Culture
Giuseppe Veneziano. 10 NFT
This is NFT’s first solo exhibition ever held in a public space in Italy. Of the 10 works of cryptoart developed by Giuseppe Veneziano, five are located outdoors along the streets in the Borgo antico of Cernobbio, four indoors at La Cernobbina Art Studio (together with a few canvases on display as evidence of the work for which Veneziano is best known). The last (accompanied by a short film explaining its meaning) in the rooms of Villa Bernasconi. For the most part, the NFTs presented here refer to the best-known repertoire of Western art history. It is a corpus of works starting with the Renaissance (Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael), looking to Caravaggio, then to Vermeer and moving closer to us with references to Van Gogh, Salvador Dali and even Maurizio Cattellan. The author (who is also an art history lecturer) ‘plays’ with these masterpieces by rendering them in a seemingly easy style, but places them within a very recent, complex and discussed technology such as NFT, making their figures capable of movement and even sound.
The possibilities for reading these NFTs are manifold. The most immediate is definitely ‘Pop-ular’. The NFT dedicated to Zlatan Ibrahimović holding the golden ball in his hands refers to Leonardo’s famous Creator Mundi. Likewise, the Madonna and Child holding a beating heart in her hands takes us back to Raphael’s many depictions on this theme. Also visible is a corrosive NFT featuring two of Walt Disney’s most famous characters: Goofy and Mickey Mouse. The second reading is more critical. The NFTs that Veneziano has dedicated to Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait or Leonardo’s Last Supper (presented at Villa Bernasconi) or Veermer’s painting The Girl with the Turban are easily recognisable ‘devices’, but they are used here to make us reflect on the contagious ‘selfie’ madness by which we have all become infected. Then there is a third reading. The latter leads us to consider the very recent NFT phenomenon in itself. In contemporary art, but not only, there is a lively debate taking into consideration the financial speculation of the value chains (Blockchain) that support them: a decidedly complex phenomenon that is currently inflaming the controversies of art experts everywhere.
Works on display in the streets of the village. Zatlan Mundi, 2022. Petritying Glance, 2022. Madonna of the Sacred Heart, 2021. Vincent Van Gogh’s Selfie, 2022. Cryptocurrency, 2022. Works on show at La Cernobbina Art Studio. Almost Friends. Venus, 2022. Balloon Christ, 2022. Artist’s Shit, 2022. Work on show at Villa Bernasconi. The Last Selfie, 2022. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco Last Supper.
Info
GIUSEPPE VENEZIANO. 10 NFT
Curated by Aldo Premoli
UNTIL 8 JANUARY 2023
Villa Bernasconi
Largo Alfredo Campanini 2, Cernobbio
The Cernobbina Art Studio
Via Regina 69, Cernobbio
Village of Cernobbio
Via F. Cavallotti, E. Fumagalli, Via XX Settembre, Piazza C. T. Galli, Cernobbio
