PIZZA carries on with the tour across the Italian independent spots for the arts. These places exist: they live, evolve, ferment, simmer and make their voice heard in the artistic situation, which is quite stiff and dusty in this country. We succeeded in meeting Carrozzeria Margot team, thanks to the help of Artissima Lido, a section dedicated to the artist-run spaces by Christian Frosi, Renato Leotta and Diego Perrone. This is what they told us.

Space Twelve: Carrozzeria Margot

Web: lacollezione.eu

How did you conceive your space?

Carrozzeria Margot was born in July 2010 in a private space, a studio and a house where three people lived: Francesco Bertelé, Cristina Spizzamiglio and Claudio Marcon. At the beginning, Francesco conceived the CM Collezione by asking some artist to create works in order to complete the collection which, as time goes by, has started to evolve into an organization that involves people who share the same professional goals. That’s the reason why the first works are realized in relationship with the space and its geographic location of Milan.

Carrozzeria Margot is a production house for contemporary arts.

Where do we find this place?

After starting at the space in Via Padova, at the moment CM hasn’t got its own base, since we would much rather follow productions in new different contexts than have a private exposition space. Its partners, who live in two continents, collaborate and work in cloud computing, so they open up new perspectives to local realities while being connected to each other.

Who does animate it?

Since Carrozzeria Margot is an association, it consists of these members:

Jacopo Addini (Artist), Francesco Bertelè (Artist), Francesca Chiacchio (Art historian), Anna Forlati (Artist), Antonio Guiotto (Artist), Hanna Hildebrand (Artist), Paola Monasterolo (Artist), Pietro Rigolo (Curator), Iacopo Seri (Artist), Eddie Spanier (Artist). And these are the external partners: Filippo Armellin (Photographer), Roberto De Pol (Artist), Francesco Fonassi (Artist), Martina Moor (Artist), Maria Pecchioli (Artist), Camilla Pietrabissa (Businnes Networking Consultant), Bigna Wehrli (Artist).

What is the philosophy behind it?

As we said before, Carrozzeria Margot is a production house for contemporary arts and it acts like an artists association that looks for new contributors that are able to suggest an idea the group, or specific groups, collaborate to develop.

CM is aimed at being a business venture with the ambition of respecting the financial and economical sustainability standards and, at the same time, fostering new trends for the national and international cultural field.

We are interested in producing works that cross the bounds of authorship to get close to a way to experience art collectively while people is creating it, a kind of art that pays attention to the needs of an extended society. As a matter of fact, we want the artist to both create the piece of art and share the creative process, we want him to relate himself intellectually and conceptually with each person involved in the project.

CM doesn’t sell its works: it sells the project that comes from the work it has produced for its own collection.

Each commissioned project is unpublished since it comes from the ‘translation’ of the collection’s work into a specific new context and purchasers.

That’s why CM is always looking for different kind of purchasers who are ready to be involved in the realization process and put their trust in the projects that take shape in a constant dialogue with us.

Besides giving credit to the works’ “artistic value”, CM focuses on the process each person involved has followed in order to create the piece of art. The distribution of complete pieces of art is not our goal but project conceived as the whole of an idea an individual artist have had and as the result of the dialogue and collaboration with several partners. CM is aimed at the distribution of potential.

What is the schedule for 2012?

At the present time, there are two works in progress for the collection; the first one is made up by Anna Forlati & Bignia Wherli that are working on a project organized by the Istituto Svizzero of Milan, the second one is a Iacopo Seri’s work that will be brought into life during the International event of Documenta XIII in Kassel. The first experience as a commissioned production, a work taken from the collection, has been unfortunately stopped during the process because the artist mismatched with La Collezione. In spite of all, that was a great moment for us to grow up, during the delicate phase where CM is becoming a production house for contemporary arts based on an artists association and not only.

Do you have any wish?

We would like to keep on working.

Translation credit: Chiara Ferrara