L’Uomo Senza Qualità / The Man Without Qualities

Teatro Margherita in Bari opens to contemporary art again with the exhibition L’Uomo Senza Qualità | The Man Without Qualities – curated by Luigi Fassi, based on a project by Vito Labarile and Maurizio Morra Greco, and coordinated by Paola Marino.

Thanks to the collaboration between three European institutions – the Malmö Konstmuseum, the Municipality of Bari and Fondazione Morra Greco of Naples – the exhibition features for the first time in Italy a selection of works from the Swedish museum collection.

The Konstmuseum – the museum of modern and contemporary art of the city of Malmö – is one of the oldest museums in Scandinavia. It boasts the most important and prestigious contemporary Nordic art in the world, the result of an accession activity that lasted for decades, embracing the best of Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian artistic production. The collection was particularly increased since the 1990s in parallel with the so-called Nordic Miracle, the phenomenon that saw Scandinavian contemporary art establish itself worldwide.

The project The Man Without Qualities takes its title from Lars Arrhenius’ 2003 work by the same name and is aimed at providing the Italian public with an example of the complexity and wealth of twenty years of Nordic artistic video production.
Below the surface of social well-being and widespread egalitarianism in their countries, the seventeen artists selected for the Bari exhibition seem to have foreshadowed the season of social and economic upheavals that are shaking Europe today and are bound to increasingly marginalize its role in the global geopolitical scenario. The works on display are the portrait of a society, since the artists tend to represent the political disorientation in today’s Europe, the intersection of male and female gender identities and the evolution of some aspects of private and family life in schizophrenic ways. Thus, Scandinavian art is especially efficient in portraying the worries and the sense of inadequacy characterizing most of contemporary European art production.
Representing worries and obsessions, but also spectacular scenarios, melancholy and wild fantasies, the video works on display create a hypnotic and emotion-charged atmosphere and give the viewer the opportunity to explore the fascination of contemporary Nordic art.

All images Courtesy Fondazione Morra Greco, Napoli