Friday 5th July 2002 LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea has the pleasure to host one of the SHOCK&SHOW events, a happening exhibition curated by Maria Campitelli.

SHOCK&SHOW runs in sequence in eight different expositive spaces following an itinerary which walks through the heart of Trieste. A frenetic chase of contemporary art, from one place of the town to the other, in order to admire in the most varied as much as shocking expressive forms: from the installation to the performance, from photography to video-events. It seems evident that in the planetary panorama of contemporary art emerges a tendency to surprise the spectator with strong happenings, emphasizing the spectacular aspect as well as the extreme valence of the artistic proposal.

SHOCK&SHOW wants to question itself on this method of concieving and making art, not to discover it, because it has already fully emerged, but through a group of representative artists, SHOCK&SHOW wants to reason on this extreme expressiveness which corresponds to the chasing of strong emotions in other fields such as sport, entertainment, cinema, of which humanity seems today to thrive on, leaving everyday emotions behind.

This is therefore a tendency and a research which LipanjePuntin artecontemporanea has tried to emphasize since the beginning of its exhibitions presenting some of the extreme artists of the international panorama: from the Macedonian Robert Gligorov to the Chinese Zhang Huan, from the Ukrainian Sergey Bratkov to the Russian Oleg Kulik. On the occasion of SHOCK & SHOW the gallery’s spaces will see as main charachters, as well as the previously mentioned Bratkov, Kulik, Huan, some of the extreme figures of this current: the British Jake & Dinos Chapman with an exceptional installation coming from the prestigious Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, the Dutch Erwin Olaf with his carnivalesque portraits, the Slovenian Goran Bertok and Dean Verzel who have recently gained the press’ attention for one of their clamorous as well as somewhat inflamed performance.

The opening will also be marked by Richard Crow’s performance at the Teatro Sloveno (5 pm), followed by Francesco Impellizzeri’s one at C-Zone (9 pm) and by the video-performance event by Paolo Ravalico Scerri at the Teatro Miiela (12 am).