Ñewpressionism in Milan: 1,11,111
From screen to nature and back again
Introduced by Miltos Manetas
With the contributions of Swiss and international artists, architects,
designers, writers, composers and authors:
Giona Bernardi, Sebastian Frank Bietenhader, Domenico Billari, Brenna Murphy, Mike Calvert, Thomas
Chenesau, Petra Cortright, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Olivier Fairhurst, Cédric Fargues, Sylvie Fleury,
Gina Folly, Ronnie Fueglister, Alessandro Giannì, Valery Grancher, Loic Gouzer, Dunja Herzog, Bruno
Jakob, Matthew Landry, Oliver Laric, Miriam Laura Leonardi, Corrado Luminati, Miltos Manetas, Jed
Martin, Lorna Mills, Lorenzo Micheli Gigotti, Robert Montgomery, Valentina Nascimben, Angelo Plessas,
Luca Pozzi, Jon Rafman, Nora Renaud, Florian Schmidt Gabain, Travess Smalley, Priscilla Tea, Mai Ueda,
Amalia Ulman, Harm van den Dorpel, Christian Wassmann, Seyoung Yoon, Ché Zara Blomfield.
11 June – 19 July 2014
Opening Tuesday 10 June 2014, 18.30
Exhibition hours:
Monday-Friday 11.00-18.00; Saturday 14.00-18.00
Closed Sundays and holidays
Free entrance
Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Milan office
Via del Vecchio Politecnico 3
20121 Milan
T. +39 02 76 01 61 18
milano@istitutosvizzero.it
Ñewpressionism in Milan: 1,11,111 is the first public demonstration of a concept and an artistic trend
whose essential aspects are still taking on form and comprehension. This public event arises from the
hypotheses produced during the workshop conducted by the artist Miltos Manetas in March 2014 for
Studio Roma, the transdisciplinary program on the contemporary.
Swiss and international artists, architects, designers, writers, composers and author are responding to
Ñewpressionism with creative input ranging from concrete works of art to the immaterial character of
ideas expressed through references or words.
The exhibition functions like a true computer: the exhibition space of the Swiss Institute in Milan,
transformed for the occasion by the architect Sebastian Bietenhader, becomes the desktop on which
some of the artworks from those gathered to date in the dynamic memory of Ñewpressionism will be
displayed.
Ñewpressionism manifests itself, as happens in luminous projections, by intersecting with the solid
surface of matter, but it is also defined through the immaterial encounter between a name and a thought.
It proposes a ñew approach to reality, where the ~ indicates a novelty that is not awaited, but is already
present and can be shown. Ñewpressionism is a projection of the spirit on Nature that combines the
digital principle – that process of numerical and repeatable binary representation – with approximated
associative formulae, shaded and dense like those generated by analogy.
Ñewpressionism sets out to cross the screen that today is part of nature itself. The screen projects,
transmits, translates but also protects, conceals and borders. Screens protect us from a wider view, isolate us
from the “entirety” showing only a part, one fragment at a time, not allowing us to grasp the
“impression,” the sensation of the “overall landscape.” In the digital world there is still a whole nature to
be unveiled that effectively is not code and belongs to the realm of the senses.
To fully express the digital we therefore need to return to Painting, Printing and Sculpture, and all the
analogical techniques that produce elaborated computations and examples of cerebral calculation that
change over time. They results they produce are more like enigmas than explanations, and when all this
becomes a work of art, these works can also be seen as computers: canvases, bronzes, books that
“calculate” in multiple universes and do not merely simulate what we call “past,” but also produce what
we call “future.”
The attempt of Ñewpressionism is to capture the entire essence: technological and natural. It means
trying, once again, to reach and make use of a “deeper realism,” something new that may seem light,
facile and not very conceptual, at first glance. Something “impressionistic.”
Press office:
Alessandra Santerini, +39 335 6853767
alessandrasanterini@gmail.com
Carola Serminato, +39 349 1299250
carola.serminato@gmail.com
Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Milan office
Via del Vecchio Politecnico 3
20121 Milano
T. +39 02 76 01 61 18
milano@istitutosvizzero.it
www.istitutosvizzero.it