streetartcom:

So the Fair is over and we’d like to share our impressions with you. MiArt 2012, the art fair of Milan just celebrated its 17th edition. We spent a lot of time there chatting, exchanging contacts and starring at the sushi fridge where for the “cheap” price of € 29,00 you could taste a small tray of bland sushi. Good things and bad things as always. MiArt’s artistic director Frank Boehm underlined this year the continuity of the contemporary and the modern, which are purposefully brought together within the same time frame in a single, completely renovated exhibition venue. Ok, these are honest ambitions but it is clear to everyone: to renovate you should show bravery and you have to select valuable artists and galleries. Yes, “Laurina Paperina” got her stand there, impressive.

Then we have to admit we appreciated a lot of great artworks especially the ones from the Italian masters such as Arnaldo Pomodoro, Alighiero Boetti,Alberto Burri, Mario Schifano. It’s unusual to get the chance to admire such splendour just few step one from another in a commercial fair. We made a selection of the works we loved and we hope you will too. These works alone were just worth the visit.

The fair was heavily overbalanced on succesfull italian “dead” artists, galleries, collectors. Maybe it was because the economic crisis that afflicts italian economy: the scared collectors prefer to invest in sure values. This construction make sence but please Mr Boehm don’t tell us about an opportunity to discover fresh contemporary art. That’s all about Italy in this period: just get here for the gorgeous traditions, like Arnaldo Pomodoro in Milan or a palatable cotoletta alla milanese, that we had for lunch just out of the constipated wanna be international sushi-Fair. The international interest of the Fair was consigned to few big names represented by their most political-oriented works, as for the comunist prints by Andy Worhol and the bright-disordering pics of cuban photographer Alberto Korda.

Street art and post-graffiti wasn’t there. Exception made by two gallerists, nervously waving last issue of Juxtapoz magazine as a bible, representing artists coming up from street art experiences who took the negative vibe to a brand-new level with their sad illustrations and installations. We had not the strength of will to take pictures nor to write down their names.

We feel to promote a gallery, maybe one of the few there that represents a real new italian presence acting in the contemporary art market. It is AIKE-DELLARCO with two active galleries one in Palermo, Sicily and the other in Shanghai that we use to visit when we come to paint graffiti with friends in Moganshan art district. Their research is interesting and the proof has been that their artist Lee Kit, with his painting you see below, won the “Rotary Club Milano Brera prize for contemporary art and young artists”, which involves the purchase of works by artists under the age of 35 which will subsequently be donated, along with the collection that will have been built up by then, to the Milan Contemporary Art Museum which is currently being set up.

So these were our impressions and hope the critics we are moving will be helpfull on next visit to MiArt 2013 to discover some groundbreaking galleries dealing with the international contemporary art market and attracting international audience and capitals. Here you find our selected gallery but you can experience a brand-new way to comb through the event with hundreds of Instagram pics tagged by visitors adding the #miart12 hashtag. Enjoy.