Focus on Contemporary Italian Art is a workshop for the knowledge and experience of practices employed by Italian artists over the last two decades.
The section’s title – in English – refers to the contradictions hidden in the contemporary interest in (and competition among) local values within a global framework. The artists here included have worked after the successes of both Arte Povera and Transavanguardia.

Neo-avantgardes have mirrored political and social engagement processes often with revolutionary, or progressive, perspectives, aimed at opening history to the future; generations born or formed over the Seventies, on the other hand, have known the end of utopias, the disintegration of social dimensions and the self-retreated investigation on the meaning of one’s belonging to a technocratic world of which no subject can rightfully feel protagonist. This has resulted in the impossibility of group logics, as well as in an open, fragmented quest for anti-heroic values that could shift the reasons of art from a why to a how, from utopias to present contingencies.

Focus on Contemporary Italian Art is much more than a gallery displaying works of art in rotation. In partnership with UniCredit Group, MAMbo has created a platform to support Italian artists of the latest generations: a way to help realize works for important international events and promote innovative practices leading to the growth of the Italian art system.