The March calendar includes 10 neonart exhibitions and installations all over the world.

If you are a fan of contemporary art and light art, you cannot miss these temporary events!

 

 

NEON ART IN GERMANY

 

Waldenbuch – Tutto bene! Italian Art from the Marli Hoppe-Ritter Collection

Where: Museum Ritter, Alfred-Ritter-Straße 27, 71111 Waldenbuch
When: 16 October 2022 - 16 April 2023
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 11 am - 6 pm
Link: Museum Ritter – Tutto Bene!

Artists: Alighiero Boetti, Corrado Bonomi, Antonio Calderara, Enrico Castellani, Gianni Colombo, Dadamaino, Fortunato Depero, Piero Dorazio, Paolo Masi, Marcello Morandini, Bruno Munari, Paolo Scirpa, Atanasio Soldati, Grazia Varisco, and Francesco Vezzoli

Exhibition: The exhibition featuring works from the Museum’s collection is dedicated to Italy’s specific contribution to abstraction and nonrepresentational art, and takes a look at various currents and approaches that have helped shape developments over the past hundred years. Over 70 paintings, reliefs, objects and kinetic works give a sense of just how differently the principles of geometry and mathematics can be interpreted. Thus, freely composed, almost sign-like forms determined the painting of the Movimento d'arte concreta, while grids and serial structures set the works of the Arte programmata in vibration and motion.

Neon artwork: Ludoscopio multispaziale by Paolo Scirpa

Paolo Scirpa, Ludoscopio multispaziale, 1987 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023, photo: Gerhard Sauer

 

NEON ART IN ITALY

 

Cremona – L’opera come promessa. William Xerra

Where: Il Triangolo Art Gallery. Vicolo della Stella, 14 – Cremona, Italy
When: 28 January – 11 March 2023
Opening hours: from Thursday to Sunday, 4.30pm - 7.30 pm
Link: iltrangoloartgallery.com

Artist: William Xerra lives and works in Piacenza. His work moves between the poetic and the pictorial sign. The artist's style highlights the temporary limits within which the work is created.
His works are present in national and international museums. There are numerous group and personal exhibitions from the 60s to today.

Exhibition: Xerra's personal exhibition at the Galleria Il Triangolo, through about forty works, documents a part of his widespread research of the last fifty years A nucleus of small works testifies to the decisive discovery of the temporary loom since the 1970s. The exhibition also presents a series of large canvases created between 1984 and 2003, sometimes intervening several times on the same piece and always placing painting, drawing, collage and assemblage in dialogue. Xerra weaves together high culture and popular culture, composing parts of old works found on flea markets, drawings by her granddaughter, neon writing, a metal coat hanger and a pink stole, to which she adds a Picasso-style nude by her own hand. The sacred is another important component of Xerra's poetics, as it emerges from various elements.

 

Mento, neon artwork by William Xerra.

 

 

Rome – Physis and Rendering. Vincenzo Marsiglia

Where: VISIONAREA Art Space - Auditorium della Conciliazione Indirizzo: Piazza Pia 1, Roma
Opening: 31 gennaio 2023 – ore 18.00
When: 1 febbraio al 25 marzo 2023        
Tickets: free
Link: bbs.lombard.com

Artist: Vincenzo Marsiglia was born in Belvedere Marittimo (CS) in 1972. His works originate from a four pointed star that becomes his distinctiveness, a real “logo” of the artist. The composition of the works looks like an obsessive action and generates different elements in which this symbol joins to cloths, felt, spangles and pottery with a variations of rhythms and shapes. He refers, for a rigorous and balanced visions and ideas, to the masters of Abstraction and Minimalism. The process of relation between work and spectator gets also a significant reduction of their distance and an unpredictable and endless changes.

Exhibition: Vincenzo Marsiglia proposes an itinerary between holographic NFTs and digital photographs, augmented reality and glasses hololens for a close encounter with the new frontiers of contemporary art, between digital and real. The works range from the respective outcomes of the "Fold", "Modus", "Star stone" and "Prospect" series, to holographic NFTs and digital photographs executed with the Hololens 2 device: a latest-generation mixed and augmented reality visor, applied for the first time in the field of visual arts research by Marsiglia.
"The exhibition," writes curator Davide Silvioli, "delves into the complexity of the artist's work through a critical reading key aimed at establishing continuity between results due to different processes. From the tangible reality of physis to the virtual reality of rendering, the identity of the project replicates the faculty of Marsiglia's research of being able to inhabit both these hemispheres of the real, detecting points of contact".

