EMPORIUM - A New Common Sense of Space Curated by: Beatrice Leanza

November 5 – December 8, 2009

Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica Leonardo Da Vinci
Via San Vittore 21, Milano - Italy

Opening for Press and Invited Guests - November 4, 2009, 6:00 PM

Exhibition Design: dotdotdot

Presented for the first time in Milan, the exhibition Emporium - A New Common Sense of Space features the works of 27 artists from China, Japan and South Korea by framing a critical analysis of the materials, places and processes of representation shaping specific uses and interpretations of the ‘contemporary’.

The different material, sonic, architectural and performative explorations here presented intend to encourage both an historical and aesthetic understanding of the social, urban and technological phenomena informing the present of specific cultural regions, and the way they outline a form of radically open, polycentric sense of internationalism.

EMPORIUM draws itself onto a cultural territory that defies notions of regionalism and nation-based entitlements, by privileging instead the impression of a mobile, productively unstable experience of identity, which signals the emergence of aesthetic strategies and subjective orders of yet specific cultural provenience.

The exhibition therefore sets forth an investigation of multidisciplinary artistic practices which implicate new formal and conceptual relationships with the space of the contemporary and the habitat of the everyday, by introducing a heterogeneous group of artists, art collectives and independently-run art spaces with backgrounds in art, design, music and architecture.

The projects included in this exhibition manifest an intrinsic connection with the spatial and social conventions of their original contexts, and intend to provide an understanding of the way younger generations are formulating new ways to deal with the space of art and social action by assuming a position of open, dynamic marginality.