The Near Distances project in the 2024 edition is the result of the collaboration between the Academies of Fine Arts, the East West East Association - APS and the stART ATTITUDE Association. 

The project Vicine Distanze (Near Distances) aims to bring together young artists, Italian students and former students, with Chinese colleagues from the State Fine Arts Academies. For this 2nd edition (2024), the young artists come from the Fine Arts Academies of Florence, Carrara, Macerata, Venice, Milan and Yunnan Arts University. The students are called upon to confront a theme linked to the city of Pisa, ‘water and its relationship with the city’. Distant and diverse civilisations are involved in a new and profound dialogue that compares languages and cultures. The works on display range from painting to video, installations and sculpture. The maximum freedom of language left to the investigation of different sensitivities, together with the heterogeneity of the works on display, becomes an important observatory for contemporary art trends.

With this second edition we propose an intimate and profound dialogue between East and West, cultures that are not only physically distant, but different in terms of tradition, history, identity and outlook on life. Including a different artistic conception-evolution that, thanks to Vicine Distanze, converges in the exploration of the theme of water: its flow, its energy, its evolution, its forms, the river, the journey, but also man's relationship with the liquid element, the experience, hence the inseparability of matter and spirit. In this gradual crescendo and evolution, water is also a ‘graphic’ line flowing towards its most majestic form, that of the sea and its horizon, i.e. ‘La Linea del Mare’, a photographic representation of water, interpreted by the images captured by Nicola Ughi and Andrea Cavazzuti, guests in the exhibition to accompany the students of the academies, in a cultural, cognitive and relational confrontation. Special guest of the exhibition is ‘Vanga’, a bronze sculpture by Master Situ ZhaoGuang, former director of the sculpture department of the C A F A (Central Academy of Fine Arts), who has managed to combine his oriental origin with the western academic tradition: in fact, he belongs to the group of artists who were sent by the Chinese government to study in St. Petersburg in the early 1960s.

Vicine Distanze (Near Distances) is not just an exhibition, but a reflection on the relationship between tradition and modernity, between cultural roots and artistic innovation: a look at art - Italian and Chinese - that precisely in the comparison between the two, highlights how China, in its gradual opening up to external influences, has been able to maintain a constant link with its own tradition and, from the 1960s to the 1980s, began a profound transformation both stylistically and thematically, welcoming distant contaminations, without ever betraying its own identity.

DOMUS COMELIANA

VIA CARDINALI MAFFI 48, PISA

28 November 2024, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

ARTISTS ON SHOW

SITU ZHAOGUANG
IMPROVVISAZIONE MUSICALE DI
CARLO IPATA E WANG YITONG
GIANNI BIANCHI
CHIARA GULMINI
ADELE CATTANEO
MARCO CESARO
GAIA SANTINI
ENRICO BANI
NICOLA UGHI
MUZ
MAURIZIO FALENI
WANG YU
YANYI SUN
ZHANG ZHIWEI
ZHANG TING
ANDREA CAVAZZUTI

PROGRAMME

10.00 A.M. INSTITUTIONAL GREETINGS, LECTURES

The morning will be dedicated to young people, academies and schools. The selected young artists will be interviewed and the interviews will be filmed and edited by the videomaker the day after the event.

This will be followed by speeches by sinologist Elisa Debernardi and gallery owner Mirco Taddeucci.

NOON: GUIDED TOUR 

The press conference will be held in the presence of Prof. Giovanni Federico Gronchi, Pro-rector of the University of Pisa for international cooperation and relations, the Chinese Consul in Italy Yin Qi, and the presidents of EstOvestEst - APS and stART ATTITUDE.
This will be followed by the opening of the exhibition with a guided tour by Professor Cristian Biasci, Coordinator of the Department of Sculpture at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, and his in-depth discussion on approaches, methodologies and academic exchanges.

4 P.M.: WELCOME AND GREETINGS

Raffaele Latrofa, Deputy Mayor of Pisa

Paolo Pesciatini, Councillor for Tourism and Productive Activities of the Municipality of Pisa

Giulia Martina Weston, Curator of the Domus Comeliana

Yin Qi, Chinese Consul General in Florence

4.30 P.M.: CONTRIBUTIONS AND VISIT TO THE EXHIBITION

Giovanni Santi, architect and associate professor of technical architecture Unipi - The City and the Water

Mirco Taddeucci, managing partner of Gradina Gallery

Elisa Debernardi, President of the Association EstOvestEst-APS

Manuela Antonucci, curator and journalist

Cristian Biasci, Coordinator of the Sculpture Department at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts

6 P.M.: TOAST AND MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

Musical improvisation by Carlo Ipata and Wang Yitong

7 PM: FINAL GREETINGS

Gianguido Maria Grassi, President of the stART ATTITUDE association