Bargino, San Casciano Val di Pesa, Florence (June 25, 2019) – The Antinori family, as part of the Antinori Art Project, a platform devoted to the visual arts and artists of our time, is pleased to unveil the much-anticipated Untitled (Antinori), a new and important site specific installation created by the American artist Sam Falls (www.samfalls.com) and curated by Ilaria Bonacossa. This marks the first time in the platform’s history when an American artist has been commissioned by the prestigious winemaking family. The work, never shown before and conceived expressly in response to the extraordinary rolling landscape of the Chianti Classico region, will be added to the permanent collection housed at the Antinori Chianti Classico winery and will be on view to the public beginning Wednesday, June 26, 2019.
Falls follows many of the world’s most interesting figures in today’s art scene to participate in this program. This new commission continues the spirit of patronage that has inspired the Antinori family for 26 generations. Falls’ artistic practice parallels that of winegrowing and producing, as both revolve around the relationship between humanity and nature. In winemaking and in the production of Untitled (Antinori), the results arise out of the subtle balance between the intervention of the artist, or the winegrower, and the fundamental role that time, air and the climate interact with the raw material.
For the Antinori Chianti Classico winery, Sam Falls has created a site-specific environmental painting that utilizes the vegetation and vines that surround the structure, along with the sun, rain, evening dew and animals that inhabit the area. These elements portray an environmental palette initiated by the artist but transformed by chance and the passage of time. The installation will bring the natural life of the Chianti Classico landscape to the underground architecture of the winery, giving rise to a surprising fusion between inside and outside, between nature and contemporary architecture, creating a window into nature.
The work is both pictorial and conceptual and signifies an environmental intervention as a work of land art. The installation transforms painting into a process in which the artist’s hand is taken by nature, guided by its drawn-out and unpredictable pace. The result is a frottage in which the shapes of leaves and plants, light and shadow, create a pattern somewhere between the abstract and the figurative. A large canvas, so long and narrow that it looks almost like a horizon, sprinkled with dry pigments, will be left among the vines. Through contact with natural elements, such as sunlight, dew, falling of leaves and shrubs, and the effects of the weather, the canvas will be “painted” by nature itself and, subsequently, installed on one of the two grand staircases in the winery.
A poetic portrait of the surrounding area and its hills, in perfect harmony with the vocation of the Antinori Chianti Classico winery, hidden underground out of a desire to place the landscape at the center of the public’s visual experience.
By commissioning Sam Falls, the Antinori Chianti Classico winery once again shows itself to be an ideal platform for artistic production. Artists are invited to create projects that respond to the history of the Antinori family’s private collection and, in this case, with a tradition that is linked to the region, to winegrowing and to the distinctive character of its natural landscape as much as to the winery’s monumental architecture.
For more information about the Antinori Art Project, please visit http://www.antinoriartproject.it. For more information on Antinori Chianti Classico winery and to book a visit, please visit www.antinori.it/antinori-nel-chianti-classico-estate/.
About Sam Falls
Sam Falls (1984) lives and works in Los Angeles. His institutional solo exhibitions include shows at CAPRI, Düsseldorf (2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporaneo di Trento e Rovereto, Trento (2018); September Spring, The Kitchen, New York (2015); Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas (2015); Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2015); Zabludowicz Collection, London (2014); Sam Falls: Light over Time, Public Art Fund, Brooklyn, New York (2014); Pomona College Museum of Art, Pomona, California (2014); LA><ART, Los Angeles (2013). Among the joint exhibitions in which he has taken part: Kunsthalle Helsinki, Helsinki (2016); Wasteland, Mona Bismarck American Center, Paris (2016); Another Minimalism: Art after California Light and Space, Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, Warwick (2016), and Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2015); Splitting Light, UB Art Gallery, University at Buffalo, New York (2015); Apparition: Frottage and Rubbings from 1985 to Now, Hammer Museum, in collaboration with the Menil Collection, Houston and Los Angeles (2015); Per_forming a collection #1, Museo MADRE, Naples (2014); A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial, International Center of Photography, New York (2013). The artist’s work can also be found in a number of important collections, including those of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Zabludowicz Collection, London.
About The Antinori Art Project
The Antinori Chianti Classico winery is a symbol of the deep tie that has bound the Antinori family to the arts since 1385: painting, sculpture, architecture and of course the art of turning the fruits of the earth into great wines. For over six hundred years, the name of the Marchesi Antinori has been linked to excellence in the art of wine and the highest tradition of patronage. And so, in very recent times, with the opening of the new winery in 2012, a monumental and alluring structure excavated in the soil of the Chianti Classico region, part of the family collection of paintings, ceramics and antique manuscripts was transferred from the historic Palazzo Antinori in Florence to a new location that makes it accessible to the members of the public who visit the Chianti Classico area on a daily basis to taste wine and in search of synesthetic experiences. To put the projects devoted to the visual arts of our time on a systematic basis and give them a greater impulse, the Antinori Art Project was launched in 2012. Antinori Art Project is a platform for interventions in the contemporary sphere, set up in collaboration with established curators, that brings all the activities undertaken in this sector together under a single coherent umbrella.
