CONTEMPORARY BESTIARY.
Between art and science, Italian artists from the ACACIA collection

From May 31st to October 24th 2013
Natural History Museum, Venice

The relationship between art and science and between art and nature are among the oldest and most indissoluble. The animal and plant world, the secrets of microscopic life and macroscopic forms, the aspects of animate and inanimate, the finite and infinite have all been subjects for comparison and stimulus, the settings for investigation into artistic expression since antiquity.

Contemporary artists have continued to compare and draw inspiration from them, reflecting and wondering at the reality emerging not only from a simple vision of nature, but also from scientific investigation leading to new knowledge, awareness and questions.

For the 2013 edition of the Venice Biennale, contemporary art will enter the Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia, invited to create a dialogue with the museum’s holdings in an alternation of grand effect and microscopic surprise based on formal analogy and similarity of content.

Aside from the natural items, established Italian and international artists will be present: Maurizo Cattelan and his famous Musicanti di Brema with their savage music, Vanessa Beecroft whose performances are veritable tableaux vivants, Paola Pivi, Francesco Vezzoli, Rosa Barba, Lara Favaretto, Luca Trevisani, Adrian paci, Roberto Cuoghi, Nico Vascellari, Francesco Gennari, Marcella Vanzo, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Marzia Migliora, Mario Airò, Gianni Caravaggio.

After the great success of its Milanese exhibition, in Venice ACACIA will be offering a selection of about 30 works of art, which will create an ironic and surprising dialogue with the natural collections of Venice’s natural history museum.Every expressive form in the visual arts will be represented here, from the most traditional – painting and sculpture – to photography and the more contemporary video and installation. The common denominator linking all the artists on show is the refusal to consider art as a formal exercise, an empty and purely self-referential exercise.

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In collaboration with ACACIA Associazione Amici Arte Contemporanea Italiana
Scientific coordination Gabriella Belli
Curated by Gemma De Angelis Testa, Giorgio Verzotti
General coordination Luca Mizzan Mauro Bon