Galleria Vezzoli 29 May – 24 November 2013

Press Kit

1. Press release Galleria Vezzoli

2. Sponsor

3. Giovanna Melandri, President Fondazione MAXXI

4. Anna Mattirolo, Exhibition Curator and Director MAXXI Arte

5. Douglas Fogle - Always crashing in the same car

6. Donatien Grau - Francesco Vezzoli and neo-neo classicism

7. Chrissie Iles - The Provocative Witness. Francesco Vezzoli, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Radical Possibilities Of Cinema

8. Cristiana Perrella - From Brescia to Hollywood and back. Conversation with the artist

9. Catalogue profile: Electa

10. Sponsor: Arcus

11. Sponsor: Il Gioco del Lotto

12. Sponsor: Camera di Commercio

13. Sponsor: Gobbetto

FRANCESCO VEZZOLI. “THE TRINITY”

MAXXI in Rome, MoMA PS1 in New York, MOCA in Los Angeles:

three prestigious museums celebrate the Italian artist in 2013

GALLERIA VEZZOLI at MAXXI over 90 works in the first Italian retrospective devoted to the artist

29 May – 24 November 2013, curated by Anna Mattirolo

THE CHURCH OF VEZZOLI at MoMA PS1 Autumn 2013, curated by Klaus Biesenbach

CINEMA VEZZOLI at MOCA Autumn/winter 2013, curated by Alma Ruiz

www.fondazionemaxxi.it | www.moma.org | www.moca.org

Rome, 23 May 2013. Internationally recognised as one of the most brilliant Italian artists of his generation, in 2013 Francesco Vezzoli is set to be showcased in three solo shows at MAXXI in Rome, MoMA PS1 in New York and MOCA in Los Angeles. Three independent exhibitions but each forming part of the major project The Trinity, born as a joint venture between three prestigious international institutions and exploring and presenting to the public diverse and fundamental aspects of the artist's work and development.

The series begins at MAXXI in Rome where, from 29 May through to 24 November 2013, the museum will be hosting Galleria Vezzoli, the first Italian retrospective devoted to this star of contemporary art, curated by Anna Mattirolo, director of MAXXI Arte.

“MAXXI has to consolidate and continue to reinforce its international ventures”, says Giovanna Melandri, president of the Fondazione MAXXI. “This is one of our new objectives. In terms of research and the production and circulation of exhibitions and projects in support of young artists, architects and creative figures today. A full-scale working team has been assembled around Francesco Vezzoli that has involved a number of institutions and I am delighted that the project gets underway at MAXXI in Italy."

GALLERIA VEZZOLI Over 90 works, some exhibited for the first time, delineating Vezzoli's artistic career, from the first embroideries in 1995 to the tapestries, the photographs and the more recent videos, through to the last sculptures in marble. With an investigation of the self-portrait that references the collection of the museums of the past. The title of the exhibition is itself inspired, with a degree of levity and irony, by Rome’s great galleries: it suggests the atmosphere of the 19th Century museums and is also a reflection on the role of the contemporary museum, a theme close to both the artist and the curator. In line with that determination not to be subjected to but to choose or to create the exhibition space that has always characterised Vezzoli, Galleries 2 and 3 have been completely transformed: red damask, wood panelling, stuccowork, niches and classical-style sculptures have reconfigured the futuristic spaces designed by Zaha Hadid to create, in a kind of “impertinent violation”, a museum within a museum. Further confirmation of the ductility of MAXXI which continues to represent a challenge and a stimulus for curators and artists and a surprise for the public.

“In his own way, Vezzoli interprets a theme which is central for us today, the role of the museum”, says Anna Mattirolo, “and he does so through the most classical modes of presentation: galleries of self-portraits, tapestries and sculptures. Parodying a traditional 19th Century museum, the artist invites us to think about the function of the museum today, precariously balanced between the “museum as temple” and the “throwaway museum”: a reflection on the world of contemporary art and the star system that revolves around it and which it is now difficult to avoid.”

THE EXHIBITION LAYOUT Multiple cultural references traverse Francesco Vezzoli’s work, from the first embroidered pieces, an intimate and private technique developed during his training in London which he uses to reproduce abstract paintings

from the Bauhaus, such as the Homages to the Square (Homage to Joseph Albers’s “Homage to the Square” – Fade to Grey to Green) or Mark Rothko in Conversation Piece, both from 1995.

