The exhibition presents more than a dozen artists of the young London generation according to the different artistic declinations, from painting to sculpture, from video to photography, to installation, to performance. Mostly unpublished productions and in many cases site-specific interventions to delineate the contemporary London cultural landscape, in the post-nineties evolution and in the pressing actuality of its most innovative interlocutors.

BREATHLESS / SENZA RESPIRO
London Art Now / Arte Contemporanea a Londra
Ca’ Pesaro Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna
19 October 2019 – 1 March 2020

Curated by Norman Rosenthal, Harry Woodlock
with Elisabetta Barisoni

With the support of The British Council

The authors are all emerging young people who live and work in London today; the exhibition presents over 40 works, of which 5 are unpublished site-specific works commissioned by the exhibition. The works come from the collections of the British Council, the Arts Council and galleries and artist studios.

Norman Rosenthal says: «that in spite of all the huge problems young artists face, and have always faced, today in London and elsewhere, the beautiful thing is that the creativity and originality of art continues to flourish in interesting and even startling ways. This exhibition, I like to think, will be a beautiful manifestation of this truth coming from London».

Harry Woodlock writes: «As a show Breathless explores the realities of contemporary art in one of the most developed centres of global capitalism today. Over the last forty years, life for the young metropolitan artist has become increasingly hard: they are subject to free market demands, ever-rising costs of living, and disintegrating social bonds. This has accelerated, and instituted with it a state of vital exhaustion that is both urgent to the future of cultural production and relevant to anyone with an interest in artistic expression».

The artworks encompass disciplines as diverse as painting, sculpture, video, installation and performance, and will be in many cases seen in Italy for the very first time.

With Breathless/Senza Respiro Ca' Pesaro, the Fondazione Musei Civici’s point of reference for contemporary art, underline once again its mission to be the museum of the present and its historical vocation of being a reference point for the renewal of society. As Elisabetta Barisoni says: «Through the filter of contemporary art, once again, we look for answers, even though we know that the best art is one that does not easily provide these and at the most poses new questions; even though we know that the artist’s eye always deforms and is more intense, more crude, more visionary than the news reports and more irrational than historicisation. But often it is more durable and sometimes even eternal».

Exhibition design and identity will be by the REAL foundation, a London-based cultural institute and architectural practice founded by Jack Self. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the opening of this exhibition.

Artists on show (in italic the artists with site-specific commissioned works): Larry Achiampong, Alvaro Barrington, Alice Channer, Matt Copson, Nicolas Deshayes, Ed Fornieles, Anthea Hamilton, Tom Hardwick-Allan, Celia Hempton, Evan Ifekoya, Lydia Ourahmane, Eddie Peake, Prem Sahib, Victoria Sin, Issy Wood.