LA STATALE ARTE | Exoteric Gate, Nanda Vigo | Milan, 14th December 2016 – 11th March 2017

La Statale Arte Opening of the second edition of the exhibition transforming the University into an outdoor contemporary sculpture museum. EXOTERIC GATE Nanda Vigo Università degli Studi di Milano Cortile della Ca' Granda via Festa del Perdono, 7 – Milan 14th December 2016 – 11th March 2017 Nanda Vigo, a Milanese artist of international status, is the protagonist of the second edition of La Statale Arte, a project opening the University up to contemporary art and hosting solo exhibitions by Italian and foreign artists, whose site-specific installations and works are called upon to interact with the striking historical architecture of the seventeenth-century premises of its central location in via Festa del Perdono. For this latest event Nanda Vigo has designed Exoteric gate, an imposing light-project composed of nine separate elements (eight pyramids of differing height and a central cylinder), which will be on display from 14th Decmeber-11th March 2017 in the middle of the courtyard of Cà Grande. Nanda Vigo belongs to that generation of artists who turned Milan into one of the capitals of world art from the 1960s onwards: the home city of Fontana, Manzoni, Gio Ponti. Her constant studies into light made her a vital benchmark for the Italian neo-avantgardes. La Statale Arte is, therefore, paying tribute to an artist whose work has left its own consistently distinctive mark on Italian art over the last few decades, anticipating the across-the-board nature of knowledge and languages while maintaining the same focus of attention. An artist, architect, and designer, Nanda Vigo has always felt the need to work in various different realms, well aware that art and architecture alone cannot encompass the complexity of her work and that she needed to devise her own trans-disciplinary language. As well as being a powerful sensorial experience in which moving light defines a new spatiotemporal dimension, Exoteric Gate is an installation - the first designed for an outdoor space - representing the culmination of a lengthy period of experimentation that began with her chronotopes back in the 1960s, spaces or objects in which indirect light filtered through reflective and refractive materials - moulded glass, steel, mirrors - creates uncertain impressions dilating the concepts of space and time. Exoteric Gate's rhythm is set by the light coming from 400 metres of LEDs, while its non-programmable motion comes from reflective surfaces creating perceptions that are not connected with stylistic aspects but make the space fluid. The installation's forms are squares, circles and triangles, primordial and trans-sculptural forms that Nanda Vigo takes as her basic vocabulary for constructing a language whose code of signs changes as it interacts with light and reflective surfaces. The eight pyramids, all of differing heights, can be traced back to her works from the 1970s described as "Spatial Stimulators" and also her more recent Deep Space projects; the former are mirror-pyramids capable of attracting space, surrounding architecture and the onlooker to render a multiple and dematerialised vision of reality; the latter, on the other hand, are structures with acute and adjustable triangulations suggesting a kind of upward thrust. The central cylinder is part of the "Totem" collection created in 2005 and, most poignantly, refers to the Never-ending Light collection, vertical structures extending up vertically from the ground into space. The title, Exoteric Gate, previously used for various works from '76, translates that "esoteric transition" and philosophical journey that Nanda Vigo undertook back in the 1970s in quest of human knowledge. It is, therefore, a kind of humanist exotericism, which underscores the various levels on which her investigations/studies have always been conducted: the levels of the real, unreal and transcendent, always translated into luminous matter. Students on degree courses in the Cultural Heritage and Art History and Criticism will be available to the general public on Thursdays and Fridays from 15th-22nd December and from 12th  January-10th March from 17:30-19:00 for a short guided tour of Ca' Granda's honorary courtyard and to present Nanda Vigo's work entitled Exoteric Gate. Those interested in taking part should simply turn up on the dates times given below and contact students on the La Statale Arte project. Exoteric Gate, curated by Donatella Volonté, is the second event in the La Statale Arte project being promoted by the Università degli Studi di Milano curated by Alberto Bentoglio, Silvia Bignami, Luca Clerici, Andrea Pinotti, and Giorgio Zanchetti.i. A publication edited by Skira will be brought out in conjunction with each event. Exoteric Gate is part of the Expo in Città project under the patronage of Milan City Council, Lombardy Regional Council, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris and the Milan Triennial in partnership with the Nanda Vigo Archive, Allegra Ravizza Gallery in Lugano, Ravizza Brownfield Gallery Honolulu and Arteventi with the backing of the Cariplo Foundation, Allestimenti Benfenati, Gruppo 2A and Angelini Design. Marco Strina designed the graphics for Exoteric Gate. Download the images Exoteric Gate Cortile della Ca' Granda Università Statale di Milano via Festa del Perdono, 7 – Milan 14th December 2016 – 11th March 2017 Opening times: Monday - Friday 9-20 / Saturday 9-17.30 Free entry Guided tours by students From 15th-22nd December and from 12th January-10th March: Every Thursday and Friday 17.30/19.00 Congregating in the main entrance lobby in via Festa del Perdono 7. To book guided tours for groups of at least 10 people and/or on other days: visiteguidate.lastatalearte@unimi.it Facebook / LaStataleArte www.lastatalearte.it

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