to the totally immersive colors of Fallen Fruit / David Allen Burns and Austin Young. A complex, subjective, oblique narration; an inclusive and participatory atmosphere; a distribution of artworks and isolated and autonomous spaces in all available places, even invading those usually excluded from the museum pathway.

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Love is many things.

Love is a spectrum.

Love is a condition that is ever-changing.

Love is a truth.

Love is a trap.

Like all of the colors of the world – love is universal, it is hard to describe and yet we all understand it without disagreement. LOVE IS: Like blue. And like red. Green and yellow. And bright orange and deep violet. All at the same time. We assign understanding without thinking about relationships in love and also we determine ideas of beauty and the sublime by using all of the colors of the world as its index. Universally, we agree about these nuanced meanings often without compromise or debate. And yet, there is function to the colors of the world. Functions that are more than about beauty. Beauty is a subjective interpretation that is continually evaluated in all places, in all emotional spaces, and in absolute real-time — simultaneously about every single thing in the entire world. The visual spectrum that represents all things of shape and form also distinguishes the differences of what is banal and what is extraordinary. And above all in exploring the meanings of our world. We all know that there are some conditions about human nature that can not be quite understood in one lifetime. The ideas that ‘love is everlasting’ and that ‘beauty is the truth’. And therefore, it’s complicated.

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“Rome is amazing. Cracked our brains open, lit our souls on fire, and broke our hearts on the first day. Without trying. Damn.” That was the social media post that started the project. We walked 80 kilometers in one week. We explored every Cathedral we passed by. We listen to the sounds of the city at all times of day. We smelled the air. We asked questions. We took hundreds of photographs. We looked carefully for the things that repeat and we paid attention to things that stand out. We returned repeatedly to buildings, parks, piazzas, palazzos, historic villas, and small bistros, cafes, and bars. Over and over following the rhythms of the city. We discovered the energy that invisibility connects the public spaces and emulsifies historic ancient prescient symbolic intuitive transcendent meanings of time and space. These transparent songs of the city can be heard at all times of day and night. The follies of life are effervescent and free flowing like the eternal springs from fountains that haven’t stopped for a thousand years.

It would be madness to ignore the beauty around you. The grand beauty. The crazy beauty. The exquisite ecstasy of the moment. That is always present. Everywhere. Right now. Bellezza e Follia.