For years Vezzoli has worked on the theme of fame and the media and communications phenomena that determine it, stripping bare its mechanisms. With the collaboration of international film and TV stars, he has created videos and performances with Valentina Cortese, Franca Valeri and Iva Zanicchi (Trilogia del Ricamo/ Embroidery Trilogy, 1997-99), with Helmut Berger in a rereading of an episode from the American soap opera Dynasty (The Kiss, 2000), with – among others – Helen Mirren, Milla Yovovich and Courtney Love (Trailer per un Rifacimento di Caligola di Gore Vidal/ Trailer for a remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula, 2005), with Sharon Stone and Bernard-Harry Levy (Democrazy, 2007), with Eva Mendes in a rereading of La Dolce Vita (Jeu de Paume, je t’aime! Advertisement for an exhibition that will never open 2009) and with Lady Gaga (Ballets Russes Italian Style – The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again, 2009).

The major installation La Trilogia della Morte/The Trilogy of Death belongs to the same strand and is composed of three works: Comizi di Non-Amore/ Speeches of Non-Love, 120 Sedute di Sodoma/ 120 Sittings of Sodoma and La Fine di Edipo Re/The End of Oedipus Rex. Presented at the Fondazione Prada in 2004 and exhibited in Paris in 2008 at the Grand Palais, the installation was born out of reflection on the thinking of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

A section of the exhibition is devoted to self-portraits. They include Self Portrait with Vera Lehndorff as Veruschka (2001), the photos from the series Francesco by Francesco (2002), made with the fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo, Francesco Vezzoli as Jean Cocteau (2002) and Greed (2010), in which he portrays himself on the label of a bottle of non-existent perfume.

Vezzoli’s self-portrait finds an eternal dimension in the latest works, the sculptures in marble from 2011 and 2012 that depict the artist in the guise of a satyr, a toga-clad Roman and an emperor. Works that mark a turning-point in his output: “from Hollywood to the Louvre” as he himself has said in an interview. The world of film and television, which for many years has obsessed the artist’s creative imagination gives way to a revisitation of the masterpieces of antiquity. As in Satire of a Satyr from 2011 and Antique not antique: self portrait as a crying Roman togatus from 2012.

Galleria Vezzoli will be followed in the autumn by The Church of Vezzoli at MoMA PS1 in New York, curated by Klaus Biesenbach: a deconsecrated church from the 19th Century originally built in the south of Italy, disassembled and rebuilt in the courtyard of MoMA PS1. Then, in late autumn, MOCA in Los Angeles will see Cinema Vezzoli, curated by Alma Ruiz, in which the artist, drawing on classic European film and the Hollywood star system, recounts the modern-day obsession with fame, politics and the public ostentation of private lives.

Francesco Vezzoli Francesco Vezzoli was born in 1971, in Brescia, Italy. He studied at Central St. Martins School of Art in London from 1992 to 1995. He currently lives and works in Milan. The artist’s work has been presented in various museums including The Garage CCC, Moscow, (2010), MOCA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2009), Kunsthalle Wien Project Space, Vienna (2009), Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris (2009), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2009), L'UIF Wolfsonian, Miami (2008), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2007), International Exposition of Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2001). His works have featured in diverse biennials, including the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the 49th and 51st Biennale of Venice, the 26th Biennial of São Paulo, the 6th International Biennial of Istanbul, and in numerous group shows.

MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts

info: 06.399.67.350; info@fondazionemaxxi.it | www.fondazionemaxxi.it - www.romaexhibit.it opening times: 11.00 – 19.00 (Tuesday, Wednesday. Thursday, Friday, Sunday) |11.00 – 22.00 (Saturday) Closed: Mondays, 1 May and 25 December | tickets: €11.00 adults, €8.00 reduced

MAXXI Press Office +39 06 3225178, press@fondazionemaxxi.it The press pack and images of the exhibition may be downloaded from the reserved area of the Fondazione MAXXI site at http://www.fondazionemaxxi.it/?page_id=5176 inserting the password areariservatamaxxi

