The Terna Award aims at becoming a launching platform for artists and new projects. This is what Gianluca Marziani believes, curator of the event’s second consecutive year. Among the novelties this year: a network of gallery owners, scholarships for the winners and international partnerships with the objective of strengthening visibility and the strength of the award, offering young talents the foundations for a solid professional path.
The Terna 01 award received wide consensus from both critics and the public. Which are the novelties of the second edition?
We tried to maintain a strong sense of continuity between the Award’s first and the second edition, changing some aspects that could be improved and confirming what we believed had worked successfully. We are particularly strengthening the activity before and after the actual contest, proposing, for example, scholarships and international partnerships. The term Award is a successful logo, but it actually includes an entire flow of ideas that rotate around the project. The contest is only one of the aspects of this and it distinguishes us from other awards that in Italy are usually more focused on the roots of the contest. The Terna Award has an institutional and communication approach that is very solid. We intend for it to become a platform that keeps growing a driving force, and engine that sparks off new projects. A Terna platform. Regarding our team, this year I will also be working with Cristiana Collu, director of the MAN museum in Nuoro, who will join me on the Award’s curatorial aspects. This year, Francesco Cascino will also curate relations with the galleries within a dedicated project. We will try, in fact, to give an increasingly important space and dynamic aspect to the role of the gallery owner within the Award itself, without any conflicts of interest, but creating a productive and informative involvement as well as a network that can benefit the artists and the operators in this field. The Jury has also been changed completely, while still maintaining its diversity. This time we have also involved film celebrities, collectors, architects, a host of categories that represent contemporary culture. The objective is to strengthen the visibility and strength of the Award that already in its last edition was recognized as being one of the most important awards in the sector. We intend to acquire increasing credibility, also improving the consent from the artists in general. I expect we will have big names in the Terawatt category and will find among the participants the best our national artistic scene has to offer. We intend to become a point of reference for young artists so that they will consider this Award as a real and virtual space that not only creates inspiration for contests, but also projects. It is no coincidence that we will be exhibiting the winning artworks of last year’s Award at the Chelsea Museum in New York.
“Connectivity - NY” is already seen as a major challenge. What are your expectations as the curator of the initiative?
It is our intention to constructively open a dialogue with the foreign authorities, giving artists the possibility to emerge and to see New York, even in its most organic circuits. We will be taking the 16 artists that had already exhibited at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Roma, to the galleries we have selected, introducing them to directors, art advisors and to other representatives of the art world. In addition to exhibiting the artworks at the Chelsea Museum, we are also giving artists the practical possibility of being discovered personally and of demonstrating their artworks. Today we wish to express an Italian value abroad, but in the years to come, “Connectivity” aims at being a connection point, as the word signifies, with other important artistic institutes and initiatives that provide artists with new possibilities such as scholarships, already a reality included in the next edition of the Award.
What did the artists you selected for the Terna 01 Award have compared to the other participants?
To be an outstanding talent is not what counts, seen as an exclusive and selection aspect owing to its nature, but the average quality of an Award: and the average quality of the Terna 01 Award was very good. We can say that the Award offered an excursus of our country: we received some beautiful and ugly artworks, but in the middle there was a large segment that was more than satisfactory. In general, I noticed a great variety of proposals, from those that were qualitatively low to those that were of very high quality. This has always been the case in art and this is how it should be. The selection was made rigorously, based on a series of principles: the quality of the artworks, not only aesthetic, but also conceptual, an artwork’s adaptability to the spirit of the times, the capability of speaking a universal language, pertinence to the theme and its interpretation. Based on these principles, the selection becomes very difficult. You can expect banality, but even works that go beyond one’s expectations as was the case for some of the winners who while being unknown, we still selected looking at the value of their work, the statement and what the artist was presenting that moment. We discovered some wonderful novelties. This explains the horizontal aspect of the Award, namely, allowing everyone the possibility of expressing themselves. In the case of the Terawatt category, instead, we invite the famous artists based on their CVs, we rigorously select them based on the curator’s objective criteria. Italy is a competitive creative scenario, in general of excellent value. If there are any failings, they are due to the art system: flaws in managing financial support, in the quality of the authorities regarding their focus and attention to contemporary art which is still lacking. Greater quality management and selection are needed, a stronger system between operators and galleries and a greater concentration of energy.
What is required today for a young artist to emerge?
The young artist today lives in a strange dimension. He is very spoiled by a system where business prevails and is very strong, as is the media pressure. He thinks that today everything is easy and immediate. In reality, instead, an artist must understand the importance of concentration, of method and resistance aiming at interior qualities and at expressive language. The young artist must understand that art is not a glamorous game, but an interior mechanism that can also have glamorous, social and financial sides to it, but these must not be the artist’s primary objective. It is the same for an author, the objective is not to win the Nobel prize, but to write a great book. The objective is to create meaningful artworks that stay. And perhaps a great artwork might win what it deserves.
2009-09-30
