Now at its fourth iteration, Opentour is a unique initiative in Italy, created and organized by the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna in collaboration with some of the leading art galleries of the city, Confcommercio Ascom and Fondazione Zucchelli, with the aim of allowing a large selection of very young student artists from the school to present their work in curated exhibitions held in a series of spaces, including the galleries involved.

Opentour is an initiative of great impact whose objective – through an intense calendar of events, exhibitions, performances and screenings in a range of different locations – is to nurture, promote and support the progress of young artists in the difficult initial phase of their future careers, giving them a chance for direct interaction with curators, gallerists and viewers.

For the first time, the initiative is accompanied by Art Up | Premio della Critica e del Collezionismo, an award organized thanks to the collaboration between Fondazione Zucchelli and the association of art galleries in the city belonging to Confcommercio Ascom, with the financial support of Emil Banca, partner of the initiative and co-promoter of the prize, as well as a group of private collectors. Art Up calls for the assigning of two awards of 1500 euros each to the two most outstanding works chosen by a committee composed of Lorenzo Balbi, artistic director of the MAMbo museum, Andrea Viliani, general director of the MADRE museum in Naples, and the collector Gaia Rossi Vacchi. The winners will be announced on Saturday 23 June at the auditorium of the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, at 19.30.

P420 hosts the exhibition Tragitti divaganti, distrazioni da una meta, curated by Francesca Bertazzoni and Davide Ferri, which brings together works by nine students from the Academy.

Tragitti divaganti, distrazioni da una meta is a disjointed group show that is not gathered around a specific theme, but stems from “distracted” reflections shared by artists and curators over the weeks leading up to the exhibition, regarding a key work for the culture of our country and the tradition of studies on Italian literature in Bologna, Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, and its 20th-century reinterpretations by writers like Italo Calvino and Gianni Celati (the title of the exhibition, in fact, comes from an essay by Celati, Angelica che fugge).

Therefore Orlando furioso – which formulates a plot, a tangle of lines and movements (escapes, pursuits, duels, spells, fixations, hyperbolic gestures…) that can resolve, in the boundless space of the poem, in perpetually suspended gestures – is not used as an illustrative reference (except for vague allusions, moments in which the images depicted in certain works link back to magical objects, lances, steeds, imaginary animals, bodies in battle…), but as an ideal counterpoint and score, an undercurrent of a hypothesis of dialogue of the works in space.

In the exhibition the same works can appear at different points; certain pairs of works can establish an exclusive relationship, chasing each other and recombining multiple times in space; the pieces can dangerously approach each other in postures of open conflict, clash, reciprocal rejection. The works can also display open hostility to the spectator; they can seem to crave boundless spaces of pertinence/distance from the other works; they refer to contumaciously enigmatic and inconclusive actions; they convey the impression of occupying space with an unreasonable, brash and brazen attitude.

Whether this impudence (and disproportionately demanding effort) is another motivation of the exhibition or simply a pose, a strategy of approach to the two large rooms of Galleria P420, the reference to the poem by Ariosto can be seen as a propaedeutic reading or simply as a sort of distraction.