Galleria Vezzoli 29 May – 24 November 2013

Galleria Vezzoli 29 May – 24 November 2013 Giovanna Melandri, President Fondazione MAXXI [...]The Galleria Vezzoli show is part of the more ambitious project entitled The Trinity, the first large international retrospective dedicated to Francesco Vezzoli’s work, organized in collaboration with the MoMA PS1 in New York and the MOCA in Los Angeles. The project comprises three distinct and closely interrelated events that celebrate and delve deeply into the past fifteen years of research conducted by this remarkable artist. With regard to this opportunity for collaboration and synergy with other major contemporary art institutions, the MAXXI is at the cutting edge in its preparation of this exhaustive as well as in-depth project focusing on one of the most original internationally acclaimed personalities of the past decade. The exhibition route wavers between the glamour of the video, the Hadrian-like syncretism of the styles, and the private dimension of the embroideries, the emblems of a domestic nostalgia for the past. The result is an ambient that combines irony with the rigor of the choices made, thus transforming the museum rooms into a space for the artist’s very personal style. The MAXXI has taken on the difficult but stimulating task of letting Vezzoli (an artist whose vision involves places and languages) completely overturn the design of the display rooms to the point of absorbing the inside of the museum within his own work, examining not just the issue of installations and expository expression, but of those particular places, spaces, volumes and especially those furnishings. [...] To complete the work on the exhibition, the MAXXI along with Electa, has published a catalogue which seeks to be a complete product, combining research, documentation and information [...]. Excerpt from Galleria Vezzoli, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Art), Electa, Milan 2013

Galleria Vezzoli 29 May – 24 November 2013 Anna Mattirolo, Exhibition Curator and Director MAXXI Arte Galleria Vezzoli “Galleria Vezzoli,” which is the title chosen for the exhibition, is a play on words, a semantic short circuit based on the union of realities that are distant from one another: the term “Galleria” recalls the eighteenth-nineteenth-century museum collections, while the artist’s surname immediately propels us toward the contemporary scene. This strident adjacency is ideally corroborated in the exhibition that focuses on turning the MAXXI into a nineteenth-century gallery dedicated to Vezzoli’s works. Multiple levels of interpretation are interwoven and juxtaposed, while the chronological arrangement of the works exhibited is combined with an in-depth analysis of the theme of the selfportrait and a reflection on the role of the contemporary museum. The aim is not just to offer a complete itinerary, but to reconstruct a more complex profi le of the artist, to go more deeply into his creative universe in order to grasp the wealth of cultural references that can be viewed in his works. It should come as no surprise that an exhibition design with a particular connotation has been chosen for the event, characterized by the use of red damask, boiserie, niches and sculptures in Classical style which redesign the spaces of the MAXXI, echoing the majestic redundancy of nineteenth- century galleries, the “museums as temples,” which were being built in that period in many European cities. By exploiting the pliable nature of Zaha Hadid’s fluid lines it was possible to create a completely different ambient, a “museum within a museum,” which subverts the public’s expectations, determining a provocative overturning of reality. The exhibition soon reveals Vezzoli’s interest in museum institutions, an attraction that encourages him to act upon the spaces, to modify them, to cross-pollinate them with his own work until they are no longer recognizable. [...] The aim is to create strident adjacencies that generate tension, “I force individuals or institutions to do something that goes against the grain.” In this continuous shift of perceptions distant realities dialogue with one another, such as in the case of "Galleria Vezzoli" that sums up different reflections: it encourages the public to interact in a new way with the works on display and raises an interesting discussion on the role of the museum institution today. Excerpt from Galleria Vezzoli, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Art), Electa, Milan 2013

Galleria Vezzoli 29 May – 24 November 2013 Douglas Fogle Always crashing in the same car [...] Why spend so much time investigating the hyper-melodramatic female figures that populate the first decades of post-War Hollywood cinema? Looking more carefully at these strange cinematic moments helps us reflection the work of Francesco Vezzoli who has spent his career working with just such survivors, enlisting the talents of figures as wide ranging as Courtney Love, Lauren Bacall, Sharon Stone, and Karen Black. Some are thought of as legends, while others have been called B-actresses, fallen stars, or much worse. Many of these actresses have passed through the fires of scandal, bad reviews, and a multitude of hypermelodramatic film scenarios. Perhaps this is why he has been so obsessed with these figures. In Gloria Swanson, Gene Tierney, Dorothy Malone, Elizabeth Taylor, and even Antigone, we see the precursors to Vezzoli’s contemporary pantheon of tragic melodramatic women. In his Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula (2005), for example, we witness a veritable casting call of what Fassbinder calls “Sirkian hope,” in other words insanity. Although only lasting a few minutes, this steroidal exercise in dramatic excess takes the most extreme moment in the history of the Roman empire and populates it with the likes of A-listers, B-listers and forgotten heroines alike such as Helen Mirren, Karen Black, Courtney Love, Michelle Phillips, and Milla Jovovich. As with his casting of Sharon Stone as an aspiring American politician in his election-themed film Democrazy (2007), Vezzoli always puts a mirror in front of our mediadriven culture making us recognize the figures that he casts and bask in their celebrity, while at the same time inserting them into a feedback loop that cycles around and around until the Hollywood image machine is run into the ground [...]. Douglas Fogle is an independent curator and contributing editor of "Artforum", "Flash Art", "Parkett", e "Frieze". From 2009-2012 he served as Deputy Director, Exhibition and Programs, and Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles where he organized a variety of exhibitions including Ed Ruscha: On the Road, an international group exhibition All of this and nothing (curated with Anne Ellegood) and Luisa Lambri: Being there. Previously, he served as curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh from 2005-2009, prior to that, Fogle was a curator in the Visual Arts Department of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from 1994-2005 where he curated a wide array of exhibitions such as Painting at the Edge of the World, The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960-1982, Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters 1962-1964 and solo exhibitions with Catherine Opie and Julie Mehretu. Excerpt from Galleria Vezzoli, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Art), Electa, Milan 2013

