Gian Maria Tosatti

Gian Maria Tosatti (born April 16, 1980) is an Italian visual artist..
Since 2021 he has been Artistic Director of La Quadriennale di Roma, the Italian national institution for research and promotion of Italian contemporary art..
In 2022 he represented Italy as unique artist of the National Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennial with the project Storia della notte e destino delle comete (History of Night and Destiny of Comets), curated by Eugenio Viola.
His art projects are usually long term investigations on specific topics related with the concept of identity, from the political to the spiritual standpoint. The resulting research is pervaded by a deep sense of history.
His works have been defined "performative machines" and consist mainly of large site-specific installations conceived for entire buildings or urban areas. His practice often involves the communities of the places for which the works are developed.
In 2014 the international magazine Domus mentioned his installation My dreams, they’ll never surrender among the world's top 10 exhibitions for that year.
In 2015 ArtReview listed him among the world's 30 most interesting artists of his generation (Future Greats).
Tosatti is also a writer and a columnist for the Italian newspapers Corriere della Sera and Il Sole24Ore.
==Biography==
Born and raised in Rome, he got a degree in Disciplines of Arts, Music and Performance at the Roma Tre University and a degree as theatre director at the Centre for Experimentation and Theatrical Research of Pontedera, where Jerzy Grotowski spent the last 15 years of his life and research.
He started his career in 1998 as critic for theatre and contemporary dance on newspapers and magazines.
In 2007 he founded the weekly online magazine La differenza, which gathered around its editorial staff a vast number of intellectuals and artists including Marc Augé, Ascanio Celestini and Attilio Scarpellini.
After an initial phase of research on the principles of performance, he began to develop research in Italy based on environmental art and the idea of site specificity which in those years had established itself through the work of Mike Nelson and Gregor Schneider, golden lion at the 49. Venice Biennale in 2001.
In 2008 he moved to New York, where he lived until 2018 collaborating with several American contemporary art centers including the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Center for Curatorial Studies of Bard College, carrying out a project called I've already been here.
In the meantime he continued to produce new projects in Europe such as Sette Stagioni dello Spirito, made in Naples, with the MADRE museum and the Morra Foundation, between 2013 and 2016 and New Men's Land, made in the Calais Jungle between 2015 and 2016.
In 2018 he moved to live in Naples and began, in Europe, a cycle of works dedicated to the state of health of democracy and Western civilization whose title in Yiddish is מייַן האַרץ איז ווי ליידיק ווי אַ שפּיגל (My Heart is a Void, the Void is a Mirror)
In 2021 he became the first artist, after the founder Cipriano Efisio Oppo, to direct the Rome Quadrenniale. Tosatti, started a profound reinterpretation of the scientific tasks of the institution which transformed the Quadrennial into a structure with daily and widespread activity both on the front of pure research and on that of publishing and international positioning. He founded the quarterly magazine Quaderni d'arte italiana published by Treccani.
==Bibliography==
===As author===
* Materiali per un Teatro Futuro, Editoria & Spettacolo, Roma, 2004 (ISBN 88-89036-04-4)
* Sette Stagioni dello Spirito - Diario 2013-2016, Electa, Milano, 2017 (ISBN 9788891812858)
* New Men's Land - Storia e destino nella Jungle di Calais, DeriveApprodi, Roma 2017 (ISBN 9788865480731)
* Esperienza e realtà, Postmedia books, Milano 2021(ISBN 9788874903221)
===As co-autor===
* Manabile per giovani artisti, Libri aparte, Bergamo, 2013 (ed. Andrea Mastrovito, Cinzia Benigni) ISBN 978-88-95059-28-0
* Forza Tutt*, Bordeaux Edizioni, Roma, 2014 (ed. Giorgio de Finis) ISBN 9788897236719
* Exploit - Come rovesciare il mondo ad Arte, Bordeaux, Roma, 2015 (ed. Fabio Benincasa, Giorgio De Finis, Andrea, Facchi) ISBN 9788897236634
* Toccare il reale. L'arte di Romeo Castellucci, Cronopio, Napoli, 2015 (ed. Piersandra Di Matteo) ISBN 9788898367139
* Rome. Nome plurale di città, Bordeaux Edizioni, Roma, 2016 (ed. Giorgio De Finis, Fabio Benincasa) ISBN 9788899641139
* מייַן האַרץ איז ווי ליידיק ווי אַ שפּיגל (Il mio cuore è vuoto come uno specchio), Treccani, Roma 2021 ISBN 9788812009916
* Annuario d’arte italiana 2022, Treccani, Roma 2023 ISBN 9788812010998
Category:1980 births
Category:Italian artists
Category:Italian people
Category:People from Rome