There are many contemporary art exhibitions scheduled for October 2020. In particular, as regards neon, 12 around the world.
Involved artists: Arthur Duff, Kerim Seiler, Massimo Uberti, Federica Marangoni, Daniela Corbascio, Fabrizio Dusi, Joseph Kosuth, Paolo Scirpa, Daniela Schilirò.

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ITALY - NEON ART

 

Bari (Italy) – Puglia Arte Contemporanea. Daniela Corbascio

When: 10th September 2020 - 2nd May 2021

Where: Dipartimento Turismo, economia della cultura e valorizzazione del territorio, Fiera del Levante Pad. 107, Lungomare Starita, 70132 Bari (ITALY)
Price: free entry

Artists: Daniela Corbascio (with neon artwork “Reflex”), Dario Agrimi, Giovanni Albanese, Jessica Carroll, Giulio De Mitri, Angelo Filomeno, Raffaella Formenti, Iginio Iurilli, Perino&Vele, Massimo Ruiu, Sandy Skoglund

Focus: One of the distinctive traits of Daniela Corbascio's poetics is the use of neon light, sometimes superimposed on other support materials and which come from her personal repertoire of intimate experience as from symbols and images of collective memory. Reflex artwork, created for the Pino Pascali Foundation in 2010, has as its subject the frieze of the stone bas-relief that dominates the portal of the Church of Purgatory (or San Martino) located in the historic center of Polignano a Mare (BA, Italy). A row of repeated cross bones, skulls and an hourglass - images of time passing - are ancient iconography that redraws the artist in a contemporary way.

Exhibition: the exhibition brings together eleven artworks by eleven artists from Pino Pascali Foundation collection and who have exhibited at the museum. The dialogue between the works takes place within the nascent PACT, an ethereal path from glassy architecture and light that becomes a casket redesigning some areas: sculpture, nature elements and talismanic signs.

 
Credit photo: Francesco Perla

 

 

Brescia (Italy) – Meccaniche Della Meraviglia. Origo di Arthur Duff

When: 12 September  – 11 October 2020
Where: Museo Diocesano di Brescia
Link: facebook Meccaniche della Meraviglia

Artist: Arthur Duff was born in Wiesbaden in 1973, he travels often, living in the United States, Korea, Germany, Japan and Italy. He has been present as a visual artist in the Italian contemporary art scene for long time. He has made many works on an urban scale and he was a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and Perugia. He is currently a professor for Boston University and for the SantaGiulia Academy of Fine Arts in Brescia.

Exhibition: The fourteenth edition of Mechanics of Wonder, a cultural event directed by Albano Morandi, involves seven artists of national and international fame, calling them to work with installations and site-specific artworks in different locations in the city of Brescia and in the municipality of Puegnago del Garda.

Neon Artworks (Arthur Duff): in Glowing Loss the lava stone forged by the fire of nature confronts the word written by human science; while in Bodies without Points of View the phrase, in white neon light, descending vertically into the space, asks visitors to move and lose the relationship between work, environment and presence.
 

 
Glowing loss, 2016
Lava stone, neon tube, electric cable, neon transformer, hexagonal bar in stainless steel
270 x 80 x 75 cm, dettaglio. Courtesy Michele Alberto Sereni

 

Mantua (Italy) - Biennale Light Art

Where: 26 September – 21 December 2020
When: Casa del Mantegna e Tempio di San Sebastiano. Mantova
Price: free entry
Link: Biennale Light Art.it

Light Art Artists: Peter Assmann, Carlo Bernardini, Nicola Boccini, Davide Coltro, Paolo Conti, Giuliana Cunéaz, Davide Dall’Osso, Giulio De Mitri, Mario De Leo, Nicola Evangelisti, Elia Festa, Giovanna Fra, Silvia Guberti, Margareta Hesse, Oki Izumi, Marco Lodola, Fardy Maes, Federica Marangoni, Max Marra, Mary Mutt, Pietro Pirelli, Francesca Romano, Giuseppe Rosini, Donatella Schilirò, Paolo Scirpa
Black Light Artists: Mario Agrifoglio, Nino Alfieri, Carlo Bernardini, Leonilde Carabba, Giulio De Mitri, Nicola Evangelisti, Maria Cristiana Fioretti, Massimo Hachen, Federica Marangoni, Vincenzo Marsiglia, Yari Miele, Sebastiano Romano, Claudio Sek De L

Exhibition: The Biennale Light Art 2020 theme is 'In praise of light between deconstruction and reconstruction of spaces'. The aim is to establish a comparison between the works of the artists and the internal and external spaces of Casa del Mantegna and Temple of San Sebastiano by Leon Battista Alberti.