Galleria Vezzoli 29 May – 24 November 2013 Donatien Grau Francesco Vezzoli and neo-neo classicism [...]Neo-classical extremism—of the kind that inspired Winckelmann’s formulation and motto “edle Einfalt, stille Größe” (“noble simplicity, calm grandeur”)—is displayed by Francesco Vezzoli’s sculptures. It is displayed as such, and pursued even in the awareness of its extremism. Artists like Aubanel and Gérôme, Couture, obviously knew quite well that there was a discrepancy between the forms they practiced and the period their world was entering. So they continued to cherish forms that were their own, leading them along the only path possible when faced with the rupture society imposed on them: hyperbole. At the same time that they took this path, they had pegged to their hearts the idea that they belonged to the end of an age. In this respect they did not fail to look at their attachment to the dead past with a certain distance, and sometimes even a certain humor, well aware of the despair inherent in their prospect. It is also Francesco Vezzoli’s, whose features, present on his sculptures, are never devoid of some form of distance or parody. Of course there is the distance related to the extreme hieraticism, this vision so aestheticized thatit loses all the qualities of accomplishment. This limit of perfection is particularly perceptible in his self-portrait as Apollo, in those as Hadrian and Antinous. By contrast, his self-portrait as a satyr, sticking out his tongue, and alternatively placing it in the ear of another satyr, or in its mouth, cannot be conceived without taking into account the large element of play, even mockery, in the classical code. It has a playful, almost parodic, aspect. [...] One might then think that this humor and this parodic distance of “Antique or Not Antique,” would dissociate self-portraits, apparently more imbued with a spirit of seriousness. This is not so, because a sculpture in this series is added to the self-portraits, making it possible to establish a community of inspiration between the works: the most telling example is the Self–Portrait as Crying Roman Togatus, which joins a bust of Francesco Vezzoli himself to the body of a Roman citizen in a toga [...]. Donatien Grau is a critic, writer and academic. Alumnus of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he teaches French and comparative literature at Université Sorbonne in Paris. He wrote several essays such as: Entretien avec Pier Luigi Tazzi, (2012), Cultivez votre tempête: De l'art, de l'éducation, du politique, de l'universalisme, (2012) e Francesco Vezzoli, Ballets Russes Italian Style, (2011). He’s also a member of the editorial board of La Règle du Jeu, he has written on contemporary art, in France and internationally, for publications such as Art Press and Another Magazine. Excerpt from Galleria Vezzoli, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Art), Electa, Milan 2013

Galleria Vezzoli 29 May – 24 November 2013 Chrissie Iles The Provocative Witness. Francesco Vezzoli, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Radical Possibilities Of Cinema In October 1975, two weeks before he was murdered, Pier Paolo Pasolini asked the Roman photographer Dino Pedriali to photograph him through the windows of his bedroom as he posed naked. The resulting eighteen images show Pasolini reclining on a bed reading, standing with one hand on his forehead, sitting in a chair, defiantly displaying his body, once virile and now ageing, as the visible, corporeal evidence of his role, in Italian society’s eyes, as “a subversive, a troublemaker, a pervert, a corrupter, a homosexual.” Pasolini’s assertion of an alternative model of masculinity within the intellectual heart of post-war Italy, in which he occupied a major position as a writer, poet, filmmaker and cultural figure, not only transgressed the rules of the social order, but suggested that culture could operate as a subversive tool for transformative social engagement. It is this radical possibility, and its manifestation through the language of cinema, that links the work of Pasolini to the project of Francesco Vezzoli. For both Pasolini and Vezzoli, cinema is a site of unresolved conflicts. [...] [...] Whilst Pasolini’s struggle against the hegemony of a consumerist normalcy played itself out in film through archetypal themes and figures – the mother, the prostitute, the worker, biblical stories, folklore, Greek mythology – depicted through visual quotations from Renaissance, Baroque and Mannerist painting, Vezzoli’s approach to the cinema as a site of engaged relationships has been to reinscribe that site with its lost European heroes – Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Roman Polanski – and to place those lost heroes at the center of the consumerist framework by which they were originally ‘contaminated’[...]. Chrissie Iles is curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Adjunct Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York, and is on the Graduate Committee of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Her exhibitions include the 2004 and 2006 Whitney Biennials, the first retrospectives of Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono and John Latham, and exhibitions of Paul McCarthy, Louise Bourgeois, Sharon Hayes, Jack Goldstein, and James Lee Byars. She has curated several large survey exhibitions of film and video, including ‘Signs of the Times: Film, Video and Slide Installation and Britain in the 1980s’, ‘Scream and Scream Again: Film in Art’, ‘Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977’ and ‘Off the Wall: Thirty Performative Actions’. Excerpt from Galleria Vezzoli, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Art), Electa, Milan 2013

