Talk

This fall, the Public Art Fund Talks at The New School examine the transformative potential of sculpture and its ability to reach beyond the material presence of an object’s physical form. Inspired by the influence of an earlier conceptual art legacy on contemporary sculptural practice, this series examines how the limits of an object might be redefined both literally and metaphorically in the public realm.

The second speaker of the series is Alaska-based, Italian artist Paola Pivi.  Watch the Public Art Fund Talk at The New School here. Her installations, sculpture, performances, and photographs create astonishing and enigmatic associations and visual relationships that expand our understanding of the experience of contemporary art. Bringing together surprising references from our everyday world, Pivi has orchestrated such unexpected scenarios as a gallery petting zoo, a transport truck flipped on the side of a road, 100 Chinese people gathered in a gallery, and a leopard traversing a gallery filled with cups of cappuccino. Likened to an “experiential playground”, her work ultimately subverts expectation with the unanticipated. Pivi’s artistic practice challenges our mode of engagement by presenting the inconceivable as real.

Born in 1979 in Milan, Italy, Paola Pivi lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska. Her work has been exhibited widely across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and the United States. Pivi is the 1999 recipient of the Golden Lion Award from the Venice Biennale. Her work has been presented at Manifesta, and the Berlin Biennial. Pivi has also exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; MACRO, Rome; Hayward Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; Portikus, Frankfurt; Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Tate Modern, London; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Massachusetts College of Art, Boston; Brown University, Providence; Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; P.S.1 MoMA, and White Columns, New York. She is represented by Massimo De Carlo, Milan and Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris.

Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2011-2013 focus theme “Thingness.”