19th ART STAYS Festival | STRUCTURA | 2021

PUNTO SULL’ARTE is pleased to announce that three of the gallery’s leading Artists – Japanese master KYOJI NAGATANI, internationally recognized Italian artist ANNALÙ, and Swedish sculptor famous for his bronze works JOHANNES NIELSEN, have been selected to participate in the prestigious ART STAYS International Festival of Contemporary Art to be held in Ptuj, Slovenia from July 8 to September 18, 2021.

ART STAYS is the leading multidisciplinary festival dedicated to the visual arts in Slovenia and an established European event that gives visibility to projects and works by established artists and emerging talents in the arts. Founded in 2003, it is now in its 19th edition this year.

The articulated program involves all major public and private, historical, artistic, cultural, political and social institutions of the ancient city of Ptuj, offering different paths of a unique dialogue in articulated perspectives and metamorphoses.

The elegant bronze sculptures of renowned Japanese artist KYOJI NAGATANI will be presented exclusively in a solo exhibition set up in the historic halls of PTUJ CASTLE reinforcing Art Stays’ intent to determine and reflect, between structuring and pathways, the relationship between ancient and contemporary art.

All of Kyoji Nagatani’s art has always carried within it two hearts: that of the great Eastern tradition (in simplification, in essential minimalism) and that of the history of Western art, which he has studied and loved, of which we can recognize happy suggestions ranging from Manzù and Brancusi to Arnaldo Pomodoro, and even rooted in the composure and symbolism of Piero della Francesca. His sensual compositions combine dream, poetry and art, offering themselves as an occasion for aesthetic and critical reflection.

The fascinating and unprecedented bronze work of monumental dimensions by Artist ANNALÙ entitled Flyingfeet, together with 4 characteristic bronze sculptures by Swedish artist JOHANNES NIELSEN will instead be presented within an exhibition entirely dedicated to sculpture, together with the works of 4 other international artists, set up in the historic halls of the DOMINICAN MONASTERY OF PTUJ. The exhibition will ensure a unique exceptional experience in the different construction and composition of matter.

ANNALÙ’s monumental bronze work, made in three different sizes, was created by taking inspiration from the myth of Hermes, messenger of the gods and considered the guardian of dreams and nocturnal spy. A kind of guardian angel, he was the one who transported souls from the world of the living to the world of the dead and, in Greek mythology, was depicted with winged shoes. In Annalù’s work, on the other hand, the body itself becomes the metamorphosis of a flight: the anatomy of the legs, in fact, is created by the movement of the butterflies that aggregate with each other in an ascending dance. As they ascend upward, the butterflies are freed from the matter that oppresses them and become increasingly detailed, making clear the sense of passage, evolution, and liberation. The butterfly (Greek psyché) is both allegory and symbol of the soul, of the fragility and brevity of life. The ancient Greeks imagined the souls of the dead in the form of a butterfly and, hence, the analogy “soul-butterfly,” life breath escaped by man at the point of death. In the work Flyngfeet Annalù does not speak of the body, but of spirituality, and the butterfly represents its immateriality.

The sculptures of Swedish Artist JOHANNES NIELSEN, who lives and works in China, are light, threadlike works characterized by an aesthetic minimalism that conveys essentiality and movement. Delicate and light human bodies made using as exceptional models the trees from whose forms he takes inspiration to shape the waist, arms and legs of his subjects. The result is stylized bodies, in perfect figural mimesis with nature, reminiscent of atmospheres laden with suggestions intended to remind us that everything is uniquely and inevitably temporary. Nielsen’s ability is precisely to convey to the viewer a feeling poised between melancholy and optimism.

The theme chosen this year by Festival Directors and Curators Jernej Forbici and Marika Vicari is “STRUCTURA” and stems from the intention of wanting to make the viewer reflect not so much on the nature of the individual, but on the mutual behavior of various elements placed as a whole, be they humans or artistic operations, capable of experiencing the different conditions and metamorphoses of the world in forms of coexistence and transformations or, in the depths of dependence between things, humans and our planet.

Along with the aforementioned locations of Ptuj Castle and the Dominican Monastery, the Festival will take place in the following other venues: City Gallery, Miheličeva Gallery, Ptuj City Public Library, Magistrat Gallery, FO.VI Gallery, along with the streets and historic buildings in the city center that will be occupied by lectures, workshops, a videomapping project, concerts, and musical experiments.

Inaugural weekend: July 8-11, 2021

Dates: July 8 – September 18, 2021