Artissima Fair Draws Art, Fashion, Design Crowds of ‘Daydreamers’

TURIN, Italy — Artissima is not just a great contemporary art fair but a fashion-forward sightseeing tour, too.

At the 2024 edition of the four-day fair, which wrapped on Sunday at the Oval pavilion of the Lingotto fairgrounds attracting about 34,200 visitors, Maison Margiela’s Tabi shoes mingled with Hermès’ Kelly bags in a blend that saw art collectors, design enthusiasts and regular fashion students filling the fair’s pavilions.

The art showcase has grown over the years bringing about further prestige to the industrious city of Turin, a 50-minute train ride outside Milan placing it on the international art and design radar not just with the event itself, but thanks to a whole lot of off-fair initiatives.

Amid geopolitical turmoil and global instability, the theme of the 2024 edition of Artissima felt particularly fitting and resonant with attendees.

Hinged on a curation that gathered 189 exhibiting galleries hailing from 34 countries, the fair’s showcase, titled “The Era of Daydreaming,” provided a strong opportunity not only to immerse oneself in the pulse of contemporary art, but perhaps be stimulated by diverse worldviews.

“The value of daydreaming has been often reduced to pastime, wasted time and generical fantasy but neuroscientists are telling us it’s among the most powerful tools of our mind because it suggests its ability to spontaneously produce visual thoughts that re-elaborate our life and daily occurrences projecting them forward,” said Artissima director Luigi Fassi.

“This year’s fair is a congress of daydreamers, which include artists and gallerists, the latter committed to stand by and accompany the former in their creative journey,” he said.

In addition to the four main sections, dubbed “Main,” “New Entries,” “Monologue/Dialogue” and “Art Spaces & Editions,” Artissima hosted three curatorial projects hinged on the fair’s ongoing collaboration with humanistic researchers.

These included “Present Future,” “Back to the Future” and “Drawings” focused on up-and-coming artists, established creators who’ve enjoyed a recent renaissance in the art market, and sketches, respectively.

Now in its 31st edition, Artissima enjoys the support of a rich roster of partners including K-Way. The brand’s parent BasicNet is based in Turin where it has maintained headquarters.

“Our partnership with Artissima, marking its 13th consecutive year this year, is the result of a solid and visionary bond, stemmed from the idea to explore the boundaries between art and fashion,” said Lorenzo Boglione, vice president of BasicNet Group and chief executive officer of K-Way and Sebago, the latter also part of the group’s portfolio of brands.

“Together we promote values such as innovation and artistic expression, both fundamental pillars for K-Way. Being part of an event of such relevance which combines creativity and cultural impact in the heart of Turin fully reflects the essence of our brand,” he added.

K-Way has taken over the Oval pavillion’s main entrance with customized decor and offered visitors a packable tote bag created for the event.

Next year, the brand is to mark its 60th anniversary and without sharing further details, the executive said celebrations will hinge on the brand’s link with the art world.

Flanking the life-size Alighiero Boetti’s “arazzo,” or tapestry, “Untitled (Black on white and white on black)” from around 1988 which reportedly sold for 770,000 euros at the fair, were compelling works by perhaps lesser known artists.

These included Oskar Holweck, considered to be a pioneer of paper art in Europe, and ceramist and sculptor Carmen Dionyse, whose busts and masks draw inspiration from Biblical and Greek mythological figures.

The women, as well as gender-nonconforming perspectives, came to the fore, with provocative artworks challenging the male-dominated worldview.

French but Italy-based Nicole Gravier has challenged the patriarchal society throughout her career. The Ermes-Ermes gallery brought to the fair the photography artist’s staged, sugary images recreating the sets of storylines of soap operas and TV series. Gravier defies clichés by embedding off-kilter and alienating elements, such as a magazine opened on an article titled “The Proletarian Revolution and Bourgeois Culture,” which clashes with the overall coy atmosphere of the pictures.

Among the up-and-comers, the young Wien-based Lotti Brockmann was at the fair showing one of her signature works. Brockmann makes casts out of public statues typically depicting male notables and then turns them into lollipops. The artist spent the day licking them, and offering visitors the opportunity to do so as well, in a multidimensional art form that tackles sculpture and performance.

Along the same lines, Debashish Paul, born in 1994 West Bengal, explores the problems of queer identity in a society dominated by heterosexual norms, conceiving paintings of sculptural costumes resembling regal gear. He also creates the costumes and wears them during his life performances.

Around the Artissima fair, Turin has built a full-fledged Art Week with happenings popping up throughout the city, which provide patrons of the art, curators, gallerists, collectors and regular attendees with lateral events.

These included, among others, “The Underground Cinema” exhibit centered on the movie industry at the Galleria d’Italia Torino museum, artist Bekhbaatar Enkhtur’s solo show “Hearsay” at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and “Objects in Mirror Might Be Closer Than They Appear,” an installation by Julian Charrière and Julius von Bismarck at Turin’s Regional Museum of Natural Science.

Many from the younger crowd wrapped their night off at the electronic and avant-pop music festival C2C, formerly known as Club to Club, which has been organized in tandem with Artissima since 2002.