
Stand E5 - Artmonte-carlo - Grimaldi forum - Monaco - Monte-carlo
From 04-30-2016 to 01-05-2016
Download the press release
Opening informations : friday 29th, april 2016, from noon til 9PM
For Artmonte-carlo, contemporary art fair of Monaco, La Station presents THE VASARI CORRIDOR, opus of BENJAMIN HUGARD.
Opening on friday, 29th april 2016, from noon til 9 PM
art fair opened on
saturday, 30th april and sunday, 1st may form noon til 8PM
STAND E5 – Espace Diaghilev
ABOUT THE VASARI CORRIDOR (2012-2013)
In 1565, the Medici family tasked the architect and painter Giorgio Vasari to build a passageway linking the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti that would overlook the city of Florence. The construction would fulfil several functions: it would enable the Medici to remain physically separate from the people, to observe activities within the dwellings from a distance and to compile a collection of distinctive self-portraits by famous painters, which up to this very day decorate the crossing of the gallery. Functioning as a place for both withdrawal and observation, the passageway can be seen as an allegory for the centre for contemporary art, whose ambivalent place in cities turns it into a heterotopia.
The project borrows its title from this historical background and metaphorically gives Chinese workers/painters specialised in copying masterpieces the opportu- nity to make their own self-portrait (a total of 25). By corrupting the pictural genre into a means of representing an invisible workforce, they contribute to a factory that defies the production mechanisms of globalised markets. The power relationships that go hand in hand with commissioned orders are changed in a way as to increase the visibility of the workers.