On Tuesday, February 6, 2020, at 6:00 pm, Quartz Studio is delighted to present Make a Better World Now, a solo exhibition by Maurizio Camerani (Ferrara, 1951) curated by Anna Daneri. Starting from an image of the Make a Better World Now performance from 1977, which the curator chose for a conversation on environmental issues part of Artissima 2019, thinking developed about the art practices of the 1970s based on a selection of the artist’s historical works, rethought and reactivated in the current exhibition project. In the words of Camerani, “The exhibition is part of a more comprehensive plan to explore my 1970s works.” These works came out of studies oriented towards “extra-media” experimentation, as Enrico Crispolti would term it, featuring the use of various media chosen on the basis of the expressive urgency of particular circumstances.
The works shown here, some never before exhibited, were made between 1976 and 1981, exemplifying a process focused on the “loss of the center” as a departure from both spaces intended for art and the traditional concept of authorship. Camerani gives substance to this poetics, first by repositioning the figure of the artist not only in relation to academic models but to the official system of analyzing and refuting the behavioral repertoire of others.
This was the origin of several cycles of work in which performance, photography, and painting converged, such as Furti di paesaggio [Landscape Thefts] (1976), a sequence of photographs that shows the reproduction of details of wall writings created with a broad variety of techniques combined with the pictorial or graphic results of that action. His distancing himself from the system was also expressed in forming a collective, the Ricerche Inter/Media Group. With this group, Camerani conceived and organized “Evento 77” in Ferrera, generating exchanges between artists and the public within a parallel channel that was independent of official cultural planning. Camerani himself put on a number of performances for this occasion based on instructions given by other artists that he had developed previously (including Make a Better World Now), which formed the series Comportamenti estetici [Aesthetic Behaviors] (1977). Camerani explores the facets of collaborative practice, arriving at a system of intertwining and interference, enriching the performative study with forays into institutional situations, such as in the 1st International Convention of Artists (1979), and radio experiments, Interferenza (1979), and video image, Altrove (1981), critiquing a problematic way of conceiving the artist’s function and public and interpersonal communication. In the early 1980s, Camerani moved into new territories, starting a collaboration with Centro Video Arte [Video Art Center] of Ferrara, founded by Lola Bonora in 1972, where his questioning of traditional languages continued through the cross-pollination of video and sculpture.
Quartz Studio would like to thank the artist, the curator, and Massimo Marchetti for their support.