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Galleria Vezzoli 29 May – 24 November 2013 Cristiana Perrella

From Brescia to Hollywood and back. Conversation with the artist CP: [...]How did you come up with the idea for this project? F.V. By trying to dribble boredom, predictability, or the pompousness of the concept of the retrospective, and therefore by turning an exhibition in which 95% of the works showcased already exist into something more subversive and multi-territorial, something poised between Cher’s farewell tour and a piece by Gordon Matta Clark. What’s important is not just that my work is being shown for the first time from its many angles, but that the way in which it is being done is in itself a new statement, not a point of arrival but a chance to raise the stakes. Hence, an exhibition that’s actually an anti-retrospective, an anti-museum [...]. C.P. : For years you worked on fame, you studied the media and communication-related phenomena that determine it. [...].Now that your attention has shifted “from Hollywood to the Louvre", is it safe to say that you have abandoned stardom to instead liaise with a form of fame, perhaps a less glamorous one, but one that is longer-lasting, that is, the kind of fame that comes with belonging to art history? F.V. I have shifted my attention because I failed, and I want this to be known. I failed because I involved some very famous figures in my work, but the Roman Polanski video with Natalie Portman and Michelle has 150,000 hits on the Internet, while the real advert for Dior perfume has 1,500,000. So these works did not become a part of the collective imaginary, I don’t know whether it’s because of a mistake I made, or because they weren’t presented the right way. I think having made some very strong gestures, even courageous and complex ones. Of having arrived where many directors never have that is, questioning the system, arguing with the system, anticipating it [...]. In any case my work is part of a niche imaginary: all those who read Artforum, Vogue and W Magazine are familiar with it, but it has not pervaded the global imaginary. C.P. And why do you think that is? F.V. I am convinced that it’s not because the work is weak, but because it’s complex. I used absolute symbols, like the celebrities, but so submerged in references and cross-references that their power of seduction was as if paralyzed. At the same time, the presence of those stars in the work was so strong that they destabilized it, shouted it down. It’s so hard to get these people to work with you, the fact of having managed to involve them in my projects comes before any other quality of the work. And in this sense it is as if I had won my bet, but a bet with myself and, paradoxically, not with art […] . Cristiana Perrella headed from 1998 to 2008 the Contemporary Arts Programme of The British School at Rome, where she curated, among others, shows by Sam Taylor Wood, Cerith Wyn Evans, Francesco Vezzoli, Richard Billingham, Martin Creed, Mark Wallinger, Yinka Shonibare, Mike Nelson, Ian Kiaer, Jonathan Monk, Douglas Gordon, and projects focused on video-art like Sweetie- Female Identity in British Video and VideoVibe- Art, Music and Video in the UK. As an independent curator she worked for various Italian and International institutions, included MAXXI, where she curated in 2010 one of the inaugural shows, Kutlug Ataman. Mesopotamian Dramaturgies and in 2012 (with Tania Bruguera) the internationl festival of performance VIVA Performance Lab Cosenza. From 2009 she has been working for Fondazione Marino Golinelli on an art and science ongoing project. She is the editor of a forthcoming monograph about Francesco Vezzoli published by Rizzoli International. Excerpt from Galleria Vezzoli, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, MAXXI - National Museum of XXI Century Art), Electa, Milan 2013

