The pop side of culture

The idea of Fondazione Dynamo Arte was born from the desire to enhance the immense cultural heritage generated in the first 15 years of Dynamo Art Factory.

With the aim of nourishing its collection and promoting the spread of artistic culture as a common good

Art, culture and creativity as a heritage of humanity that nourishes, educates, and includes. This is the philosophy of Art for Social Impact at the heart of the Dynamo world, which fifteen years ago led to the creation of the Dynamo Art Factory workshops and today to the idea of a foundation that aims to concretely promote this accessible and inclusive approach to Beauty, as a fundamental right inseparable from that of Happiness. It all began in 2009 when, among the first Dynamo Recreational Therapy activities offered to children staying at the Camp, Dynamo Art Factory workshops were introduced. Nothing to do with art therapy or art&craft, but rather a project conceived and structured with the inclusive vision of the Dynamo method. These are, in fact, workshops inspired by those found in cutting-edge Anglo-Saxon museums, with the added bonus that at Dynamo, established artists are involved free of charge with the aim of creating a project structured ad hoc according to their expressive canons and the particular needs of children and adolescents with serious pathologies.

The premises were positive but, as often happens at Dynamo, the result exceeded expectations in many respects.

If, on the one hand, the encounter between the magic of the place, the genius of the artists and the imagination of the children allowed the young people to have fun and express what is difficult to communicate in words through the pre-verbal language of art, on the other hand, this combination gave rise to surprising works also from a formal quality point of view. "From the very beginning, we wanted to aim for excellence; in the early years, it was not easy to bring great artists to the Camp," says Diva Moriani, creator and director of the project. "Then the results and word of mouth led the artists' community itself to start following us with enthusiasm, spontaneously applying and showing gratitude for the human and professional experience gained at the Camp. Suffice it to say that to favor the creative flow, our rule is that each artist works with us only once; however, it often happens that artists decide to donate their works to support the project, in which they believe and invest creative and time resources."

NOTHING TO DO WITH ART THERAPY OR ART&CRAFT, BUT RATHER A PROJECT CONCEIVED AND STRUCTURED WITH THE INCLUSIVE VISION OF THE DYNAMO METHOD

WORKSHOP WITH LOREDANA LONGO

The artist proposed the creation of one of her iconic Victory sculptures, reflecting on the intrinsic dualism of the term victory. The children created the work through a cast molding process in silicone molds and then demolished it with hammers and other tools.

WORKSHOP WITH PAOLO TROILO

The children tried their hand at portraiture of great figures of contemporary art with their fingers, a technique typical of Troilo's artistic production. The portraits were then assembled into a video, so that they "screamed" the claim of the Dynamo Art Factory exhibition: "Art is wow!".

WORKSHOP WITH ALESSANDRO PAPETTI

Five years after the session at Dynamo, the artist returned to work with campers at Triennale Milano to create a new forest filled with dreams and desires. Using the method of gestural painting, the children painted a forest inhabited by animals and elements born from their imagination.

WORKSHOP WITH VELASCO VITALI

The artist asked the children to create a series of drawings with the dog as the protagonist. The works were then assembled into a video, whose audio consisted of the noises produced during the workshop (such as pencils on the table) and the children's voices altered into sounds.

Art factory in the Triennale di Milano exhibition

"Art is wow!", staged last spring, celebrated 15 years of encounters between celebrated artists and guests at Camp

“Art is wow!”, staged last spring, celebrated 15 years of encounters between celebrated artists and guests at the Camp

Next to it, "Terzo Paradiso," a work created by Michelangelo Pistoletto with Dynamo Camp families. On the facing page, the entrance to the exhibition at Triennale Milano: a retrospective journey that, starting from recent digital art works, tells the story of the various facets of a project that has involved leading figures in contemporary art, great masters, and emerging artists over the years, embracing a wide and heterogeneous variety of languages.

Curated by Diva Moriani and Marco Bazzini, at Triennale Milano from February 8 to March 26, 2023, a selection of works was staged that, lending themselves to a double reading, retrace the history of the encounter between artists and Dynamo guests, as well as the multiple trends and languages of contemporary art over the last fifteen years. Thus, it was possible to find works created by children with the guidance of post-war masters of the caliber of the father of Arte Povera, Michelangelo Pistoletto, or the poet of erasures, Emilio Isgrò, as well as the most fashionable contemporary talents such as Marzia Migliora, Loredana Longo, Goldschmied & Chiari, Gian Maria Tosatti. The common denominator: fun and accessibility, which at Dynamo means focusing on emotional expression, the discovery of one's own resources and relationships, the encounter with the other, in this case through the privileged instrument of the language of art. Among the iconic works are the canvases by Alfredo Pirri who, working with visually impaired children, chose to use a pigment of perfumed licorice to make the work accessible, or the sensory paintings by Francesca Pasquali, who involved users in assembling colored straws. If Omar Hassan allowed adolescents to transform anger into creative power by punching the canvas with boxing gloves soaked in color, Velasco Vitali raised awareness about sustainability by involving young participants in his sculptures made of jute and leather scraps. To symbolize the concept of a group, there is the 1:1 scale David created with the guidance of Andrea Crespi through one hundred lines traced by as many children, or the work conceived by Giovanni Ozzola and placed on the grand staircase of the Triennale: a sky dotted with 87 stars, one for each child who took part in the creative project. To make art more accessible and to make the museum feel like a living place, the exhibition – which was free to visit – was accompanied by a calendar of workshops for pathology associations and local schools conducted by artists and Dynamo Staff and talks by industry experts. Among the events on the calendar was also the inauguration of the Dynamo Art Gallery on Over's metaverse simultaneously with an auction on the marketplace.

Overcoming during the NFT Night entirely dedicated to the theme of crypto art for social impact.