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JURY 19th EDITION
Matteo Zauli
Director of Carlo Zauli Museum
Born in Faenza in 1967, in 200 he graduated in the Cultural Management Course in Turin, organized by Fondazione Fitzcarraldo.
He began his activity in the cultural field in 1995, when he founded the cultural organization Diatonia with two friends, with the aim of using contemporary art as a tool for the development of his home town.
In 2002 he turned the studio of his father into the Carlo Zauli Museum, and he has been the director of the museum ever since.
His organizational and curatorial practice is focused mainly on the relationship between classical sculptural materials, especially ceramics, and contemporary thought and the enhancement of urban spaces through cultural projects.
In 2013 he launched the MCZ Art Residency, which has featured artists such as Salvatore Arancio, Gianni Caravaggio, Alberto Garutti, Francesco Gennari, Eva Marisaldi, Mathieu Mercier, Jonathan Monk, Bruno Peinado, Diego Perrone, Daniel Silver, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Sisley Xhafa.
Over the years, he has organized several exhibitions of Carlo Zauli's work both in Italy and abroad, especially in Japan and in the USA.
In 2012 he co-founded District A – Faenza Art District, a project for the enhancement of the historical centre of Faenza; moreover he is the art director of Materia Montelupo, an art residency in the ceramic worksites of Montelupo Fiorentino.
He has been teaching since 2003, holding lectures about cultural management and his own museum experience.
Paolo De Grandis
Curator and President of PDG Arte Communications
Paolo De Grandis is a contemporary art curator and President of PDG Arte Communications.
Born in Venice in 1957, in the late 1970s he moved to the United States where he discovered a passion for art and developed an interest in organizing art exhibitions.
From 1984 to 1990 he was the director of Academia Foundation. In 1984 he organized his first exhibition, Quartetto, on the occasion of the 41st Venice Biennale at Scuola Grande S. Giovanni Evangelista. Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Alanna Heiss and Kasper König, the exhibition included works of Joseph Beuys, Enzo Cucchi, Bruce Nauman and Luciano Fabro.
In 1985 the Academia Foundation and FIAT USA financed The Knot, the first exhibition of Arte Povera in New York. The exhibition was curated by Germano Celant with works by Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gilberto Zorio.
In the early 1990s De Grandis founded PDG Arte Communications.
Driven by the desire to bring art out of institutional venues, in 1995 he organized Art Taiwan, the first National Pavilion outside the gardens of the Venice Biennale. Since then, many countries have turned to PDG Arte Communications to find suitable venues in which to exhibit during the Venice Biennale.
In 1998 he created OPEN, an international exhibition of sculptures and installations held every year during the Venice Film Festival. Over the years, artists from more than 75 countries have exhibited at OPEN, including Yoko Ono, Marisa Merz, Emilio Vedova, Richard Long, Mimmo Rotella, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Keith Haring, Fabrizio Plessi, Julian Schnabel, Dennis Hopper.
From 2016 he works with Claudio Crescentini, curator of the Macro Museum in Rome, with the project From The Venice Biennale to MACRO. International Perspectives, bringin to Rome some of the exhibitions he has curated for the Venice Biennale.
Simone Pallotta
Curator of pubblic and urban art
Independent curator, since 2006 he has been working both in integrated public art projects and in crossover cultural projects. He was born in 1979 in Rome, he grew up in the Writing field and formed as an art historian, he decided to mix his urban art knowledge with his humanistic studies ideating and creating projects in which art and cities collaborate for a cultural innovation.
He curated and realised projects with some of the most important international urban artists: Blu, Momo, Agostino Iacurci, Borondo, Aryz, 108, Edoardo Tresoldi e Sten & Lex.
In 2014 he curated his first indoor exhibition: From Street to Art, the first group exhibition of Italian urban artists at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York dedicated to the discovery of the deep diversities and the different personalities of the national artistic scene.
The project that best represents Simone Pallotta is SANBA, ideated in San Basilio headquarter in Rome from 2014 to 2016.
He realised public art projects in the high security section of Rebibbia jail in Rome and for the Presidency of the Council he created art projects in 10 Italian schools to mark the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation over Nazi-Fascism.
He curated projects of urban creativity for the Municipalities of Rome, Civitavecchia and Turin.
He wrote for contemporary art magazines and he is one of the founders of Carlo Battaglia Foundation.
In Summer 2016 he wrote the critic text and he curated the installation of Edoardo Tresoldi in Manfredonia, the wire mesh artwork which represents the ancient early Christian Basilica in Siponto. Thanks to this work, in 2017, the prestigious Forbes magazine nominated the artist as one of the “30 under 30 influencers” in the art category.
Since September 2016 he has been collaborating with Circus, in Milan, a reality born as a society for photographic services which now aims for the fusion between the profit world and social cultural projects.