The Underground Cinema

The collaboration between Intesa Sanpaolo and Artissima continues with the third edition of the artist film and video showcase, hosted at Gallerie d’Italia – Torino with the exhibition “The Underground Cinema”, curated by Irene Calderoni (Artistic Director, Scuola Piccola Zattere, Venice), from Friday 1 to Sunday 3 November 2024. This showcase of video works, many exhibited in Italy for the first time, will feature artists represented by galleries participating in Artissima. The featured artists are: Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz (Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam), Alice Bucknell (IMPORT EXPORT, Warsaw), Stephanie Comilang (ChertLüdde, Berlin), Pauline Curnier Jardin (Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, ChertLüdde, Berlin), Valentina Furian (UNA, Piacenza), Lungiswa Gqunta (WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town), Beatrice Marchi (Federico Vavassori, Milan), Lili Reynaud Dewar (Layr, Vienna), and Silvia Rivas (Rolf Art, Buenos Aires).
Drawing inspiration from the distinctive features of the museum’s exhibition space—an underground, immersive architecture—the title, “The Underground Cinema”, evokes Robert Smithson’s reflections on cinematic experiences as a physical and psychic journey of abandonment, where the memory of viewing drifts into “a thicket of elsewheres.” The selection of works, presented in a sequence of kaleidoscopic montages, creates multiple reflections with an almost hypnotic, liminal quality—not as a detachment from reality, but as a means of accessing a deeper level of memory, desire, knowledge, and action. In dialogue with Artissima’s broader thematic framework, the project explores dreamlike imagery, suspended between wakefulness and sleep, light and darkness, reality and its projection on the screen.
As part of this collaboration, “La Condizione Umana”, curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, was presented in 2023, and in 2022, “Collective Individuals”, curated by Leonardo Bigazzi.