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Artissima, 31 October – 3 November 2019, Torino, Italy

Artissima is Italy’s most important contemporary art fair. Since its establishment in 1994, it has combined the presence of an international market with a focus on experimentation and research. Share

Artissima will open its 26th edition by returning to the Oval in Turin from Thursday 31 October (preview) to Sunday 3 November 2019. For the third consecutive year, Artissima is directed by Ilaria Bonacossa, whose appointment as director has been recently reconfirmed by the board of directors of Fondazione Torino Musei for the next two years (until 2021).

As the only fair in Italy exclusively devoted to contemporary art, Artissima welcomes over 55,000 visitors with a diverse and experimental programme responds to the interesting developments of our time. Internationally renowned for its focus on pioneering practices, and as a launching pad for up-and-coming artists and galleries, Artissima attracts a large audience of collectors, sector professionals and art lovers every year.

With each edition, the fair welcomes curators, directors of art institutions and foundations, as well as the patrons of museums from all over the world who are involved in various ways in its programme. The theme for Artissima’s 26th edition is the duality of desire/censorship. The objective is to stimulate timely and varied reflections on the power of the image: contemporary ambitions and utopias; the impulses that shape our times, and the perspectives and narratives that cross them.

The vitality of Artissima resonates throughout the city, thanks to the many cultural projects made in collaboration with public institutions, museums, foundations and galleries across the region. Artissima contributes to the growth of the Italian contemporary art market: stimulating and supporting collectors with an eye for innovation, and a continuously evolving critical and curatorial vision. The fair is managed by Artissima srl, a company affiliated with Fondazione Torino Musei.

Artissima, 31 October – 3 November 2019, Torino, Italy
Photo: Courtesy of Artissima
The theme of the 26th edition

The theme of the fair in the words of Ilaria Bonacossa: “Desire springs from the relationship between the body and society, between experienced reality and an imagined, coveted existence. In history, works of art have conveyed images capable of emancipating us from things conventionally seen as taboo, thanks to the desire to break rules, to dissolve the boundaries between normal and exceptional.

The borderline between permitted and prohibited content is at the centre of a very timely debate in which art itself is the object of censorship. In the digital world and the main social networks preventive, often algorithmic control increasingly hampers the spread and promotion of our artistic-cultural heritage. In such a context, desire remains a moment of rupture, a ‘ligne de fuite’, as Deleuze and Guattari posited in A Thousand Plateaux: a disruptive energy that manages to infiltrate the cracks in the system, to open up unexpected lateral viewpoints capable of showing the open spaces beyond the limits of conventions. And contemporary art is still a space of true, physical encounter between people and their aspirations”.

Dates: 31 October – 3 November 2019

Address: OVAL Lingotto Fiere, via Giacomo Matté Trucco, 70, Torino