ASYMPTOMATIC PICTOPLASMA: FLASHBACKS INTO CONTEMPORARY ART is the last exhibition in the 2017 season.

Although it stakes no claim to being exhaustive, considering the enormous historical heritage of the realms of painting, this exhibition sets out to refocus attention on this medium of expression, all too often still subjected to derision, at an epoch-making moment when experimentation and the experimental are no longer experiencing a sufficiently fertile terrain for developing new ideas and artistic proposals.

As time goes by, painting remains an authentic medium that has almost never been able to elude an objective critique of its nature and within the bounds of the quality parameters of the artistic product.

While on the one hand the purpose of the exhibitions organised recently has been to highlight the latest new trends in contemporary painting, HEALTHY CARRIERS OF PICTOPLASM adopts a basic approach to tackle the issue of painting from a more general, less specific vantage point.

This, then is about ‘painting’, not as a locus of the mind and cradle of avant-garde potentialities, but as free artistic geography.

The artists considered, chosen by the curator for the express purpose of avoiding slipping into the trap of affectedness and linguistic militancy for its own sake, share the particular characteristic of fertilising creative ideas that fall outside stereotypes of idiom, fashions or the dominant style of the moment in a given market. This characteristic makes them stronger and independent, nor are they short of the occasional historical landmark.

The MACT/CACT has been holding thematic exhibitions for some time, with the aim of furnishing food for thought about the crisis currently afflicting global culture and about the cult of ignorance that has been taking hold in recent years, witness the fall-off in the markets for the arts, antiques and museology. There are no answers in sight for now, other than the rearrangement of social and sociological structures.

Mario Casanova, Bellinzona 2017
Translation by Pete Kercher

Ph MACT/CACT.