The Collezione Taurisano Acquisition and Donation Award
BECAUSE OF MANY SUNS, the Acquisition Award established by Collezione Taurisano in 2021 in collaboration with the Art-o-rama fair continues. Conceived to support emergent artistic practices, BECAUSE OF MANY SUNS proudly introduces in this year’s edition the donation of the winning artwork or project to the Museum Madre – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples.
Purchased in 2005 by the Campania Region to be used as a museum for contemporary art, the three floors of the 19th century Palazzo Donnaregina house the Madre has been restored and turned into a museum based on a project by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira. Among the artists present in its permanent collection, housed on the second floor of the building, are Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Anish Kapoor, Richard Serra, Jannis Kounellis, Rebecca Horn, and Sol LeWitt. Through numerous important temporary exhibitions, the Madre has become a witness to a history that has made Campania a crossroads of all contemporary arts, aimed at studying and documenting the past through the most current sensibility and languages, and therefore able to act in the present and outline the future.
Looking for artistic practices that traverse languages critically engaging with today’s world and navigating possible, diverse futures, the jury composed by the collector Francesco Taurisano, the MADRE Museum’s Director, Eva Fabbris, and this year’s appointed prize’s curator, Giulia Pollicita, awarded the prize to artist Max Guy represented by the gallery Good Weather, Chicago/Little Rock/North Little Rock. The installation Matrix, 2024, will be donated to the Museum Madre – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina in Naples. The jury has chosen to award the prize to Max Guy for the poignant and wit addressing of socio-cultural issues calling audiences into play in challenging normalised credences in Western society. The work will be donated to the Madre Museum in Naples and specifically adapted by the artist for the museum collection. To this purpose, Max Guy will spend a residency in Naples, supported by the Taurisano Collection, to develop and activate the installation in the new context that will welcome it.
Aligning with the Collezione Taurisano’s fresh approach to collecting and its longstanding support to arts, for 2024 the award intends to go beyond the frame of Art-o-rama in La Friche la Belle de Mai’s days bridging a small connection between Marseille and Naples. The donation to the Madre Museum, one of the most important contemporary art museums and collections in Italy, strengthens BECAUSE OF MANY SUNS’ active involvement in facilitating the promotion of emergent practitioners, attempting to have a more enduring effect to cultural production coupling two diverse institutions doing outstanding work on the arts, that are the Art-o-rama fair and the Madre Museum.
BECAUSE OF MANY SUNS has been conceived by the transdisciplinary art collective Apparatus 22, referring to the prize as a ray of sun that nurtures young practices while claiming the construction of a more supportive environment for the arts. The collective conceived its graphic incarnation in collaboration with visual designer Otilia Fiastru.
Past editions’ winners :
(2024) Max Guy, Matrix (2024), represented by Good Weather (Chicago/Little Rock/North Little Rock)
(2023) Juan Pablo Macías, Letto (THEREAFTER) (2016-2019), presented at the fair by Gian Marco Casini (Livorno)
(2022-ex aequo) Inès Di Folco, Constellation (2022), presented at the fair by Sissi Club (Marseille)
(2022-special mention and private acquisition) Hunter Foster, Court (2022) presented at the fair by Good Weather (Chicago)
(2021-ex aequo) Anna Dot, Giving A Space to Confusion (2017), presented at the fair by Bombon Projects (Barcelona)
(2021-ex aequo) Mary Hurrell, Blush Response (2020), presented on the Immaterial Salon by Nicoletti Contemporary (London)
