Cesare Pietroiusti (Rome, 1955) is a teacher and artist. He founded the Rivista di Psicologia dell’Arte in 1979 and graduated in medicine. He later went on to teach at the Visual Arts Laboratory in Venice from 2004, also developing his practice and artistic profile in the meantime.
Cesare Pietroiusti art: microevents and paradoxical situations
Pietroiusti investigates the microevents, paradoxical situations, behaviors and minor gestures that make up the experience of everyday life. His practice can involve direct contact with the audience, including public interactions. Since 2004 he has irreversibly transformed other people’s banknotes; he has distributed tens of thousands of designs produced and signed by him free of charge; he has sold stories; he has ingested banknotes at the end of an auction and then returning them to the rightful owner after the evacuation; he has opened shops where the goods for sale are banknotes and the ‘currency’ with which they can be purchased is the gaze of the buyer; he has set up exhibitions where the works are on sale not in exchange for money, but of visitors’ ideas or proposals.
In 2000 he jointly funded the project Nomads & Residents; he is also part of the curatorial team of the Corso Superiore di Arti Visive of Ratti Foundation, Como
Most important exhibitions
Since 1977 Pietroiusti exhibits in personal and collective shows in international museums and galleries like the Serpentine Gallery, London, 1992; Louisiana Museum in 1996; the Venice Biennale (1990, 1999, 2003); Tirana Biennale in 2005, Performa 07, New York (2007) and the Athens Biennale in 2009. Some of solo projects were held at Jartrakor, Rome (1978, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985), Studio Casoli, Milano (1987), Galleria Alice, Rome (1989); Galleria Primo Piano, Rome (1994); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2007); MaMbo, Bologna (2008, with Stefano Arienti); Galleria Franco Sofantino, Torino (2009); and Wilkinson Gallery, London (2009). In 2010, Wunderkammern had the pleasure of welcoming Pietroiusti in a collaborative project with Contemporanea Roma called Living Layers: a long-term project, curated by Wunderkammern and Pietroiusti, that sought to stimulate interpretations of the territory and its Living Heritage by means of contemporary art.
