/ PRESENTATION
1984. Evolution and Regeneration of Writing
by Pietro Rivasi
From June 24 to September 18, 2016, Galleria Civica of Modena hosted an exhibition exploring the phenomenon of street art, held at the Palazzina dei Giardini venue.
Titled 1984. Evolution and Regeneration of Writing, the exhibition was curated by Pietro Rivasi and produced in collaboration with the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena and the Luigi Poletti Civic Art Library of Modena. It offered an overview of the many evolutions of street art, focusing on some of its most significant contemporary artists—such as Taps & Moses™, Olivier Kosta-Thefaine, and PAL Crew—who are laying the aesthetic and theoretical foundations for the future of this expressive form.
Modena boasts a strong tradition in street art, dating back to 1981, when Jean-Michel Basquiat visited the city for a solo show at Emilio Mazzoli’s gallery. This tradition continued with the activities of Icone, the Giorgio De Mitri Foundation, and the Avia Pervia and D406 galleries. Additionally, the Luigi Poletti Civic Art Library holds one of Italy’s most important collections of documentation on writing and street art.
The exhibition gave special emphasis to the most controversial aspect of street art: unsanctioned interventions in public space. Through a wealth of photographic and video documentation, viewers were immersed in the lived experiences of the artists themselves.
The show revealed how writers have adapted to their times and to society: some have sought to renew their language and codes, others have transferred their street experience into a more classic art form for galleries and institutional spaces, while others still have stubbornly preserved the original spirit of the New York pioneers.
The exhibition was divided into two sections. The first focused on documentary material, including photos, videos, and installations by Zelle Asphaltkultur, Taps & Moses™, BBS Crew, Fra32, Sauli Sirviö, and Porto.
Among the highlights was Never Going Home, a video chronicling the nomadic lifestyle of Utah and Ether—two international writing jet-setters—during a journey through Japan, and a video installation titled Writers’ Bench, curated by Spraytrains.com.
This type of documentation is essential for constructing the history of unsanctioned urban interventions, which are ephemeral by nature—due to weather, removal by authorities, or alteration by other writers.
Researching and studying such materials, mostly on paper, is a vital tool for understanding the development of now-established artists who began their careers by tagging walls. It is also crucial for clarifying the differences between writing, street art, and muralism.
The second section featured works by Francesco Barbieri, Egs, and PAL Crew, sourced from both public and private collections, as well as site-specific works created for the Palazzina dei Giardini by Olivier Kosta-Thefaine and Matteo Ceretto Castigliano/CT.
The exhibition title echoes George Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984, which for its original readers represented a distant and ominous future. “Today, that premonition of global surveillance,” notes Pietro Rivasi, “has become reality. And 1984 is now 32 years in the past—the same number of years that separate us from the publication of Subway Art, the book that more than any other sparked the explosion of writing in Europe and worldwide, and from the Arte di Frontiera exhibition held in nearby Bologna, which brought the most important New York writers of the time to Italy within a prominent institutional setting.”A catalog accompanied the exhibition, designed and printed by Luca Lattuga of Anonima Impressori in Bologna, featuring the exhibited works and essays by the curator, Jacob Kimvall, Jens Besser, and Pierpaolo Ascari.
To mark the opening on Thursday, June 23, a DJ set was organized by Museek, a Modena-based label known for its collaborations with the writing and street art scenes.