Catalogue profile

informazioni Ufficio stampa Electa Tel 02 71046441 electalibri@mondadori.it

CONTENTS Works Introduction Giovanna Melandri Galleria Vezzoli Anna Mattirolo Francesco Vezzoli and Neo-Neo Classicism Donatien Grau The provocative witness: Francesco Vezzoli, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the radical possibilities of cinema Chrissie Iles Always crashing in the same car Douglas Fogle From Brescia to Hollywood and back. Coversation with the artist Cristiana Perrella Exhibited works Biography Bibliography

www.electaweb.com

GALLERIA VEZZOLI Catalogue Electa edited by Anna Mattirolo format 17 x 24 pages 240 illustrations 100 price € 40

ARCUS: INTERVENING IN SUPPORT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

In the month of February 2004, the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities was responsible for the constitution of Arcus SpA, a limited company devoted to supporting art, culture and the performing arts, in accordance with Law No. 291 of 16 October 2003. 291. The company capital is wholly underwritten by the Ministry of the Economy, while the company’s day-to-day activities are based on the programmes established by annual decrees adopted by the Minister for Cultural Heritage and Activities – who also exercises the shareholder rights – together with the Minister for Infrastructures. Arcus may also develop independent projects.

Arcus’s declared aim is that of providing innovative support for significant and ambitious projects within the world of cultural heritage and activities and its possible interrelations with the country’s strategic infrastructures.Within the ambit of Arcus’s mission, supporting projects entails identifying important initiatives, contributing to the completion of planning, intervening in organizational and technical aspects, participating – where appropriate or necessary – in the financing of the project, monitoring its development and contributing to its successful outcomeIt is important that Arcus’s modus operandi is clearly understood, as explained above: the company intervenes to provide organizational and financial support for significant projects, but in no way is it comparable to an agency for the distribution of funding, nor may it be numbered among the “scattershot” distributors of public or private funds.Arcus is, therefore, an original instrument for the support and launching of significant and innovative projects within the panorama of Italian culture. Economic support, where provided, must be seen as wholly instrumental within the ambit of a cultural project that is conceptually valid and operationally shared.

In more detail, Arcus provides assistance for initiatives relating, for example:

To achieve its aims Arcus draws on resources detailed in article 60 of Law 289 of 27 December 2002 (Financial Law 2003). The legislation provides for 3% of the funding for infrastructures being devoted to expenses relating to interventions safeguarding and in favour of cultural heritage and activities. Arcus is identified asthe recipient structure for these funds. Furthermore, in accordance with article 3 of Law No. 43 of 31 March 2005, the above-mentioned percentage is increased annually by afurther 2%. Moreover, the company may receive finances provided by the European Union, the stateand other public and private bodies.

Arcus also works to bring potential stakeholders into contact with the various projects.When necessary, therefore, the company contacts foundations with banking origins or otherwise,local authorities, exponents of local bodies and civic society, the universities and private individuals in order to aggregate around the initiatives increasing resources and coordinated financing.

Arcus’s ambitious project is therefore that of becoming the “glue” that renders operative the systemic capacity for the promotion and planned support of initiatives designed to enhance the cultural heritage and activities, with a view to ever better conservation, fruition and valorization. By taking appropriate measures, Arcus favours the necessary convergence of the various stakeholders, thus contributing to the success of the various cultural projects identified.

Arcus S.p.A.Via Barberini, 86 - 00187 Roma Tel. 06 42089 Fax 06 42089227 E-mail:

info@arcusonline.org

to the establishment of projects for the restoration, redevelopment and improved fruition of the cultural heritage;

to the preservation of the landscape and cultural heritage through actions and interventions also designed to mitigate the impact of existing or forthcoming infrastructures;

to support the programming, monitoring and evaluation of interventions in the cultural heritage sector;

to promote planning within the cultural heritage and activities sector and that of the performing arts;

to identify and support projects valorizing and protecting cultural heritage through interventions with significant technological contents;

to support projects relating to cultural tourismin thebroadest sense of the term;

to promote the birth and constitution of cultural catchment areas in relation to emblematic examples of cultural heritage within the ambit of an integrated and systemic vision capable of linking local cultural heritage, infrastructure, tourism, allied industries and transport;

to intervene in the broad-based sector comprising initiatives designed to render the cultural heritage fully accessibleto the differently able.

