0:1 Palla al Centro | Temporaneo e Certo 2022
curated by Gianluca Collica

Artists: Federico Baronello, Francesco Di Giovanni, Rä di Martino, Urs Lüthi, Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Nicola Pecoraro, Viola Yesiltaç

The concept stems from a desire to articulate and make visible a personal vision of art through a dialogue between the specific cultural identity of Sicily and diverse international cultural contexts.
Drawing on experiences developed since the 1990s, and engaging with historical turning points such as the global financial crisis of 2008 and the broader transformations that have shaped the contemporary West, the research focuses primarily on artists whose practices approach everyday life through an intimate, lyrical, and experiential perspective, proposing forms of narrative capable of fostering subjective, participatory, and shared ways of seeing.
The programme is structured around two apparently autonomous yet, upon closer examination, deeply interconnected and complementary lines of research.
The first centres on narrative, identifying figurative painting, though not exclusively, as a privileged means of articulating the relationship between art and life. The self-referentiality and authority that characterised significant strands of artistic practice at the end of the twentieth century are now being challenged by the need for forms of narrative that are less cryptic, more open and inclusive, and more responsive to the concerns of contemporary society, thereby establishing a renewed relationship between art and history.
Within this perspective, particular attention is given to the relationship between recognisability and style, including the ways in which market forces may condition creative freedom; to the sustainability of artistic production and the responsibility of communication; and to the progressive redefinition of authorship and self-referentiality through the sharing of knowledge, collaboration, and cross-pollination between artistic languages. The research thus places the Sicilian model at the centre of its narrative, recognising both its longstanding and profound relationship with figuration and its capacity to engage with an international cultural dimension.
The second line of research addresses the recent past, and in particular a trajectory of artistic inquiry that, beginning in the 1990s, altered the perspective from which the world was perceived by introducing an experiential approach capable of articulating both the objective and subjective values embedded in lived contexts. This aesthetic is fundamental to understanding contemporary practice and to establishing a historical framework for the poetics of numerous contemporary artists, including those working in Sicily.
This trajectory also considers the transformations brought about by the 2008 financial crisis and the resulting condition of social and existential precarity, which have profoundly altered both the ways in which life is perceived and the ways in which art is conceived. Twentieth-century determinism has progressively given way to a more horizontal, fluid, and contingent relationship with reality, fostering new forms of collaboration while redefining the artist’s role within the cultural system and reshaping the relationship between artist and audience.
The research therefore focuses on the need for forms of narrative that move beyond mere chronicle, provocation, or spectacle, favouring instead a critical and participatory engagement with the present. In this sense, the two lines of research converge in questioning the role of art within the identity-forming processes of contemporary society and in defining a new status for the artist: no longer an isolated and self-referential author, but an agent capable of sharing, cross-pollinating, and bringing experiences, languages, and forms of knowledge into dialogue.