The new frontiers of the contemporary

From October 2019 to March 2020 a series of exhibitions of paintings, videos and installations present the work of four contemporary artists: Hannah Levy, Haroon Mirza, Christian Manuel Zanon and Guglielmo Castelli.

The Fondazione Coppola has organized The new frontiers of the contemporary, a series of exhibitions scheduled from October 31st 2019 to March 31st 2020, presenting the work of four significant figures in the current art scene. Interventions, installations and works by Hannah Levy (from October 31st), Haroon Mirza (from November 22nd), Christian Manuel Zanon (from December 1st) and Guglielmo Castelli (from December 14th) are on show at the Torrione of Vicenza, the exhibition venue of the foundation. These exhibitions sponsored by the Municipality of Vicenza occupy all six of the exhibition floors of the Torrione (the tower of a medieval fortress), starting from the ground floor, entering into a dialogue with the architectural space and encouraging diverse new readings of the exhibition context and the works presented there. The four artists all have a particularly original approach to the specific mediums in which they work: sculpture for Hannah Levy, video, sound and the installation for Mirza, the installation and design for Zanon and painting for Castelli.

Hannah Levy was born in New York in 1991, where she now lives and works. After obtaining a BFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (2009-2013), she obtained the title of “Meisterschüler” from the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Levy’s work explores the connections between art and design, with the intention of overcoming this dichotomy. The artist works mainly with sculpture, and her works constitute a reflection on objects, their logics of meaning and the relationships that we tend to establish with them. Five of her works in silicone, created between 2017 and 2019, are exhibited at the Fondazione Coppola. These works have already been exhibited at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, at the MoMA PS1 and in London.

Haroon Mirza is an English artist born in 1977 who lives and works in London. He studied painting at the Winchester School of Art and obtained a Master’s degree in Design (critical practice and theory) from Goldsmiths College (2006), followed by a Master’s degree in Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art and Design (2007). He is internationally known for his complex immersive installations, which combine sound, light waves, electric currents, LEDs and various other materials. Mirza works like a composer, reconsidering the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music, which he does not consider as cultural forms that can be categorized. Two of his video installations are on display: Adhãn (2009) and Birds of Pray (2010), a work that won the Northern Art Prize in 2011. Haroon Mirza was awarded the Silver Lion at the 54th edition of the Venice International Art Biennale in 2011.

Christian Manuel Zanon is a visual artist who was born in Cittadella, in the Italian province of Padua, in 1985, and who lives and works in Pesaro and Padua. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti fine arts academy in Venice and then at the Universität der Kunst in Berlin, where he explored topics related to visual communication and poetry. He subsequently attended the Fondazione Studio Marangoni in Florence, the Faculty of Visual Arts of the IUAV University of Venice and the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The artist realizes his works with the use of various different media, such as drawing and installations, giving life to complex creations in which unusual and mysterious pathways are explored and delineated.

Guglielmo Castelli was born in 1987, and he lives and works in Turin. He studied theatrical set design at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti of Turin. Widely considered to be one of the most promising young artists of the new generation, he works mainly with painting and drawing. His paintings, dominated by melancholy and intimistic atmospheres, are characterized by fluid shapes and extensive uniform backgrounds, almost as if the subjects were captured in a moment of transformation. Four of his small and medium-sized paintings realized in 2019 are on display. The artist was a finalist for the 2019 Premio Cairo.

The exhibition venue of the Fondazione Coppola is located in the medieval tower known as the Torrione di Vicenza, an important architectural monument of the city of Vicenza, which was restored by the firm of architects UP3 Architetti Associati in 2018. The foundation inaugurated its activity last April by opening the tower for the first personal exhibition in Italy of the German artists Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy, the two main exponents of the so-called “New Leipzig School”, an artistic movement that over the past thirty years has become established as an important reference point for many generations of visual artists. The Fondazione Coppola mostly exhibits works by living artists, such as significant emerging young talents who have participated in national or international exhibitions, in many cases receiving widespread recognition.