 

 

NEON ART IN POLAND

 

Warsaw – The Legacy Gallery

Where: Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN in Warsaw
When: Permament neon artwork         
Tickets: free
Link: Polin.pl

Artists: The twenty-six individuals featured in the Legacy gallery represent creative achievement in many fields: art, literature, music, film, theatre, science and the humanities, law, education, economics, politics. Their biographies also testify to the diversity of their life experience and to the complex relations between Polish and Jewish worlds.
This constellation of luminaries forms a collective portrait of Polish Jews in all their diversity, as seen through the prism of the lives and achievements of individuals who are at once exceptional and representative. Their biographies and careers were shaped at the crossroads of many cultures, which made them particularly open to the world. May their lives, values, and achievements continue to inspire us today and the generations to come.

Neon artwork: Hubert Czerepok chose the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and reinterpreted the ten sefirot, divine powers that constitute the world. The globes of his contemporary neon sculpture symbolize spheres of creativity, including fine arts, literature, cinema and theatre, music, science, politics, economics, law, and education.

 

 

NEON ART IN SPAIN

 

Barcellona - Racconti (In)Visibili: tra cielo e terra

Where: Reial Cercle Artístic Carrer dels Arcs, 5, 08002 Barcellona
Opening: 2 February 2023
When: 2 February - March 2023              
Opening Hours: 10-14 15- 20
Link: reialcercleartistic.cat/

Artists: 15 italian contemporary artists: Antonio Ligabue, Matteo Basilé, Bertozzi&Casoni, Paolo Buggiani, Cinzia Sarto, Vincenzo Marsiglia, Stefano Canto, Angelo Bellobono, Davide Dormino, Simone Pellegrini, Elena Bellantoni, Elena Mazzi, Leonardo Petrucci, Benedetto Pietromarchi, Maurizio Sapia, which are compared thematically with the audio-visual section composed of the engaging narration of the short films made by the director Francesco de Melis and the ethnographic reportages of the photographer Massimo Cutrupi.

Exhibition: Racconti (In)Visibili: tra cielo e terra  ((In)Visible Tales: Between Heaven and Earth) created by the Central Institute for Intangible Heritage of the Ministry of Culture is the first stage of the international project of the same name which will touch, between February 2023 and June 2024, the cities of Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon , Havana and New York.

The selected artists are all characterized by a research inspired by the ephemeral yet constant nature of the collective identity and the various forms of interaction between man and nature, between memory and a sense of belonging.

Neon Artwork: Fold Neon by Vincenzo Marsiglia
Through plays of light and illuminations, the artist perceives artistic expression as a state of encounter and community celebration in which the work is declined in different colors and sizes, allowing him to relate to the space that evolves over time towards the creation of physical and virtual spaces connected with matter and with the landscape.

 

 

NEON ART IN UNITED KINGDOM

 

London – Addicted to Love. Sara Pope & Eve De Haan

Where: Quantus Gallery, 11-29 Fashion St, London E1 6PX
When: 16 October 2022 - 16 April 2023
Ticket: free
Opening hours: from Monday to Friday 9:30 am - 6:00 pm
Link: www.quantusgallery.com

Exhibition:  Contemporary UK artists Eve De Haan and Sara Pope explore desire, seduction and connection in the powerfully uplifting joint exhibition ADDICTED TO LOVE

Artists: Sara Pope & Eve De Haan
Best known for her colourful, hyperreal paintings of glossy lips, Brighton-based Sara Pope aims to capture the sensuality and seductive power conveyed by the lips and mouth. Rolling Stones fans may find Pope’s paintings reminiscent of the band’s lips and tongue logo, designed by John Pasche and first used on the 1971 album Sticky Fingers. Mick Jagger’s brief to Pasche was to convey a tribute to Kali, the Hindu goddess of empowerment and energy.

Eve De Haan aka @halfaroastchicken applies her love of the written word to a growing portfolio of neon artworks. A theology graduate, the London-based artist describes her work as “progressive and positive” and, like Sara Pope, is interested in art as a form of communication.

 

 

NEON ART IN UNITED STATES

 

Chicago – Love, Neon

Where: Ken Saunders Gallery, 2041 West Carroll Avenue, Suite C-320, Chicago, IL 60612
Opening time: Saturday 11-3pm and by appointment
Tickets: free
Link: kensaundersgallery.com

Artists: Works by James Akers, John Bannon, Jacob Fishman, Annesta Le, Zoelle Nagib, Jason Pickleman, Michael Young.