 
Artisti: Daniela Schilirò e Paolo Scirpa

 

 

Ravenna, Bagnacavallo (Italy) - Insieme al mondo piangere, ridere, vivere. Fabrizio Dusi

When: 20 September - 15 November 2020
Where: Museo Civico delle Cappuccine, Bagnocavallo, Ravenna. Italy
Link: Museo Civico delle Cappuccine – Fabrizio Dusi
 

Artist:  Fabrizio Dusi is a contemporary Italian author who works on issues related to collective history and contingency: from the Shoah to migrants, touching existential nuances entrusted to the verses of great writers of the twentieth century, such as Vittorio Sereni, Antonia Pozzi, Primo Levi and Liliana Segre.
Fabrizio Dusi is an artist, painter and ceramist, who has worked for years between various art languages, from sculpture to neon installations.

Mostra: In the aftermath of the health emergency, the artistic project curated by Diego Galizzi and Chiara Gatti will restore art to its original social and pedagogical function. Art as a reflection of a shared thought. Art as a source of universal questions and reflections. Art as a message but also art as an omen and harmony with history.

In addition to the public installation (a new heritage of Bagnocavallo), the itinerary at the Museo Civico delle Cappuccine includes various neon lights (with large luminous outline of Italy) created ad hoc for the exhibition and dedicated to the geographies affected by Covid-19  and separated from each other by a policy of closed borders. Together with these neon sculptures, there is also a sequence of paintings on isothermal blankets (allusion to the theme of exiles and migrants), with the Italian regions united by a global fate, despite the drama of isolation.

Museo Civico delle Cappuccine - Insieme al mondo piangere, ridere, vivere. Fabrizio Dusi

 

 

Venice (Italy) – Unbreakable: Women in glass. Federica Marangoni

When: 5 Settembre 2020 – 7 gennaio 2021
Time: 10 am- 1 pm & 3 pm- 5 pm
Where: Fondazione Berengo Art Space, Campiello Della Pescheria, Fondamenta dei Vetrai, Murano (VE)
Cost: free entry
Link: Fondazione Berengo

Artists: there are over sixty contemporary female artists from around the world who have worked with Berengo Studio in its furnaces on Murano for over thirty years. Among them, Federica Marangoni was the first artist to return to work in Berengo Studio after the worldwide lockdown. For this exhibition she has created two new sculptures titled: Work Monument to the Female Job.

Exhibition: “UNBREAKABLE: WOMEN IN GLASS is a metaphor, a paradox, and a symbol. A provocative proposal by Adriano Berengo to explore the intimate relationship that women have with glass in the heart of Murano.” curator Nadja Romain notes. Curator Koen Vanmechelen declares that “It is time to name mythical icons — inspiring artworks signed by women so that history can no longer be stolen. The invisibility and transparency of glass can shape a new generation while healing scars from history.”
“In 2020 many people in the art world would like to believe that we have achieved parity but the truth is we still have a long way to go. This is why spaces celebrating female artists remain so essential, and an exhibition such as UNBREAKABLE: WOMEN IN GLASS is still important even today" said Susan Fisher Sterling, Director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Federica Marangoni "Work Monument to the Female Job"

 

GERMANY - NEON ART

Berlin (Germany) - Kerim Seiler

When: from June 2020
Where: Kink Bar & Restaurant, Schönhauser Allee 176, Berlin
Link: www.kink-berlin.de

Artists: Neon: Kerim Seiler, Interior: Oliver Mansaray and Daniel Scheppan (the two owners)
Kerim Seiler (born in 1974, Bern, Switzerland) has developed a complex, philosophic sculptural approach to working with space. From colourful and inflatable molecule sculptures to permanent neon light installations and architectural performative artworks, Seiler’s visual language merges complex theories of positivism and metaphysics.

Location: A restaurant, bar and in-house culinary laboratory, KINK Bar & Restaurant opens in a restored industrial building, nested in the sociocultural centre Pfefferberg, host to various galleries, artist studios and event venues. Sustaining a constant dialogue with contemporary art and design, the wide room is reinvested through a selection of contemporary installations and works presented throughout the restaurant and bar. At its core, suspended from its high ceiling, Swiss contemporary artist Kerim Seiler’s Spaceknot (Pfefferberg) – a large-scale site-specific work consisting of over 100 meters of red neon tubes – elegantly loops through the space. Rethinking the void “as his canvas,” the artist transforms what appears to be a two-dimensional twisted knot into a multi-dimensional space-embracing sculpture.

 
Kink Bar, Germany

 

 

POLAND - NEON ART

Warsaw (Poland) – Neon Muzeum

Where: Neon Muzeum – Building 55, Soho Factory, Ul. Mińska 25, Warsaw (Poland)
Link: Neon Muzeum - Covid FAQ

Museum: The Neon Muzeum is dedicated to the documentation and the preservation of Cold War era neon signs and electro-graphic design. The permanent collection contains hundreds of dazzling neon. They have also initiated a campaign to protect the last important neon signs within their original urban environment.

