The pop side of culture
The idea of Dynamo Art Foundation stems from the desire to enhance the immense cultural heritage generated in the first 15 years of Dynamo Art Factory.
With the aim of curating its collection and promoting the dissemination of artistic culture as a common good.
Art, culture and creativity as the heritage of the human being that nurtures, educates, includes. This is the philosophy of Art for the Social at the basis of the Dynamo world, which fifteen years ago led to the birth of the Dynamo Art Factory workshops and today to the idea of a foundation that aims to concretely promote this accessible and inclusive approach to Beauty, as a fundamental right inseparable from that to Happiness. It all began in 2009, when among the first activities of Therapy Recreational Dynamo proposed to the children guests at the Camp were introduced the workshops of Dynamo Art Factory. Nothing to do with art therapy or art&craft, but rather a project designed and structured with the inclusive vision of the Dynamo method. These are, in fact, workshops inspired by those found in the avant-garde museums of the Anglo-Saxon world, with the addition that at Dynamo, established artists are involved free of charge with the aim of creating a project structured ad hoc according to their own expressive canons and the particular needs of the children and adolescents with serious illnesses housed.
The premises were positive but, as is often the case at Dynamo, the result exceeded expectations in many ways.While the combination of the magic of the place, the genius of the artists, and the imagination of the children allowed the very young to have fun and express in the preverbal language of art how difficult it is to communicate in words, this combination also resulted in works that are surprising in terms of formal quality.”From the very first moment we wanted to aim for excellence, the first years it was not easy to bring great artists to Camp,” says Diva Moriani, creator and director of the project. “Then the results and word of mouth meant that it was the community itself of artists to start following us with enthusiasm, spontaneously applying and showing gratitude for the human and professional experience at Camp. Suffice it to say that to encourage creative flow, our rule is that each artist works with us only once time, however it often happens that artists decide to donate their works to support the project, in which they believe and invest creative resources and time.”
NOTHING TO DO WITH ART THERAPY OR ART&CRAFT, BUT RATHER A PROJECT DESIGNED AND STRUCTURED WITH THE INCLUSIVE VISION OF THE DYNAMO METHOD
WORKSHOP WITH LOREDANA LONGO
The artist proposed the creation of one of her iconic Victory sculptures, reasoning about the inherent dualism of the term victory. The children created the work through a process of casting molding in silicone molds and then demolished it with hammers and other tools
WORKSHOP WITH PAOLO TROILO
The children have tried to make portraits of great figures of contemporary art with fingers, a technique typical of Troilo’s artistic production. The portraits were then edited into a video, so that they “screamed” the claim of Dynamo Art Factory’s exhibition, “Art is wow!”
WORKSHOP WITH ALESSANDRO PAPETTI
Five years after the session at Dynamo, the artist has returned to work with campers at Triennale Milano to create together a new forest filled with dreams and wishes. Using the method of painting gestural, the children painted a forest inhabited by animals and elements from their imagination.
WORKSHOP WITH VELASCO VITALI
The artist asked the children to make a series of drawings that featured a dog as the protagonist. The works were then edited into a video, the audio of which consists of the noises produced during the workshop (such as that of pencils on the table) and the children’s voices altered into sounds.
