FluxBooks. From the Sixties to the Future. Artists’ books from the Luigi Bonotto Collection

FluxBooks is an exhibition devoted to the artist's books, a collaboration between the Bonotto Foundation and the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation with the intent to revive towards the future one of the most radical and utopian poetics developed in the last century.
In two exhibitions, presenting respectively the artist's books produced within the Fluxus and the work accomplished by the young artists of the Bevilacqua La Masa from the study of these materials, FluxBooks will be held from March 4 to April 26, 2015 in the offices of the Venetian Palzzetto Tito and Galleria di Piazza San Marco.
The numerous aesthetic experiences avvicendatesi during the twentieth century found in the artist book a happy medium for experimentation. Its always easier production, thanks to the spread of print media are relatively inexpensive and easy to use, has led him to be elected, in some areas of poetry, a real topos even in the most advanced of its negation.
Fluxus is undoubtedly one of the more prolific and irreverent transformation of the medium book. In fact, the experiments made by the artists linked to the group organized by George Maciunas have profoundly marked the way to conceive the object book. The evolution evident in his book drastic denial of the object itself, is undoubtedly the election of disparate objects to the rank of the book. Objects that are as enigmatic and completely unreadable if not as closely related to the poetic metaphor developed by the author of the book itself. These are called "books object", a definition that highlights the still difficult assimilation of such a dry location relative to an object always custodian of culture and human memory. The most daring transformation, though perhaps still the least analyzed, they are by graphics that brings forward the intentions of the historical avant-garde of the early twentieth century coming to influence the contemporary production.
FluxBooks: From the Sixties to the Future concretized the third phase of the collaboration between Fondazione Bonotto (Vicenza) and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice) The first phase (compare) has developed between February and May 2014, and has seen the involvement of young artists in residence took the BLM Foundation. Thanks to a series of stays at the Fondazione Bonotto, assignees BLM were able to capture the main elements that underlie the practice of the artist's book and impetus necessary to develop the next phase.
During the second phase (produce) the young artists had the opportunity to design and create works in dialogue / confrontation with books Fluxus collection Luigi Bonotto studied and chosen during the first phase of the project. In this phase, each assignee BLM, using its specific language and in line with its poetic, has created his own work that "regenerates", both aesthetically and both conceptual poetics expressed by some of the major players Fluxus.
The third phase (show) closes this first experience of partnership articulating it in two exhibitions: a historic FluxBooks: From the Sixties ... and a contemporary FluxBooks: ... to the Future. The exhibitions, in two separate locations in the city of Venice, will be connected with video links or web which will tend to restore unity to the different sections. Even the catalog, although in two different autonomous dossiers, will still have a unit distribution to emphasize the continuity of the poetic movement Fluxus, programmatically never extinguished and intended to "flow" over time.

The exhibition FluxBooks be divided into two sections:

FluxBooks: From the Sixties ...

Staged in the Galleria di Piazza San Marco, the exhibition will collect art books produced within Fluxus in a time span of its establishment in the early sixties, until the death of its founder George Maciunas occurred at late seventies. Books will be joined various documents (posters, invitations, photos, videos, etc.) useful for reconstructing the cultural climate of the time.

The exhibition will be divided into five thematic areas.

Book as book, the book is the book in its objectivity but is subject to a radical transformation in content and graphics solutions adopted;
Book as memento, the book as a single document remaining to witness a performance, a happening, an action;
Book as plot, the book intended as canvas, trace, tool to use for a game, a performance, an action;
Book as box, the book as a box of surprises that becomes real box in the series of Fluxkit;
Book as object, the book loses its classical form, its readability to become object.

Exhibited works of Marcel Alocco, Eric Andersen, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Stanley Brouwn, John Cage, Jose? L. Castillejo, Giuseppe Chiari, Philip Corner, Willem De Ridder, Jean Dupuy, Robert Filliou, Albert M. Fine, Henry Flynt, Bici Forbes Hendricks, Ken Friedman, Al Hansen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Juan Hidalgo, Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson, Joe Jones, Allan Kaprow, Milan Kni?z?a?k, Alison Knowls, Arthur Koepcke, Jackson Mac Low, George Maciunas, Walter Marchetti, Jonas Mekas, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Dieter Roth, Takako Saito, Gianni Emilio Simonetti, Daniel Spoerri, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, La Monte Young.
FluxBooks: From the Sixties ...
Exhibition curated by Giorgio Maffei and Patrick Peterlini
 Venue: Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa Gallery in Piazza San Marco San Marco 71c - 30124 Venice

FluxBooks: ... to the Future

Fluxus was an artistic movement that developed in the late fifties and early eighties. His spirit was not to a closed group but an open flow of people into the atmosphere and attitudes of ethical radical changes postwar advanced. One can interpret the spirit of Fluxus as something that describes the transience of life and the constant succession of events, values, places that looks like unstoppable. In this spirit was organized the exhibition of young artists of the Atelier Bevilacqua La Masa who reinterpreted and reinvented artist books historians, identified in the residences Studiio at Fondazione Bonotto.