Photo courtesy Warsaw Neon Muzeum

 

UNITED KINGDOM - NEON ART

London (UK) – Bruce Nauman Exhibition

When: 7 October 2020 – 21 February 2021
Where: Tate Britain, London
Price: 13£ - free for members
Link: Tate.org – Bruce Nauman

Artist: Bruce Nauman is widely recognised as one of the most innovative and influential artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His work encompasses a range of media including sculpture, sound, film, video and neon. Since the late 1960s, he has continually tested and reinvented what an artwork can be by reshaping traditional forms and creating new ones.

Mostra: Through more than 40 works, the exhibition will explore the distinctive themes that have preoccupied Nauman during his remarkable 50-year career. Unfolding across a sequence of immersive installations inviting deep viewer engagement, the show will acknowledge how Nauman’s works contrast the instant gratification of today’s screen-based information and entertainment culture. It will also reveal how Nauman has transformed the way we think about art by exploring our understanding of language and perception of our physical and psychological place in the world.
Nauman created several ground-breaking neon signs that combine text and colour to reveal the ambiguities beneath everyday phrases and expressions.

Bruce Nauman. One Hundred Live and Die 1984. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing on metal monolith (299.7 x 335.9 x 53.3). Collection Benesse Holdings, Inc./Benesse House Museum, Naoshima
© Bruce Nauman / ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020, Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York 

 

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UNITED STATES - NEON ART

 

Glendale  – MONA (Museum of Neon Art)

Where: Echo Park, West Hollywood, East Hollywood, Koreatown e Glendale
Price: free online contents
Link: MONA

Info: While the Museum of Neon Art (MONA) reaches the sixth month of its closure to visitors, it has continued to share the light and provide audiences a way to connect to the museum collection, the city of Los Angeles, as well as their own creative spirit through free content available on their website as well as via social media.
MONA published four new self guided “Light Walks.” These free downloads — available under the “learn” tab of the MONA website — provide neon tours of Echo Park, West Hollywood, East Hollywood, Koreatown, and Glendale. The neon lights of these neighbourhoods weave through tales of early Hollywood, early evangelism, rock n’roll history, gentrification, police corruption, and immigrant success, while they also point the way in blinking lights to mouth-watering takeout options and ways to support local business.

Kayla Graffam - Untitled Mood #7 

 

Las Vegas - The Neon Museum

Where: 770 Las Vegas Boulevard North
Link: https://www.neonmuseum.org/

Museum: The Neon Museum is a non-profit organization dedicated to collecting, preserving, studying and exhibiting iconic Las Vegas signs for educational, historic, arts and cultural enrichment. The Neon Museum houses an outdoor exhibition space known as the Neon Boneyard; the North Gallery, home to the immersive audiovisual spectacle “Brilliant!” which uses technology advances to re-illuminate more than 40 non-operational signs.

Digital Tour: The 360 Virtual Tour launches with an Evening Glow experience as guests tour the museum at night while the signage is illuminated. Once guests enter the museum via the virtual tour, a welcome video provides details and instruction on how to navigate the Neon Boneyard. With travel limited for the foreseeable future, enjoying an immersive visit to The Neon Museum, with all its spectacular sign design and history, makes an entertaining and educational diversion for people of all ages.

 
The Neon Museum, Las Vegas

 

 

New York – Existential Time. Joseph Kosuth

When: 10 September – 24 October 2020
Where: Sean Kelly Gallery, New York
Link: kny.com

Artist: Joseph Kosuth, one of the pioneers of Conceptual art and installation art, has initiated language-based works and appropriation strategies since the 1960s. His work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art.

Exhibition: Joseph Kosuth has developed a series of installations that address the problem of time and existence, emphasizing the lack, limitations, and abundance of meaning that surrounds the experience of being in time, past and present.
Over the last six months, time—how we experience it and how we perceive it—has shifted irrevocably for each of us, making the timing of this exhibition, which was supposed to have opened in March before the pandemic descended upon us, even more appropriate and poignant.

Installation view of Joseph Kosuth: 'Existential Time' at Sean Kelly, New York
Photography: Jason Wyche, New York. Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

 

 

San Francisco – Neon tours

When: 3-4 October 2020
Where: San Francisco city – online!
Link: SF Neon

Neon tours online: A celebration and investigation of neon art, design, and vintage neon signs. These vibrant neon creations have evolved from advertising to art and cultural landmarks.
What to expect: a virtual festival with talks, screenings, demos, and tours from speakers and artists sharing techniques, history, insights, and stunning visuals.

 

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