Welcome to Artissima! You are listening to audio number 6 entitled Interstellar Journeys and you are about to explore a contemporary art fair by following the route designed for you by Elena Patrignani. “An art fair? And what is that?” I'm sure you're wondering. An art fair is a very large place where art galleries from all over the world gather for a few days to display and sell works of art. In essence, art galleries are special shops where enthusiasts and collectors purchase artworks. Inside, there are thousands of artworks, dozens of galleries, hundreds of artists, many collectors, and lots of visitors like you: this place is like a gigantic galaxy, or rather, an enormous universe of art, which you will explore like curious astronauts on an incredible interstellar journey. So let's put on the spacesuit, put on the helmet, and fasten the seatbelts! So we're taking off... Oh, how careless of me, of course, we're taking off, but where are we going? Excuse me, when you leave, you always forget something, and here we forgot a fundamental object: the map! Then take one and look for the Rose Easton Gallery at number 9 in the black corridor. Put the audio on pause and then press play once you’re there, I'll be waiting! Ten, nine, eight, seven... BFFFFFTttttps…

Here are the communications resumed, can you hear me? How's it going up there in space? The first stop on your journey is the Rose Easton Gallery: what is on display in this gallery? As astronauts, you are scientifically observing what is before your eyes...there is a large white structure with a horizontal plane and a vertical one, and attached to it are various types of balloons or coloured airbags that slowly inflate and slowly deflate. And then in the middle, there's a bigger airbag. Is it moving? Is it inflated or deflated? Maybe at this moment it's sadly soft, or maybe instead it's full of air, very big there in the middle. It may seem strange, but this is a kind of large sculpture by the Australian artist Louis Morlae . "But sculptures don't move!", you'll say. While historical sculptures, designed to sit on pedestals and be admired by all, remained static, the artworks of today's artists always have something unexpected. Louis Morlae defines his sculptures as "robotic sculptures" because they move and function like robots. Think that this work even has a robot name: it's called SFB2! And speaking of unexpected things: when these balloons are inflated, they produce a sound, an irritating noise, like the screeching of instruments or the scraping of metals. We can imagine that SFB2 is part of the shuttle you're travelling on: so what purpose might such instrumentation serve on your mode of transport? And why does it make this tremendous sound at regular intervals? It almost feels like something that breathes... Is it perhaps a strange living organism that inhabits your spaceship? What role and purpose would it have, then? While you conjure and formulate spatial hypotheses, the second stage awaits you: join us at the Import Export gallery at number 11 in the lilac corridor of the Back to the Future section. Put the audio on pause and reactivate it once you arrive.

Here you have arrived at the second stage of your galactic journey: landing in the gallery called Import Export. From the porthole of your spacecraft, you can observe strange space creatures: they are suuuuuper thin figures, made only of a line, and they seem to have no bodies and be incredibly light. There are figures that seem to swim gracefully in the sky, characters without arms, with very short legs and enormous heads. There is an eye here and there, a hand detached from the body. There is then a figure without a nose and without a mouth, with an unusual body: it seems that instead of a belly, there are two profile faces–one looking to the right and the other to the left; and this character is astride another, who seems to carry him as if he were a flying carpet. Of course, in this universe of contemporary art, one encounters very strange creatures! Think that these were made by an artist named Franciszka Themerson. Franciszka began drawing before she could even walk: 'She was born with a pencil in her hand,' everyone used to say, and as a child, she enjoyed painting blue horses on the good tablecloth in the living room, to the despair of those who then had to try to remove the stains! These fantastic characters were often crafted with a single stroke, never lifting the hand from the page, but they are not the only ones! Have you noticed that Themerson represented them not only with drawings, but also with painting? As she was a painter and draughtswoman (she also created numerous children's books), she crafted theatre masks and costumes, built puppets and marionettes, and, along with her husband, imagined some very eccentric films. Approach the screen showing the film 'The Eye and the Ear'. Did you find it? What is in this film? You can see white luminous shapes moving to the rhythm of music. They look like magical images that appear in the darkness of space: there is even a moment when you see stars and galaxies... Is it the sound that you hear in the universe? Or maybe the way aliens make music? Or maybe it is the stars that light up and, pulsing with light, emit wonderful sounds... Close your eyes for a moment, imagine floating in the dark space and listen to the voice of the stars. Then when you want to resume the journey, the third stop awaits us at the Alzueta Gallery at number 5 of the Drawings section, right in the centre of the fair. Pause the audio and press play again when you have arrived.