The collective Anemoi, inspired by a "score" of George Brecht in the artist's book "Water Yam" (1963 - 2002) on the idea of limit as something gradually re-formulated, an object of experimentation and extensions, will create the actions that gradually change the perception of things, taking the limits of the daily exhaustion; Paola Angelini and Joseph Abate dialogue with recipes unusual Yoko Ono in "Grapefruit" (1964 - 2005) on painting; Marko Bjelan?evi? propose an original installation for listening to the music of John Cage, starting from the book "Not wanting to say anything about Marcel" (1969) by the same author; Saverio Bonato, with reference to the book by Allan Kaprow "Assemblage, environements & Happenings", will conduct a performance to create an object / artist's book during the opening of the exhibition, in which, however, the process does not reveal to the public; Pamela Breda, considering the artist's book of Geoffrey Hendricks "Anatomy of the Sky" (1985), will collect and publish the applications for MARS ONE, an initiative launched by a team of the Netherlands to build a colony on Mars by 2024; Samuel Cherubini with Taric Exposed will match a 3D object to each of the 1348 categories in the index of this manual. Taking a cue from "Topography Anécdoctée du Hasard" Daniel Spoerri, result in a chaotic way, precarious and fallacious cataloging who aspires to accurately classify everything on the planet; Graziano Meneghin and Jacopo Trabona, ironic take on the commercial use of cultural product, will achieve a distributor of toys coin inside with plastic pellets containing the reproduction of a key chain ring as a page in the book of Robert Filliou, "Petite Histoire Sainte a Peu "(1969); Fabrizio Perghem rielaborerà mode of preservation of the Book of Stanley Brouwn "step 1 X 1 / X 1 1 M" (1986) reasoning on the trail of sedimentation of dust between the two sheets; Fabio Roncato, observation method that generates the book by Ken Friedman "Homage to Dieter Roth" (1971), which is a small cube built from a book listing book became in turn, imagines recreate baits process formation of lagoon environments capturing debris carried by river currents. These will form independently of the sculptures whose weight and size will be proportional to the current object: a sculpture whose volume is given by so many levels, each of which contains information and stories; Catherine Erica Shanta, starting from the idea of blindness mechanical contained in "Optique Moderne" (1963) by Daniel Spoerri, will work on the concept of the blind spot. From the physiological constitution of the eye to his illness, the views of blacks holes in space, optical illusions; blindness told through a theoretical text and through scientific instrumentation with the construction of several telescopes to see from blinded; the Contractors' Association, inspired by the book as a box of artistic projects of George Maciunas "Fluxyearbox 1" (1964), will carry out in a spirit of Fluxus costume said "The iridescent", which will be used for a play that the group will stage a Venice; Eleonora Sovereigns, also reinterpreting "Topography anécdotée du Hasard" (1962) by Daniel Spoerri, will present a relational project consists of an inventory of items lost / abandoned in Venice with information about their discovery.

Works in exhibition: Giuseppe Abate, Paola Angelini, Anemoi (Daniela Da Silva Ferreira, Laura Di Nicolantonio, Maria Elena Fantoni e Natas?a Vasiljevic?), Marko Bjelanc?evic?, Pamela Breda, Saverio Bonato, Samuele Cherubini, Graziano Meneghin, Jacopo Trabona, Fabrizio Perghem, Fabio Roncato, Caterina Erica Shanta, Gli Impresari (Edoardo Aruta, Marco Di Giuseppe, Rosario Sorbello), Eleonora Sovrani.

In dialogue with works by: Eric Andersen, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Stanley Brouwn, John Cage, Robert Filliou, Henry Flynt, Ken Friedman, Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Gianni Emilio Simonetti, La Monte Young.

FluxBooks: ... to the Future
Exhibition curated by Stefano Coletto and Angela Vettese
  Venue: Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa Palazzetto Tito Dorsoduro 2826-30123 Venezia

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