Session after session to date there have been about 140 artists who have donated their genius for a production of more than 2,000 works, which has allowed young people to experiment with languages disparate expressive languages: from painting to sculpture, from photography to video art, from installation site-specific to the fledgling crypto art .At the same time, a permanent Dynamo Art Gallery has found its place in the heart of the Camp: a two-level exhibition space where works, set up on a rotating basis, are made available by donation in line with the respective artist’s contemporary market quotation, complemented by site-specific works dotting the Camp. Subsequently, the format was also extended to parents of children with complex neurological disorders; the cathartic function of creativity has yielded excellent results with adults as well, becoming a structural part of the Family Session calendar. In addition, to make the more accessible the idea of Art and making Art, from 2018 – with the Art Factory in Museums project – we began to “visit” the children who have been guests at Camp in the museums of their cities. A tour of workshops led by established artists accompanied by Dynamo staff that to date has stopped at eight institutions of the caliber of Triennale Milan, MAXXI of Rome, Fondazione Sandretto of Turin, to make discover the museum as a living, stimulating and inclusive “house of art.” As evidence of the dialogue with institutions in the sector, right on the occasion of the Salone del Mobile, Art Factory was awarded in the Inspiring Learning Projects section of the Ro Plastic Prize 2023: a project conceived by Rossana Orlandi to raise awareness of recycling in the creative world. “It is by realizing the immense value of the cultural heritage generated in these first 15 years of Dynamo Art Factory and from the desire to enhance it for its social function, that the idea was born of Dynamo Art Foundation.” Continues Diva Moriani: “Starting from the body of works resulting from the collaborations between artists and Art Factory guests, site-specific works and creations donated by artists, the Foundation aims to nurture its collection in line with the contemporary creativity with which Dynamo has always been intertwined and to promote the spread of artistic culture as a common good, therefore also and especially among the most fragile groups.” Thus the works in Fornaci di Barga where the Dynamo Foundation will be housed. Art are about to begin, for another seed in the Dynamo world destined to bear good fruit.
In these pages, moments of creativity experienced by the children during the workshops held at the Milan Triennale together with four artists.
Art factory on exhibition in Triennale Milano
“Art is wow!”, staged last spring, celebrated 15 years of encounters between celebrated artists and guests at Camp
Under the curatorship of Diva Moriani and Marco Bazzini, at Triennale Milano from Feb. 8 to March 26, 2023, there was staged a selection of some of the works that, lending themselves to a double reading, retrace the story of the encounter between artists and Dynamo guests, but also of the multiple trends and languages of contemporary art in the last fifteen years. Thus in the exhibition it was possible to come across the works created by the children with the guidance of masters of the post-World War II period of the caliber of the father of arte povera Michelangelo Pistoletto or the poet of erasures Emilio Isgrò, but also of the talents of the contemporary today most in vogue such as Marzia Migliora, Loredana Longo, Goldschmied & Chiari, Gian Maria Tosatti. The lowest common denominator: fun and accessibility, which at Dynamo means putting emotional expression, the discovery of one’s own resources and relationships, the encounter with the other, in this case through the privileged language of art. Among the iconic works are the canvases of Alfredo Pirri who, working with children visually impaired, has chosen to use a licorice-scented pigment to make the work usable, or the paintings sensory paintings by Francesca Pasquali, who involved users in assembling colored straws. If Omar Hassan allowed teenagers to transform anger into power creativity by punching the canvas with boxing gloves soaked in color, Velasco Vitali raised awareness about sustainability by engaging the young participants in his sculptures made of burlap and leather scraps. A symbolizing the group concept the 1:1 scale David made with the guidance of Andrea Crespi through one hundred lines drawn by as many young people or the work conceived by Giovanni Ozzola and placed on the grand staircase of the Triennale: a sky dotted of 87 stars, one for each boy who took part in the creative project.
To make art more accessible and make the museum breathe as a living place, the exhibition – which can be visited free of charge – was accompanied by a calendar of workshops aimed at associations of pathology and schools in the area conducted by artists and Dynamo staff and talks by experts in the field. Among scheduled events also include the opening of the Dynamo Art Gallery on the Over metaverse in conjunction with an auction on the marketplace. Over during the NFT Night entirely dedicated to the theme of crypto art for social.
Next, “Third Paradise,” a work created by Michelangelo Pistoletto with the families of Dynamo Camp.
Facing page, the entrance to the exhibition at Triennale Milano: a backward journey that, starting with recent digital art works, recounts the different facets of a project that has involved over the years protagonists of excellence of contemporary art, great masters and artists emerging, embracing a wide and heterogeneous variety of languages.