You are now becoming expert cosmonauts, you will have a lot of things to put in your travel notebook once you return to Earth! And in this stop, what will be your discovery? As always, take a close look around: there are numerous paintings hanging on the walls, some large and others smaller, and even the walls themselves are painted. It might almost seem as if we've walked into a living room... yet since we're in space, it must certainly be an alien living room! What do you see in these drawings? Colours first! What colours? Are any of them more present than the others? And then what? Besides the colours? There are shapes! Do these drawings show complex scenes full of details? Are these drawings similar to reality or, instead, do they contain simple shapes? What is depicted in these drawings is undoubtedly ABSTRACT: you perceive merely colours and shapes, and it appears they have no connection to reality. These works are by an artist named Sabine Finkenauer and Sabine likes simple things. Indeed, she draws influence from her surroundings—plants, clothing, mountains, furniture—and simplifies through drawing to such an extent that we can no longer recognise the original objects from which she started. We no longer see a sofa, but a shape; we no longer see a flower, but a shape; we see nothing but shapes... and her drawings become the repetition of many similar shapes, of different colours and sizes. The artist has entire notebooks filled with densely colourful shapes, as if taking notes of what she see, always simplifying everything. Sabine has also designed carpets, tablecloths, and crockery for the home with her colourful geometric patterns. But can we really imagine that the stand you are at is the home of an alien family... what type of furniture do extraterrestrials need? Do they sit on armchairs like us? How do they set the table? How many handles do their cups have? Try to become architects of houses on other planets and after imagining a beautiful project, join me at the Ncontemporary gallery at number 5 of the celestial corridor. Press pause and then play again when you are at your destination.

Do you remember when at the beginning of this journey we were leaving forgetting the map? Who draws the maps? There are no libraries of maps of any kind of place: unexplored places don't have maps, it's the explorers, those who are the first to discover, explore, and investigate a location, who draw them for the first time. So those who arrive later already have a more precise idea of where they will go and what they will see. In this gallery there are some maps ... of the Moon! That's right! Have you seen them? There is a large, rectangular one and a smaller, round one, just like the Moon. Approach carefully... I imagine your surprise at seeing the Moon not white and grey as it actually is, but extremely colourful – there's green, lilac, a bit of blue, purple, and above all, an abundance of red!- But how come? There has to be a meaning! What do you think these colours might correspond to? Try to discuss it among yourselves for a moment and make some hypotheses... The reason for all these colours in the depiction of the otherwise white Moon is this: maps do not always aim to show just mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers… Sometimes, they reveal something more, such as the various materials found in a place. This is indeed the case: each colour corresponds to a different material of which the soil of the Moon is composed, with red, for example, indicating lava because there were also volcanoes there. These beautiful maps were made by an artist named Santiago Reyes Villaveces, who was inspired by the maps created by real astronauts. He also made a drawing and a painting of Mars and its mountains... In this instance, Santiago acts somewhat like the painters of the past: he paints landscapes, but instead of earthly ones, he paints those of other planets, documenting how they are composed. We are now taking off from the Moon and Mars, bidding farewell to Santiago and his maps, and heading towards the final stage of this journey, the COB gallery at number 4 of the celestial corridor, right in front of us. As always, for the last time, stop the recording and press play once you have arrived at your destination.

Turn off your spaceship's engines and silently observe the wonder before you: an incredible silver galaxy that moves slowly, rotating gently. It shines in the light and is dotted with small planets and asteroids that seem like pearls. This is a work of art created by the artist Elli Antoniou. Elli is passionate about science fiction and astrophysics, the science that studies the stars and space, and often draws inspiration from these two worlds to create her works. And so Elli imagines the universe in billions of years and fantasises about stellar explosions and galaxy encounters. If you look around, you'll see small paintings on the walls: it's as if they display the traces of space debris splattered everywhere. The artist's work is not at all simple: she works with metal, using specialised tools to engrave it, ensuring light reflects in every direction; this is why her sculptures are so bright and luminous. In fact, Elli imagines them in large, dimly lit rooms so as to shine like real stars. And in that way, they would seem even more like distant galaxies: it's as if in this interstellar journey we've taken together, we've moved so far away that we see our galaxy from a very, very great distance. Seen from so far away, even the Earth, which seems immense to us, is actually a dot in the infinite universe. And then we, in turn, feel tiny in relation to all that is incredible, great, and wonderful happening over our heads and around us! We have explored far and wide in this strange universe of contemporary art; we have encountered creatures drawn with a single line, observed paintings with shapes so simple that we cannot recognise them, seen sculptures that move by inflating and seem like bizarre contraptions from some spacecraft, come into contact with mysterious objects, studied the map of the lunar surface, and observed, enchanted, the beauty of a galaxy from afar. It's now time to return to Earth, but don't forget what you have seen: grab a notebook and fill it with colourful shapes, try to draw imagined characters without lifting your pencil from the page, imagine the music of the universe, observe what is around you as if you were seeing it from space... It was an honour to be your guide for this space expedition. I’ll be waiting for you next year, for a new world and a new adventure!