The Game of Lotto in support of art and culture in Italy

Il Gioco del Lotto (Lotto game) has a centuries-old tradition. During the course of history, in fact, it has gone from clandestinity to being celebrated, opposed but then legalized because it brought in revenue destined, in part, to works of piety and public good. The first reliable news about Il Gioco del Lotto dates back to 1620 in Genoa. Later on in the second half of the XVII century, the "Lotto della Zitella/Lotto of the Old Maid" became popular. This version of the game also became famous throughout Europe. In the State of the Church, Il Gioco del Lotto enjoyed alternating fortune. On 9 December 1731, in the framework of the interventions to support public financing, it was definitively institutionalized. The first drawing held on 14 February 1732 in the square of the Campidoglio was a huge success. This newfound availability of money allowed Pope Clemente XII to promote urban renewal in Rome, with the construction among other things of Trevi Fountain, the façade of St. John in Lateran, the Palazzo della Consulta al Quirinale and the façade of St. John of the Florentines. The importance of the proceeds from Il Gioco del Lotto for culturally important works was no less important in the following decades, rather it would be consolidated with the extraordinary museum project promoted by the popes in Rome: the establishment of the Vatican Museums in 1771. There were many other cities that benefited from the revenue from Lotto such as the port of Ancona, the remodeling of the bridge of Tiberius in Rimini and the rebuilding of the aqueduct in Perugia. Subsequently, the historical ties between Il Gioco del Lotto and cultural heritage were definitively consolidated in 1996 with the introduction of the second weekly drawing on Wednesday. A part of the proceeds from the game was destined, on the basis of a three-year program, to the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activity for the recovery and conservation of our artistic, cultural and landscape heritage (law no.662/96). For several years, Il Gioco del Lotto has been involved in projects and activities in support of initiatives characterized by educational and social values. For this reason, Il Gioco del Lotto has linked its name to the most important cultural institutions with the desire to contribute and enrich the community with quality initiatives. It was within the context of increasingly greater focus on activities aimed at enhancing the territory that Il Gioco del Lotto in the past participated in the recovery of places with significant social impact in the city of Rome. Today it has chosen to work alongside important institutions such as the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Scuderie del Quirinale, Vittoriano, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini and since its inauguration, MAXXI. All these are only a few of the most significant examples of how Il Gioco del Lotto actively contributes to the growth of Italian cultural life. For years, it has been committed to enhancing our artistic heritage with promotional and communication initiatives aimed at bringing all citizens closer to their culture.

Lottomatica is the largest lottery operator in the world in terms of receipts and it is the leader in the gaming sector in Italy. In its capacity as the exclusive concessionaire of the State, since 1993, the Company administers the main lottery in the world, "Lotto", and since 2004, the Instant and Deferred lotteries. Lottomatica is successfully continuing its growth strategy through the diversification of its game portfolio (Sports games, entertainment equipment, Videolotteries, pari-mutuel betting), supplying all the relative technical services. Taking advantage of its distribution network and significant processing expertise, Lottomatica also offers automated payment services. The Company, of which the De Agostini Group is the majority shareholder, distributes games and services through the most extensive real-time online network in Europe.

THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE SUPPORTS THE SHOW

GALLERIA VEZZOLI

Promoting territorial and business development and improving the quality of life of its

citizens: these are the guiding objectives of the activity of the Chamber of Commerce

of Rome. An institution which, in following a “culture of doing”, has chosen to invest

its resources and its know-how in the creation of a competitive and cutting-edge local

context, complete with modern infrastructure, both tangible and intangible, and of

services fully able to meet the needs of business. Thanks to a “common understanding”

among the representative associations that make up its governing bodies, the Chamber

of Commerce has actively promoted the development of infrastructures critical to both

the modernization of the city and the creation of employment and wealth, such as the

Exhibition Centre - Fiera Roma, the System of Technology Parks (Tiburtino and Castel

Romano), the Food and Agriculture Centre and the Rome Auditorium-Music Park.

This action has gone hand-in-hand with a strong commitment to supporting the growth

of the economic fabric of the capital, achieved through the development of its

productive sectors and of some of its most genuine vocations, such as innovation,

tourism and culture.

Within this strategic approach, support for culture takes on particular importance. The

Rome Chamber of Commerce in fact believes that this is an investment in the true

sense of the word, able to activate development dynamics through the valorisation of

our most precious assets. Promoting culture in fact means triggering a powerful

economic multiplier and strengthening an essential attraction for tourists and foreign

investors, with obvious positive consequences for business and employment. For a city

like Rome and a country like Italy betting on culture is an essential choice if the aim is

balanced development in which economic competitiveness and social cohesion go

hand- in-hand.

The activity of our Institution is aimed at creating a local context with a high level of

creative and cultural vitality. One of the ways this is reflected is in involvement and

support for the most important events on the city’s cultural calendar, such as the show

“Galleria Vezzoli”, presenting the path of one of the most important young Italian

artists. This eventis the second occasion of collaboration between the Chamber of

Commerce of Rome and the MAXXI Foundation – the National Museum of 21st

century art, after the show “Vertical Thinking” by William Kentridge.

