20 years of masks and costumes

The criteria for choosing the sketches for this exhibition are, of course, tied to the character of the Carnival and favor extravagance, extro, absurd, paradox and surreal, but also the color and rhythm present In the sketches. The massive selection was made according to these themes: "Masks and New Masks", "Musics", "Crafts", "Animals", "Belle Epoque", "Old America", "Military", "Portraits of Absurd" "Sexy ladies", "Games and fairy tales".

The exhibition includes sketches displayed in "real" size, tableaux that collect different interpretations of the same subject, "macro" reproductions also shaped and / or hanging on the ceiling, flying objects. The authors are among the most famous artists of modernity and contemporaneity: Felice Casorati, Renato Guttuso, Emanuele Luzzati, Mino Maccari, Giacomo Calò Carducci, Piero Copertini, Gianna Lanza, Jacques Lecoq, Enrico Capuzzo, Jean Pierre Ponnelle, Theophanes Matsoukis, Ed Wittstein, Walter Siegfrid, Dorino Cioffi, Giancarlo Tantille, Therese Van Treek, Dafne Ciarocchi.

Video screens reproduce cross-fading sequences of images (scenes and characters) associated with musical excerpts to listen through specially crafted headphones.

The selected  performances for listening are: “Allez-hop!” (Berio-Lecoq), “Treemonisha” (Scott Joplin-Copertini), “Idomeneo” (Mozart-Casorati), “Il Mandarino Meraviglioso” (Bartók-Ponnelle), “Lady Machbeth of Minsk” (Shostakovic-Guttuso).

Ivan Fedele for his part recalled that "Masks and masks costumes are the symbols of the Carnival. From the earliest forms of this liturgy of re-creation (celebration of the passage from chaos to cosmogony order), as we know them in festivals in honor of Dionysus or the Roman Saturnals, or in the representations of the ancient Indo-European myths, these symbols are were also used for other forms of representation such as street theater or cultured theater, creating real characters and places of fiction to which roles and precise features were associated. Theater and music theater are an inexhaustible source of invention and creation of a fantastic imagery that is expressed in scenes, costumes and masks (in the broad sense) that necessarily inhabit the "surreal", even in the interpretations they would like to say More realistic. "

• The Grand Atelier of the Biennale
A surprise for kids... of all ages! The Tailor's laboratory was set up at Ca’ Giustinian, where it was possible, in a matter of minutes, to make a carnival costume with simple or "poor" materials on the pattern of some sketches of the exhibition. With the help of our collaborators you could leave Ca 'Giustinian with a new and original costume!

Ca’ Giustinian: 2 through 12 February 2013.