WORKS

Also used as an ideal introduction to a solo exhibition by Gianni Pettena in Paris (Galerie Mercier & Associés, 2011), this banner/poster was initially made for Contribution (Rennes, 2008), an event that set out to involve artists, designers and architects by inviting them to carry out interventions in symbolic locations of the city: the city hall, representing public institutions, the wholesale market, for commercial activities, and an art gallery, for culture.

Together with other artists, Pettena chose to give the intervention the form of a banner to be hung inside the market, seemingly the place most distant from any form of art. Since the form of the “contribution” in that place was fixed (the banner), the uniqueness of the intervention could only be outlined by what was written on it. Going back to themes dear to him ever since the seventies (the first version dates in fact back to 1973), Pettena not only introduced the artistic intervention into an environment that was alien to it, but extended the provocation to the point of laying claim to absolute freedom for the artist. In doing so he stirred people’s curiosity, and thus induced reflection on an unusual subject for that place