BOXART GALLERY
The Boxart project – the name of which comes from the idea of a container, or “box”, for art – was long in the making, but it all came together in the mid-1990s. The gallery officially opened in 1995, and in 2002 it moved to its current premises in the old part of Verona, close by the ancient Arena.
Italian artists with whom Boxart has established relationships of mutual esteem, and for whom it has become a channel, include Mario Schifano, who exhibited no fewer than four times. Three times he was presented by Achille Bonito Oliva, who was also the critic for the Sandro Chia solo display in 2004.
The aim of creating specially designed projects for the premises has continued with the works of younger artists. A new stream was discovered with Marco Cingolani. An intellectual even before being an artist, he works in Milan and New York and has taken part in group events, and a solo Società anonima del colore. His life in Milan circles introduced him to Giovanni Frangi, a leading name in the most recent exhibitions. Even though highly original, his study of colour means Wainer Vaccari of Modena has much in common with Cingolani and they have exhibited, together with Frangi, in I Vizi Capitali and Senza Trucco. In 2003 Luca Beatrice presented Segni (2003), a solo exhibition of works by Vaccari.
As Boxart entered its second decade, it opened up to multimedia. In the early months of 2006 came the first venture, Images, with the photographer Franco Fontana. The 10-year turning point also opened up broader horizons. Boxart started accompanying Italian works with research on a global scale and this led to Ma Liuming and the Gao Brothers, whose controversial works the Gallery brought to Italy for the first time. The 2006 solo provided a sort of compensation for the creative duo, as the Gao Brothers had been barred from leaving their country in 2001 to take part in the Venice Biennale, to which they had been invited by Harald Szeeman. Dialogue with the Orient continued with an exchange between a young Italian talent, Andrea Facco, and pre-Olympic Beijing, illustrated in the Waiting for Beijing (2008) exhibition, with the experiences of the Artist in Residence at Ny Arts in the Chinese capital.
Investigation of the Far East did not stop there, for there then came Kim Joon, the revolutionary Korean digital artist whose works explore the body and tattoos.
The underlying theme of Boxart is increasingly that of an attraction for a sensational expressive language, which reached its climax in works by Hermann Nitsch from 2007 onwards, which had never previously been shown. This undertaking was tackled with the critical support of Danilo Eccher, then director of MACRo in Rome.
The 2008 programme will include an event involving the Viennese Aktionismus artist and the first solo exhibition by a Chinese of this generation in Italy.