PAOLA PIVI: Art with a View

Duration: 2018 October 13 -2019 March 10
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 13, 18:00-20:00
Venue: 2100 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33139, USA

Paola Pivi’s new exhibition in The Bass Museum of Art, Miami opened on October 13 2018. Arthub participated to this exhibition providing an original artwork production exhibited here for the first time.

Paola Pivi’s artistic practice is diverse and enigmatic. Her oeuvre appears to have been formed through multiple creative minds. Art with a View at The Bass presents new work by the artist, as well as Pivi’s anthropomorphic, feather-covered polar bears; canvases of cascading pearls; video showing fish in flight on a passenger jet; and a 65- foot inflatable ladder. Each piece poses questions and is defined by its openness to interpretation, through the appropriation of cultural symbols.

In 1997, as a student, Paola Pivi placed a truck on its side as part of the exhibition Fuori Uso (Pescara, Italy). Two years later, she installed an upside-down G-91 fighter jet in the Venice Biennale’s Arsenale, helping Italy win the coveted Golden Lion award for best national pavilion. In subsequent years, she has invited horses to the Eiffel Tower and a leopard to roam amongst cappuccino cups—documenting the experience through photography.

Such ambitious and spectacular acts have come to define her art. These gestures are about freedom. They deliver unexpected visuals, which surprisingly also appear to be familiar. Nomadic by nature, Paola Pivi has lived in many unexpected places in the world, including the remote island of Alicudi in southern Italy, India, and Anchorage, Alaska. Pivi first exhibited at Viafarini in Milan in 1995, the same year she enrolled in the Brera Academy of Art in Milan.

In 2012, the artist was commissioned to create two original public artworks in New York City: “How I roll”, a project by Public Art Fund, a Piper Seneca airplane lifted on its wingtips and constantly rotating forward, installed near Central Park at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, and Untitled (zebras), a striking image of zebras on a snow-covered mountaintop on the 25-by-75-foot High Line Billboard at West 18th Street. Like all of her photographs, this image is a live-action still, presented without digital intervention. Another of her photographs, Untitled (donkey), shows a lonely donkey on a boat floating in the Mediterranean Sea. Pivi is included in the permanent collections of The Guggenheim Museum and the Centre Pompidou.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Paola Pivi (b. 1971, Milan, Italy) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including I did it again, SCAD, Savannah (2018), I am tired of eating fish, curated, La Rinascente, Italy (2017), Ma’am, Dallas Contemporary, Texas (2016), Tulkus 1880 to 2018, FRAC Bourgogne, France (2014), You started it … I finish it, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2014), Tulkus 1880 to 2018, Witte de With, Netherlands (2013), Share, But It’s Not Fair, Rockbund Art Museum, China (2012), How I roll, Public Art Fund, New York (2012), It’s a cocktail party, Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2008), and It just keeps getting better, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2007). Pivi has exhibited internationally at institutions including Stad Kortrijk, Belgium, Anchorage Museum, Alaska, Fondazione Prada, Italy, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Germany, Whitechapel Gallery, United Kingdom, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Italy, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, MOMA PS1, New York, and the XLVIII Biennale di Venezia, Italy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Art with a view is curated by Justine Ludwig, former Chief Curator at Dallas Contemporary. The presentation at The Bass is organized by Leilani Lynch, Assistant Curator, The Bass.

Paola Pivi: Art with a View is generously sponsored by PHILLIPS. Additional support for the exhibition is provided by Galerie Perrotin and Massimo De Carlo, Milan, London, Hong Kong. Production support provided by Davide Quadrio for Arthub, Shanghai/Hong Kong. The exhibition is supported in part by the Diane W. Camber Exhibition Fund. The Bass is generously funded by the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program and Cultural Arts Council, the Miami- Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, and sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.

For a complete selection of high-res imagery and to access the full press kit, please visit www.thebass.org/presskit.

Image courtesy the artist and Dallas Contemporary.