100 years, 100 rooms, 100 artists

Art Hotel Gran Paradiso is proud to announce the opening of the hotel’s 2013 season and more importantly, a new edition of its artistic activities. The hotel’s unique mission aims to bring all of its guests – many of whom have never had the pleasure of living and sleeping with an artwork in their bedroom – closer to the world of art and culture. While the most frequently repeated word in Italy iscrisis, this innovative hotel in Sorrento puts forward a creative emblem of hope: that of a powerful synergy between private business and the art world, so that new creative energies will bring us to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

The title 100³: 100 anni, 100 stanze, 100 artisti (100³ : 100 years, 100 rooms, 100 artists) encompasses the far-sighted ambition of creating a point of reference for art and culture in the Campania region, with an annual program of exhibitions and activities and a direct dialogue between participating visitors and protagonists in the International art world. In fact, the opening of the 2013 edition will be an unmissable, week-end long exchange between the artists, gallerists and art critics invited to contribute their exceptional vision to the small solo shows installed in each room. In a day far removed from quotidian reality, a carom of Art, Music and Poetry, with Dionysian muses accompanied by Bacchae, satyrs, wine and delicacies will unfold.

On occasion of the 2013 edition, Art Hotel Gran Paradiso’s rooms will be divided into three sections, Galleries, Collections and 100³ .

Imagine an art fair where galleries cannot apply, but can only be invited, where instead of a booth each gallery is given an hotel room and presents a solo show by a living artist that lasts for seven months, and you will catch onto the concept behind the Galleries section. A small part of this section (4 rooms), will be dedicated to young artists still enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Naples, each sponsored by a Professor of the Accademy. Our Guests, who remain the prime audience, will be able to vote their favourite Gallery room and thus choose the winner of the 2013 100³ Prize. In addition to a monetary award, the winner will receive the opportunity of an artist’s residence in Sorrento during which he/she can elaborate on commissions and projects, as well as creating a permanent installation for one of the hotel’s rooms.

The Collections section consists of a series of solo show rooms in which the projects are more site specific, while the lenders involved are not only galleries but also private collectors and art critics. This section presents more famous artists (some of whom are no longer alive), however, they are not eligible for the 100³ Prize.

The 100³ section consists of a series of permanent room installations, each of which represents the site specific work of one of the annual contest’s winners.

Amongst these, a site-specific installation by Takeo Hanazawa – winner of last year’s competition, who has subsequently dedicated himself to a series of activities that look at the link between artistic production and the spaces in which they are conceived – will be inaugurated. Thus, Yuki no Furu Machi wo, created during the artist’s residence at the hotel, is the second of the artist’s rooms to remain as a permanent installation. Here both ancient and contemporary symbols and codes are used to trace the limits of an aesthetic dimension, a dimension that goes far beyond that of reality and is measured according to the relation between natural and artificial,replica handbags material and spiritual elements as they move on to find new intersections.

With the aim of fostering new occasions for cultural encounters and exchanges,designer replica handbags during the months to come a rich and varied programme of talks, book presentations, concerts and a workshop will take place.

Setting the scene for these events is Cuore/Anima, a curatorial project run in collaboration with the Belle Arti Academy of Naples, whose 2012-2013 N.T.A. (New technologies for the arts) Graduate course was fully sponsored by the Art Hotel Gran Paradiso. The Cuore/Anima exhibition is the result of their work and will occupy the common spaces and the rooftops of the hotel.

Our thanks goes to all of the Artists and the Lenders, without whom none of this would have been possible.