Import Export

MARS is pleased to announce the first stage of IMPORT EXPORT, a programme of exhibitions and events in partnership with la rada, Swiss independent space and FUZAO, a project created by Chinese art students in Milan, and in particular by the young artist and curator Yimei Zhang, now working in Locarno.

This partnership was awarded by Pro Helvetia during the Viavai+ creative laboratory, an exchange between Ticino, Valais and Lombardy, held in Milan a year ago. This workshop allowed the three art spaces to create together the project Import Export, which starts with this stage in Locarno, followed by legs in Shanghai and the surrounding area and then in Milan.

Our civilization of consumption was based on the international exchange of goods, according to the liberalist doctrine. In the last few years it no longer seems to be questioned only by the historical left, but by the sovereign right. In fact, not only is a large part of the world's population now not allowed to move freely as - we sincerely do not know why - the world flow of tourism can do, even if it is annoying. Even the goods are increasingly opposed, in an economic war conducted with blows of duties and limits. This is the case, for example, with many Chinese goods, and not only from the USA.

We started from the awareness that works of art are commodities, even if they have a very peculiar nature.
The idea is that showing works in the form of goods - even if in a non-commercial space: la rada is not a gallery - can provoke a reflection on the necessity of the freedom of any movement of human beings.
In an appropriate place like la rada - on the roof of which the only 5G antenna in Ticino has just been installed (perhaps made of Huawei technology...) - it will be the best moment for this provocation: that of the Locarno festival, when the public and the world of cinema from all over the world converge in this town.

This exhibition is a large group show that brings together sixteen Swiss, Italian, Chinese and one American artists, even of different generations. In addition, performers and video makers (mostly Swiss) will animate the hall of the Teatro dei Fauni, which shares the atrium with la rada.

Thanks to the availability of the Festival, la rada opens the same day, an hour before, the exhibition Future Archive in the foyer of L'Altra Sala, a collection of utopian #design projects for the survival of man in a world that is increasingly less livable, but in this regard we refer to the specific press release.
Among the Swiss artists, there are many young people and one of them participates in both exhibitions. This is the French artist Morgane Erpen, who works by creating meta-organic forms, in transition between various disciplines. Andrea Marioni from Ticino, working in Bienne, creates projects based on social emergencies; in this case he has produced an ad hoc work on the theme of the arms trade. Also from Ticino, but working in Belgium, Hektor Mamet - already author of dysfunctional #design works - has worked this time on the theme of overabundance of packaging. Both Gil Pellaton and Cassidy Toner create phantasmagorical sculptural works, with intense ironic and sometimes kinetic understatement. Karim Forlin - also from Ticino, working in Geneva - has created a space for rest and dialogue that is useful to the spectators and also very playful.

Harry Druzd, an American from New York, will be exhibiting both small paintings on canvas and an installation created for this exhibition and combining kinetic art with simulated reality.

Fabio Carnaghi, curator and co-director at #mars, wrote: «The Italian artists presented in the Import Export project document different practices that reflect a culture that extends from poetic suggestions to allusive eclectic experimentations to languages borrowed from interdisciplinary contributions. Through multiform media investigations, reuse is the leitmotif of my selection.

Lorenza Boisi pursues a research that recovers the traditional features of painting, translated into pictorial figuration and in her figuline alter ego. Devis Venturelli, through the fabric, gives shape to an object syntax that uses a hybrid language - taken from installation art and from the filmic medium, usual in Venturelli praxis - focusing on the sartorial concept of editing and rescue procedures. Francesca Ferreri focuses her research on the process of stratification that fills a space-time distance between objects of past utility, generating a new material surface, made of plaster mixed with pigments, sands, quartz and consolidating resins, according to a practice, with a strong poietic value, typical of the techniques of restoration. Yari Miele uses polychrome marbles that have been discarded as a result of their industrial use in laser-made inlays, resulting in sensitive forms that stimulate the artist's imagination for their luminescence, opacity and traces of veins and inclusions.»

Yimei Zhang, on the other hand, on the subject of Chinese artists: «For Import Export I thought of selecting emerging Chinese artists. The works range from painting to graphics, video and photography in a multimedia vision.

Xiao Longhua works in various fields such as painting, comics and sculpture. His imagination consists in assembling and recomposing parts of objects, creating hybrids presented in this case in a narrative entrusted to the video. Yu Chenye presents graphic works translated into prints that have a metaphysical conception in urban visions that despite the contemporaneity of the views become mnemonic suggestions. Lvya creates tapestries in fabric printed in a pop iconography starting from the autobiographical contingency of an allergy to flower pollen. Tao Siqi deals with painting. Details of everyday life such as objects, animals and human figures become subjective landscapes in strong colours. Finally, I thought of joining artists of my generation with my photographs that investigate the details that surround me, now transformed into shapes and colors through incessant exercises in composition.» 

The exhibition opens at la rada in via della Morettina 2, Locarno, on Wednesday 7 August and will be visible until Saturday 7 September, with free admission. During the film festival will be open every day from 18 to 22, while from 22 August it will be open from Thursday to Saturday, from 14 to 19, as well as by appointment by writing to riccardo.lisi@larada.ch or calling the numbers +41 76 4391866 or +39 320 4866373.

As mentioned, during the festival la rada also organizes a program of screenings and performances, in the hall of the Teatro dei Fauni, always with free admission.

On the opening night, from 6pm to 11pm, the short film Femme with gun, by Andrée Julikà Tavares and Gianluca Monnier (parapluie), will be screened. The film takes up the imaginary of film noir and in particular the figure of the femme fatale, with a conceptual crasis - from the title - between French and English scenes in the world of old-fashioned cinema.

In the next few days we will gradually communicate the other appointments of the programme of performances and screenings at la rada.

Finally, from 8 to 17 August, from 10 pm to 3 am, la rada will host the EXIST parties, musical evenings with free but limited access, where cinema professionals will have the opportunity to have fun, talk and dance.