A new exhibition presented in collaboration with the Depart Foundation and curated by Vincenzo de Bellis opened last Thursday at the Academy. Over forty works by thirty-one artists, who live and work in the United States, are on view in the AAR Gallery, the Atrium, the Cortile and the Cryptoporticus until November 14. Most of the works on show are recent acquisitions from the Depart Foundation collection, an organization dedicated to emerging international artists with the goal of fostering broad education and critical discourse in order to enhance creativity and innovation in the realms of art, design, architecture, and the sciences within the contemporary scene in Italy and beyond.
The show includes the artwork of Uri Aran, Darren Bader, Aaron Bobrow, Joe Bradley, Nick Darmstaedter, Tom Burr, Louis Eisner, Roe Etheridge, Sam Falls, Mark Flood, Elias Hansen, John Henderson, Mike Kelley, Brendan Lynch, Takeshi Murata, Carter Mull, Oscar Murillo, Mitzi Pederson, Seth Price, Rob Pruitt, Jon Rafman, Stephen G. Rhodes, Amanda Ross-Ho, Sterling Ruby, Edward Ruscha, Lucien Smith, Valerie Snobeck, Frances Stark, Mateo Tannatt, and Oscar Tuazon. Nero is publishing a catalogue in connection with the exhibition, which contains a preface by the American Academy’s Andrew Heiskell Arts Director Peter Benson Miller and contributions from Vincenzo de Bellis, Fionn Meade, and Jordan Wolfson. The catalogue will be presented at a finissage at the end of the show’s run at the Academy.
Americana is a term that often refers to the material culture of the United States and the title of the exhibition intentionally suggests an ambiguous relationship to such manufactured objects or artifacts. Curator Vincenzo de Bellis explained, “The works on display here reveal the tendency of contemporary artists to relate their works to history, as well as to the artistic and social traditions of the United States, while, at the same time maintaining a critical distance from them, underlining in the process the controversial aspects of an extraordinarily complex country.” Today’s global art scene is characterized by the magic and mayhem of cultural fusion, but for many people the anxieties of American influence are tied to bigger ideological issues. The contemporary artists in this show have employed a variety of approaches in wrestling with such questions about American culture and examining the authority of its influence on the artistic imagination.
If the modernist aesthetic was forged in an epic struggle between tradition and innovation, questions about how our history can productively shape our future have only become more relevant with time. The American Academy in Rome was founded on the idea that only by engaging with historic tradition can we invent the future and in this respect it is the perfect setting for such an exhibition.