PISCINA ARTE APERTA – MUSEO D’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA ALL’APERTO

This dense web of contacts and cultural and personal exchanges was one of the strengths of this project. Unfortunately, for about twenty years the initiative died out, but the contemporary art works on the walls of the town, a testimony and INDELIBLE SIGN of the project, suffered the slow and inexorable degradation caused by the exposure to the elements of works that were sometimes experimental in terms of techniques and materials. The year 2021, the year of its 30th anniversary, marked the rebirth of the PISCINA ARTE APERTA project, sanctioned through the establishment of the Museo Civico di ARTE CONTEMPORANEA ALL'APERTO (Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art Outdoors) with City Council Resolution no. 13 of 17 May 2021. The project for the enhancement and promotion of this itinerary in the town's historical centre was launched, an open-air contempoarnea art gallery that accompanies the visitor through a 30-year-long Piedmontese artistic itinerary, including figurative, informal and abstract art, freely accessible. A fortunate series of coincidences made it possible to launch an ambitious programme of restoration, conservation and valorisation of this important heritage, sanctioned through a memorandum of understanding signed in June 2021 between the Municipality of Piscina and the General Directorate for Education, Research and Cultural Institutes of the MIC, the Central Institute for Restoration of Rome and Matera, and the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the Metropolitan City of Turin. Through this pilot project, 23 students from the fifth year of the ICR tackled the study, experimentation and restoration of three works from the contemporary art gallery in Piscina for six weeks: Giacomo Soffiantino, "Omaggio a Piscina", 1991; Antonio Carena, "Due trance di Cielo", 1991; Francesco Tabusso, "Canneto a Piscina", 1993 In addition to this, also in October 2021, the Museum's premises were inaugurated, with the archive of catalogues of past initiatives and a smat tv to show the public the videos produced on the initiative and to promote courses, conferences and art initiatives. In 2022, a collaboration was started with the Giorgio Amendola Foundation of Turin, which granted Piscina Arte Aperta a photographic exhibition "ATELIER D'ARTISTA" currently being held at the Museum premises. At this point, the municipal administration, in agreement with the management of the PISCINA ARTE APERTA Museum of Contemporary Art, decided to restart the original project by October 2022, starting again to enrich the outdoor contemporary art collection. Three internationally renowned artists were invited and accepted: Luigi Stoisa, Ugo Giletta and Gabriele Garbolino, representative personalities of Piedmontese art who have several international exhibitions and many art publications to their credit. In keeping with the philosophy of the PISCINA ARTE APERTA project, the three established artists will be flanked by new installations by deserving young students recommended by the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts of Turin, with which the Piscina Museum of Contemporary Art is formalising a collaboration agreement. In addition to the three new installations, Saturday 1st October will see the inauguration of the restoration of a further three works from past editions, recently recovered: Giorgio Griffa's "Tre segni" 1995; Marcello Corazzini's "Attesa di Odisseo" 1996; Carlo Pigrucci's "Composizione" 1997 thanks to the renewed four-year protocol of understanding signed on 18-February 2022 by :Municipality of Piscina;Direzione Generale Educazione, Ricerca e Istituti Culturali del MIC; the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro di Roma e Matera; the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Torino. The work "Unghie" (Nails) by artist Ermanno Barovero, removed from the Piscinese collection for over a year because it was the subject of a restoration thesis by student Chiara Carcano of the University of Turin and the "La Venaria Reale" Conservation and Restoration Centre, will also be repositioned.