Giovanni Rendina: Curator Who Made a Show of Fictional Artists

Giovanni Rendina (Cesena, 1991), an independent curator and researcher, began his journey at DAMS Bologna, where a course on contemporary art by Professor Bartorelli sparked his interest—particularly the anecdote of Yves Klein dyeing visitors' urine blue. He now combines art with political philosophy in his PhD. His recent curatorial project, "Lo Sguardo Fuori" by Andrea Magnani at Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio, featured a fictional secondary-market gallery with works attributed to invented artists, allowing Rendina to explore narrative fiction and the enunciative power of exhibitions. He sees the curator's role as a sounding board, helping artists develop complex projects beyond the exhibition space. His PhD monograph will be published in summer. Rendina admires the Dada and Futurist movements but feels distant from art history. He values post-structuralist texts like Deleuze and Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus" and Foucault's "The Order of Discourse," as well as Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and Wu Ming1's "Q of Qomplotto." He was impressed by the opera "Have a Good Day!" by Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė, and Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, curated by Lorenzo Balbi in Bologna.