Arnaldo Pomodoro Sculpture Prize. 8th edition | Dancing at the Edge of the World

Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro e Fondazione ICA Milano presentano Dancing at the Edge of the World, mostra collettiva che riunisce i cinque artisti finalisti dell’VIII edizione del Premio Arnaldo Pomodoro per la Scultura: Bronwyn Katz, Dan Lie, Yu Ji, Trương Công Tùng e Luana Vitra.
La mostra segna un momento centrale del percorso del Premio e offre al pubblico uno sguardo sulle più attuali direzioni della ricerca scultorea internazionale.

Established in 2006 by Arnaldo Pomodoro, the Prize is among the few – both in Italy and internationally – specifically dedicated to sculpture. Each edition acts as an observatory of the international scene, identifying those artists between 25 and 45 years old whose individual research offers a reflection on the very idea of sculptural practice and makes a tangible contribution to the development of contemporary sculpture.
Starting this year, thanks to the generous support of Venini, the monetary award increases from €10,000 to €30,000, further strengthening the Prize’s commitment to supporting the research and experimentation of the artist who will win the eighth edition, who will also receive a commemorative plaque specially created by Venini.

The exhibition of the finalists represents a moment of dialogue and production in which new works, conceived specifically for this occasion, engage with the spaces of Fondazione ICA Milano, taking them as an active element of the creative process. Sculpture thus emerges as an open field of critical inquiry, sensitive to the cultural, ecological, and social transformations of the present.

Affermano i curatori Federico Giani e Chiara Nuzzi:
«Il progetto curatoriale prende il titolo dall’omonima raccolta di saggi di Ursula K. Le Guin (1989), nella quale l’autrice invita a immaginare prospettive alternative e a considerare l’immaginazione come strumento politico e sociale generativo. Muovendo da questa matrice teorica, la mostra affronta alcune delle questioni più urgenti del contemporaneo — la decentralizzazione dell’azione umana, la dimensione ecologica, la contrazione dell’orizzonte futuro — proponendo incursioni in territori di possibilità che ridefiniscono il rapporto tra corpi, materia e ambiente». 

In this context, sculpture manifests itself as a living entity in continuous transformation: not a static object, but a critical and visionary intervention capable of reformulating relationships between human and non-human, natural and artificial, time and space. Although the human figure is visually almost entirely absent, the works deeply question the embodied experience of existence and the many forces — natural, environmental, climatic, architectural, political, and technological — that determine its conditions. As noted by Anne Reeve, President of the Prize Jury, the research presented here outlines a new biomorphism, a morphology of the body capable of inhabiting the dissolution of physical and temporal boundaries.

Thanks are extended to Venini, Main Partner of the event, for their generous support of the Prize and the promotion of contemporary art, and to IGPDecaux, which for the fourth consecutive edition serves as Media Partner of the Prize.