Reaching for the Stars: a journey to to the firmament of contemporary art

A rocket welcomes visitors entering the Reaching for the Stars exhibition in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, and prepares them for the journey to the stars of contemporary art.
A journey that also wishes to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation in Turin, one of the most prestigious collections of contemporary art.
The 15-metre-high artwork is Gonogo, the new installation by artist Goshka Macuga, the title refers to the moment preceding an aerospace launch, characterized by the series of checks carried out that are signaled with a "go" or a "no go".

Among the bright stars of this firmament we find Maurizio Cattelan, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Anish Kapoor, Glenn Brown, Tino Seghal, David Medalla, Rudolf Stingel, Katharina Fritsch, Lara Favaretto, Sarah Lucas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Thomas Ruff, Charles Ray, Mark Manders, Michael Armitage, Cecily Brown and many more. Artists and works from all over the world, that will accompany us on this international journey into the art world.

Among the most interesting pieces we find those by Damien Hirst, who brings to the dispaly Love is Great (1994) where real butterflies are almost incorporated by a sky of blue paint, as wella as an upside down room with glass walls and a desk where nothing happens , by the quite explanatory title, The acquired inability to escape-Inverted and divided (1993).
Also Maurizio Cattelan's work, entitled Bibidibobidiboo (1996), sees an animal as the protagonist. Inside the small room reproduced by the artist we see a scene that is as funny as it is disturbing: a stuffed squirrel, slumped on his kitchen table after having shot himself in the head with a gun.
The other work on display by the Italian artist is La rivoluzione siamo noi (We are the revolution), a sculptural self-portrait. With his disquieting stare, the artist scrutinizes us, dressed in a gray felt suit and hanging from an coat hanger, almost as if he were a piece of clothing himself.

The puppet Cattelan sways, moved by the movement of air in the room, mostly produced by the noisy work of Lara Favaretto, Gummo V (2012), which brings into the room a system of rotating car wash brushes, surprising the visitors in the room with their alternate action.
In the center of the room, a strange specimen of polar bear covered in the plumage of a chick is rubbing on the ground as if it wanted to dry in the snow, certainly not an animal that can survive in the Arctic environment. It is once again a work by an Italian artist, Paola Pivi, entitled Have you seen me before? (2008).

We are still in the second room but the exhibition offers over 70 works and includes the spaces of the Strozzina. The much varied and often profound themes offer food for thought. These are the themes that have marked the transition from the 20th to the 21st century: the experimentation of artistic languages, the role of women in contemporary society, racial and gender discrimination, the body, alienation and many others, tackled through a great variety of media.
Definetly one of the most important exhibitions of the season, not to be missed!