Nasi per l'arte is not about noses. But how can we say that, when noses of all shapes and sizes will accompany you on your visit? The nose itself, the nose as a form, is not the essence of the curatorial concept. Is a nose just a nose? Renâe Magritte would ask. The exhibition Nasi per l'arte was born from the encounter between two curatorial noses belonging to Joanna De Vos and Melania Rossi. We met many years ago and found that our noses for art were connected somehow. The title of the show indicates that both our lives have always been directed toward--indeed dedicated to--art. The nose is a navigator, guiding us through life; a delicate vehicle that detects and determines. It narrows and dilates at the same time, creating circular communication between the inner and the outer world. Curious self-portraits, drawings, paintings, figurative and abstract sculpture, sculptural installations, reanimated cinema, video works, photographs, artworks that revive tradition and mythology or inquire into the human condition-- these are the fragrances of the exhibition. Their perfume spreads through the rooms of the elegant Palazzo Merulana, wafting past the pieces in its wonderful permanent collection. The most beautiful thing that could happen at Nasi per l'arte would be for all the artworks to breathe as one, creating a meeting that generates new meanings and new feelings. Two noses got together and now, with nostrils open wide, they sincerely hope you will enjoy experiencing their and your noses for art. Exhibition: Palazzo Merulana, Rome, Italy (25.03. - 21.05.2023).

Los-Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy (b.1945) creates Disneyesque installations, sculptures of animal/vegetable/human hybrids and slapstick performances in a purge of a national subconscious. The psycho-sexual desires and anxieties induced by the media and the built environment of contemporary America emerge in his collisions of plastic prosthetic limbs and condiments that stand in for bodily fluids. These works have been variously deployed: through live actions, often documented on video, and more recently in outsized figures and artificial rural environments, combined in overtly sexual ways. McCarthy's work echoes that of European artists such as Joseph Beuys or the Viennese Aktionistes, but gives 'action art' a postmodern twist. This is the first comprehensive survey of over twenty years of work by a profoundly influential artist whose work is in the collections of the world's most important museums. Ralph Rugoff, curator, critic and author of Circus Americanus, has created an important critical framework for contemporary West Coast art. In the Survey he identifies key themes in McCarthy's oeuvre and sets them within a broader cultural context. Expert on live arts and co-editor of Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, Kristine Stiles talks with the artist about his performances. Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, celebrated for his writings in Flash Art and his curating of public art projects in Italy, focuses on McCarthy's Pinocchio Pipenose Householddilemma, a nineteenth-century tale told in a post-Disney world. For the Artist's Choice, McCarthy has spliced together various fragments from Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, creating his own non-linear rendition of this classic existential novel. The book also includes interviews and previously unpublished notes and poems towards sculptures, performances and videos.

Organised to coincide with the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale, the exhibition will feature five large marble sculptures by the Flemish artist, including an unprecedented reinterpretation of Michelangelo's Pietà. From 1st June till 16th October 2011, during the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale, the Nuova Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia (Sestiere Cannaregio 3599) will host the latest exhibition of the works of Jan Fabre (Antwerp, 1958), entitled PIETAS. Curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and by Katerina Koskina and promoted by the GAMeC - Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bergamo, by the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, and by the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, the exhibition will present five large sculptures in pure marble and Carrara statue marble by the Flemish artist--from Press Release.

Essays by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Charlotte Laubard.

When Sislej Xhafa mowed the word Benvenuto into a Tuscan hillside, European immigration-policy wonks squirmed a bit. His Pleasure Our Flowers decorated a Ghent police station with Biedermeier chairs and Persian carpets. This subversive young Kosovar, Albania's representative to the 2005 Venice Biennale, has also been known to photograph himself as a pickpocket and a mafioso.