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Gobbetto synthetic resins: between art and technolo gical innovation.

The Company Until the end of the 1950s resins were prevalently used in the construction of ships and airplanes and in that period Gobbetto was founded. In fact it was in those years, between the 50s and 60s that the Company led by Giancarlo Gobbetto patented the first line of monolithic resins, Monosint ®, ideal for covering floors, walls and surfaces mostly in the industrial sector, and responding to the needs of the building sector - mostly amongst the food and pharmaceutical industry -. In these years Giancarlo Gobbetto , created "MareSotto " that was the first experimental work to exploit the technique of colour separation in a thermosetting polymer melt . The objective in the 80s was to broaden the application to residential and commercial environments. Gobbetto presented at this time two new lines for indoor use: Gobbetto Dega Art ® and Gobbetto Dega® Spatolato , which created a sort of spatula effect, with customizable colours and decoration, thus confirming its place in the civil architecture sector for homes, offices and commercial spaces. In those years the company was creating many new products and these included the outdoor line named Gobbetto Dega® Carpet . Apart from his wife Itala, always by her husband Giancarlo Gobbetto's side, in the 90s their son and daughter Gianluca and Clarissa entered the Company. Both promoted new technological research and new applications for the products encouraging aesthetic solutions that were ever more creative. The start of the third millennium for Gobbetto was a moment of great momentum in their design. The impossible became possible. Resins became the indispensable materials used by creatives all over the world. Surfaces covered in resin are flexible, elastic, they take on colours and have light filled consistencies unique to the material; they coat and cover any type of object or material. Floors began to be made with removable resins. And in these years the Company came out with new proposals like Flexint ® an exclusive soft resin, Gobbetto Dega® Texture , a unique finish that brings to mind elements of nature, Poliepo ® Termo , a heat sensitive resin Poliepo ® Biolux , a phosphorescent resin, Dega Rock ®, the resin filled stucco that gives the floor a finished look that resembles natural rocky stone ideal for wet environments, Street Spot ® and Street Spot ® Autoposante , a solution for pavements, self-laying, removable and reusable . In the meantime the showroom in Via Carroccio in Milan became very popular with designers and artists looking for personalised solutions to meet their particular work and creative needs; always backed up by the technical and applicational research undertaken at the company building in Trezzano sul Naviglio.

Communication In the 60s communication from the Company was concentrated mainly on the technical characteristics of the material and specifically on the Monosint® line. In 1978, Thomas Maldonado, the distinguished university Professor of Environmental Design at the Polytechnic of Milan, studied the new branding and logo of the company. The "2G" and the arrow, that symbolise the name of the owner Giancarlo Gobbetto in the old logo are now transformed into three dimensional characters.

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In the 90s catalogues and brochures are the communication tools used and it is these attractive images of the products used in different environments that help to build the request for them from artists and designers. In the new millennium the Company concentrates its information towards the creative world. The colour and the freedom of choice to combine the resins with other materials gives infinite possibilities and infinite applications.

Projects

In 50 years of business, Gobbetto has overseen important projects in Italy and abroad as well as prestigious collaborations with multinational companies. In Italy we can bring to mind the creation of the flooring for the gallery area of the Triennale di Milano , the flooring of the Perugina Museum and of the Museo del Tesoro di San Gennaro in the Duomo of Naples. Another important collaboration was created in 1982/83 with Agip . In those years the multinational, owned villages in Algeria next to the oil refinery in the Sahara, where the sandstorms invaded the streets leaving them semi destroyed, so they asked the Company for a solution that allowed them to create a street for walking on that avoided this problem. The collaboration with Agip carried on over the years in Nigeria and Egypt. In 2006 the UN together with the artist Ranan Lurie chose Gobbetto resins to create "Uniting Painting " an unusual work of art celebrating sixty years of the United Nations. The creation began from the entrance of the UN Palace and unrolled in a continuous flow down the stairs to the outside courtyard to disappear into the East River and re emerge on Roosvelt Island. Raymundo Sesma , the famous international artist, created for the Balelatina of Basilea Modern Art Exhibition a large work, Campo Expandido VII, which you can still see today outside the exhibition centre. The work, unveiled in June 2007, was made of a majestic and imposing crane from the ship building industry and was entirely covered with Gobbetto resins.

April 2012

Press:

Studio Roscio - Via Bistolfi, 49 - 20134 Milan tel. 023450212 - 023495882 - fax 02311844 e-mail: info@studioroscio.com

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