Berenice Olmedo

Fondazione Zimei, as part of its new project Someplace Sometime dedicated to the relationship between art and public space, is proud to announce the exhibition PickPocket, curated by Massimiliano Scuderi. The occasion involves 18 international artists in reactivating of the space of Michetti Theatre. The project, born in collaboration with the Municipality of Pescara, is freely inspired by a 1959 film by Robert Bresson and comes from an idea by the artist Renata Lucas. In the film, the main character is a young man who tests his skill in various ways at stealing the wallets of unfortunate people in Paris metro, refining his technique day after day. Bresson's work seems to be the most fitting metaphor in the interpretation of contemporary creativity, always in between radicalism and subjectivity on the one hand, and the idea of the limit on the other, of what is untouchable. Taking possession of something is, in fact, closely connected to the existential condition of loss and lack, as sides of the same coin. This disruptive logic is the foundation of the 20th century avant-garde. The exhibition is made up of different artistic attitudes and processes that range within these conceptual extremes; reality is phagocytised and returned in a new conformation, for a new foundation, creating the preconditions for a model that begins with a staging. The theatre is thus reactivated as a specific context for a great social sculpture in which all participants are involved.