ARTOXIC 2023

 

International Contemporary Art exhibition

2023 MARCH, 16th

Concept by Art Curator Chiara Rizzatti

What is toxic translates as a craving that mixes in the veins with the blood and reaches directly to the heart, obscuring all rationality. If on the one hand the term is generally used in chemistry to refer to a substance that is harmful to the organism, on the other we realize that there is no limit to the areas in which it can be applied. It is curious, in fact, that it is found in almost every branch of knowledge: in the scientific world we speak of toxic matter, of toxic air, of toxic water; in the psychology of toxic behavior, in the literature of toxic feeling. The Greek poetess Sappho, referring to the "love sickness", described the psychophysical reactions of an affective addiction, which crawls under the epidermis, clouds the eyes, shaking the body with tremors. It is the irrepressible reaction provoked by the toxic substance, whether understood in its strictest or figurative sense, and by its sudden lack, which generates obsession and affection. The more harmful it is, the more upsetting the thought of doing without it.

The contribution of the idea of toxicity is as endemic as its vicious consequences, and does not spare the artistic sphere, in which it hides. With the dualism of art and toxicity, we are faced with an apparently oxymoronic juxtaposition: how is it possible to associate the constricting and unhealthy tendency of toxicity with the intellectual autonomy that distinguishes the production of an artist? What looks like a daring Pindaric flight, turns out to be an integral part of numerous artistic forms, among which it is increasingly difficult to find the effigy of an inspired art, which is also a harbinger of a - so to speak - toxic attitude.

At the base of this dichotomy, there is a difference between toxicity in art and toxicity for art. The first concerns the outer shell of the art world: its stringent dictates, its ephemeral fashions, its empty arguments. All this poisons inspiration and progressively suffocates it, harnessing it in predefined categories that reject everything that deviates from the canons. An evanescent carousel of self-centered inconsistency.

The second, on the contrary, concerns the artist, and in particular the personal need of an artist to tap into the creative process without any filter. It is a vivid, throbbing necessity that fills the mind and does not stop until - finally - it is realized. In ancient times, it was believed that the Muses bestowed inspiration as a gift to artists, to allow them to rule men and show them new visions of reality. And this invested the artist with a semi divine stature. This concept - settled over the millennia - has always taken on different shades, but what remains unchanged is the priority of an inner thrust, capable of resonating within and shaking the imagination. It is in its own way an addiction, since it is impossible to resist its the call; but the artistic stimulus manages to elevate it to something higher. On the other hand, what means is more effective than art for processing negativity into something constructive? Constraint thus becomes liberation, addiction becomes self-affirmation, "toxicity" becomes a virtuous means to courageously follow the most authentic part of oneself.

MADS presents ARTOXIC to entice artists to share their most subversive side, without any caution or prudence, and to dwell on the nature of the inspiration that ignites their soul, be it the bearer of gentle harmony or of dark dissonance, forcefully tearing the foundation of each rule.