Victor Vasarely, Orion Or, 1970. Photography Mazzoleni
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Bologna Arte Fiera: the new route with Artistic Director Simone Menegoi

For the first ever, the decision to appoint a collector as Managing Director; the next edition will be the result of a collaboration with the Furla Foundation

Bologna, the city of Arte Fiera. The fair at its 46th edition

Arte Fiera is by definition an inclusive and democratic fair. Its spirit of renewal is a reflection of unedited choices combined with a return to tradition. Lampoon discussed Arte Fiera’s renewal route with Artistic Director Simone Menegoi, for the fourth time at the helm of the exhibition taking place in Bologna next February. To emphasize renewal, the decision to appoint Enea Righi as Managing Director, who will be in charge of the coordination of some aspects for the success of the event, focusing on the visitor experience. It will be the first time for a fair in Italy or abroad to have a collector to cover the role. 

The Halls represent Arte Fiera history

Arte Fiera will be reclaiming its customary sites, Halls 25 and 26, the ones it had always been historically associated with. The Halls represent Arte Fiera history, considered a symbol of the city and the BolognaFiere company, whose stylized logo is carved in the truss of the pavilions, the first to be built in the neighborhood back in the day. A short walk from Piazza Costituzione, the fair district’s main entrance from the city. A return to tradition, yet in discontinuity with recent history. 

Arte Fiera 2023 will count 141 exhibitors in total parted in the Main Section and curated sections. The offer will range from the Twentieth century to contemporary trends, a well rooted tradition in the city from a strictly cultural point of view.

Performance is a field of expression linked to Bologna and to Arte Fiera, which has made live performance an essential feature of its program of events since 2019. From the first edition in 1975, performers attending Arte Fiera have gone down in history, like Marina Abramovich and Ulay, with some of them even financed by the fair. 

The next edition will be the result of a collaboration with the Furla Foundation, curated by Bruna Roccasalva, the Foundation’s artistic director. There will be a single, large-scale event making its Italian debut, merging installation, performance and choreography: a live creation by Public Movement, an Israeli artistic collective.

Arte Fiera: locations and a waste-free, reuse-oriented policy 

There’s no theme to Arte Fiera, which is described by Menegoi as multifaceted and dedicated to the generalist public. The relationship with the spaces is relaxed.  The fair aims to attract the wider public as well as a more specialized segment, one that mostly determines the success of a fair: collectors, collaborators from the art world, art critics, journalists.

The entrance area that will be welcoming visitors before they enter the Halls will be redesigned by MCA – Mario Cucinella Architects. Cucinella proposed to readapt the “Design with Nature” installation created for the recent Salone del Mobile in Milano 2022, consisting of two large tables, designed with the use of recycled material, it is capable of generating different and multifunctional spaces and encouraging interaction between visitors. The main idea behind this intervention is to attract the attention on the issues of sustainability which has been a central element in the Studio’s activity for the last thirty years.

The new version of the design is destined to live on the service area even after Arte Fiera. For the occasion, it was reimagined with a curved and welcoming 1225 square meters long shape containing a bookshop, a VIP desk and an area devoted to presentations and meetings, a space for cultural dialogue and debate. 

Linked to the Piazza Costituzione entrance, a 5×9-meter screen will display the first LED Wall Commission, dedicated to Yuri Ancarani, an artist celebrated in the fields of visual arts and motion picture. At the same time Ancarani will host its solo show at MAMbo – Bologna Museum of Modern Arts.

Reimagined visual identity and communication formats 

New sections, more artists, more curators and an updated visual identity. Among this year’s innovations, a new visual identity curated by Leftloft, an independent creative studio based in Milan working on commercial and cultural projects. Their choice was to go back to Arte Fiera’s traditional logo: the circle and the colors: red, black and white. Adding animations, gifs and dynamism to the original idea, they brought the circle to life.

It will now be possible to present a greater number of artists, with no quantitative constraint for large stands. The goal is to significantly expand the offer of artists and works participating at the fair, and encourage further investment in collecting.

Alongside the curated sections, Arte Fiera 2023 will launch a new format: Percorso. Not a real section but, as the title indicates, an itinerary that connects a certain number of stands in the Main section according to a thematic criterion. The theme of the first Percorso will be a material or a technique that has undergone an international rediscovery in recent years: ceramics.

Last but not least, the scripts: manual interventions that add notes and annotations to the main messages, meeting with a more informal and personalized approach to art and the public. The scripts are designed to make them look like they were written by hand, quickly, resembling the look of confidential annotations. 

The fair is like a construction site, explained Menegoi, and it is constantly being renewed.

Simone Menegoi

Simone Menegoi was born in 1970. He’s an independent critic and curator working in Italy and abroad. He was appointed Artistic Director of Arte Fiera in 2019.  

Martina Tondo

The writer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article.

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