Exhibition: Neon is sending you a message. "Love is in the Air. Pretend to Unsown Gardens". Love, Neon

JOHN BANNON. What It’s For, 2020 (neon)

 

 

Glendale (CA) – Oliver B. Nowlin: Lightning’s Lung

Where: 216 S. Brand Blvd. Glendale, CA 91204
When: 24 February – 27 August 2023
Opening: 4 March 2023 from 6 to 8 pm
Link: neonmona.org

Artist: Oliver Nowlin’s work mines his personal narrative and diverse interests. He abstracts stories from his life by conveying them through geometric forms, texture, color, mark-making, and light. The found objects that Nowlin occasionally integrates into his sculptural form (cardboard packaging and beer can decals) are transformed through sculptural and painterly interventions. Inspirations for the works range from his time in the Navy during the Vietnam war; his family; when he witnessed lightning hitting the ground while camping as a child; his time fishing along the LA River; and his son.

Exhibition: Exhibition showcases wall-based sculptures made over the last 3 decades by the 81- year-old artist

Museum: The Museum of Neon Art is the only museum in the world devoted exclusively to art in electric media, exhibiting electric and kinetic fine art, and outstanding examples of historic neon signs, for over three decades.
Neon is a gateway between scientific principles and artistic expression. Neon illumination integrates electrical technology, creative design, and fundamental concepts of physics and chemistry.

 

Oliver B. Nowlin: Lightning’s Lung. Courtesy of MONA

 

 

New York – Luminous: The Art of Neon

Where: Culture Lab LIC 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City, New York, NY 11101
When: February 9 - March 26 2023
Opening: February 9, 6-9pm
Days: Thursday & Friday, 5-9pm, and Saturday & Sunday, 2-9pm
Tickets: Free
Link: Culturelablic.org

Exhibition: We are excited to present "Luminous: The Art of Neon" an exhibition showcasing the vibrant and dynamic world of neon art, featuring works that explore the medium's unique ability to capture and transmit light!
Curators: Kenny Greenberg of Krypton Neon, Tess Howsam, Artistic Director, Culture Lab LIC

 

Tacoma – She Bends: Redefining Neon Legacy

Where: Museum of Glass. 1801 Dock Street, Tacoma, WA 98402
When: 11 February – October 2023
Opening Celebration: February 11 – 5:30pm-8pm
Days: 10am-5pm, Wednesday - Sunday. Third Thursday of every month, 5am-8pm, free admission
Tickets: $18 - Adults; $16 - Seniors (65+)/College Students (18+)/Military (Active and Veteran); $10 - Children (6–18); Free - Children (under 6); Free - Museum Members; $1/person; $2/family - EBT Cardholders

Artists: Sarah Blood, Carissa Grace, Kacie Lees, Stephanie Sara Lifshutz, Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez, Meryl Pataky, Lily Reeves, Daniella Thach, and Jude Abu Zaineh.

She Bends: She Bends explores the evolution of neon teaching methodologies in the traditionally male-dominated art form, and the transition of the medium from an agent of advertising and commercial signage to fine art. She Bends aims to push the boundaries of neon and is dedicated to building a more equitable future for the art form through public education, curatorial projects, and artist programs.

Exhibition: In addition to the process of neon and the importance of women and gender-expansive artists in the medium’s history, visitors will learn about the intersection between art and science, the commercial history of the material, and its emergence as a more personal art form. Much of the exhibited work is not only a response to neon’s commercial origins, but an exploration of themes of cultural identity, healing, or political activism. Additionally, since neon is a “master/apprentice” craft, the exhibition’s curators are focused on how neon skills are passed on and how the material’s legacy evolves.

Museum: Located in Tacoma, Washington, Museum of Glass is a premier contemporary art museum dedicated to glass and glassmaking with the West Coast’s largest and most active museum glass studio. Opened in 2002, the Museum has established a reputation for hosting impactful and engaging artist residencies, organizing nationally traveling exhibitions, and creating unique programs for visitors while building a growing permanent collection chronicling the development of modern and contemporary glass.

Meryl Pataky (American, born 1983) with textile collaboration by Allie Felton. A Modern Guilt (installation view), 2020. Neon and mixed media; dimensions variable. Courtesy of artist. Photo by Deb Leal.

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Are you an artist working with real neon or a gallery hosting artworks made with cold cathode lamps and would you like to be published in F/ART's neon art column?

Contact us by sending us a press kit and photos of your installation, you could be featured in the next article!