Dragon, Crab, and Turtle is pleased to present a summer exhibit at the Villa Ranuzzi Cospi located in the middle of sunflower fields outside Bologna.  Built in the 1500s and then completely restructured before 1711, much of the extravagant baroque structure has been decorated with fantasy scenes from Roman Antiquity as well as pastel-coloured paintings of sea shells, exotic flowers and fanciful bucolic designs associated with summertime living.  The owner of the villa, Prospero Ferdinando Benedetto Lorenzo Francesco Baldassare Ranuzzi Cospi, soon began to host the “Accademia dei Notturni,” an artistic and literary salon that met in his villa in the evenings to party—and his plan for the villa as a place fit for summertime entertainment, recreation, pleasure, culture and the arts has been successfully carried out ever since.   

 

Portions of the interior space also feature 21st c. spray-painted murals by Katherine Bernhardt whose paintings focus on vibrantly coloured birds, pop culture icons, fruits and flowers, serving as backdrop and juxtaposition for a wide variety of other contemporary works by American artists associated with Dragon, Crab and Turtle including: Ashley Colangelo, Vaughn Davis Jr., Bianca Fields, Rachel B. Hayes and Jose Luis Vargas.  All of this contemporary American art contrasts strikingly with the early modern Italian villa context, putting both places and eras into much greater perspective.  

 

This summer show features primarily textiles: comfy quilts by Colangelo, heavily altered canvases by Davis Jr, fantastical animal-inspired drawings by Fields, bold and enormous floating banners by Hayes, and other-worldly canvases paintings by Vargas.  The exhibit brings together unique top-rate work coming out of lesser known parts of the U.S.—including Missouri, Oklahoma and Puerto Rico—in order to share it with an Italian and global audience.  

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Curated on location by Elizabeth Bernhardt.