Rita Urso is pleased to inaugurate I love the gallery - 20th anniversary exhibition, a show that presents the gallery's activity from its beginnings in 2001 to the most recent years, through a wide selection of works from its collection. The title is inspired by the video I love the gallerists and they love me (2001) by Adrian Paci, shown in his first solo exhibition in Milan curated by Edi Muka. In the work we see the artist's hands intervening to modify the positions and faces of the protagonists, gallerists Rita and Remo Urso. A refined metaphor for the transformative power of art on the human soul, the video provides an important starting point for a reflection on the evolution of an art gallery as a path of life and an act of love towards a profession.
Artopia was in fact born under the banner of an indissoluble union between intimacy and profession, for its proximity to the home of the gallerist and her family and for having proposed site-specific projects that cross the borders of the home, subverting the stereotype of the white cube. Part of the exhibition documents this peculiarity of the space, presenting a series of works by Italian artists, Marzia Migliora, Paola Gaggiotti, Margherita Morgantin, Enzo Umbaca and Martina della Valle, and artists from the Balkan area, Adrian Paci, Phil Collins, Maja Bajevic and Jelena Tomašević, who in exhibitions specially conceived for the gallery have explored, with a poetic and radical approach, themes connected with home and identity, concepts of uprooting and memory. The exhibition concludes by illustrating the relatively recent expansion of the gallery's programme, approaching languages such as film, performance, architecture and design. Works selected for the occasion are by ZAPRUDER filmmakersgroup, Elizabeth McAlpine and Jean-Baptiste Maitre, all artists who reflect, through the filter of the language of film, on the relationship between temporality and the filmic-photographic image.
The works are installed for the occasion in a large collateral space, a former workshop of the late 19th century located in the gallery's courtyard.