Artissima, the art fair that closed yesterday in Turin, was even more recreative than the last edition i attended (two years ago.) Best moments (ex-aequo): buying for peanuts art magazines i’ll never find the time to leaf through and catching hilarious snippets of conversations all over the venue: “The problem with contemporary art is that if you don’t pay attention, you end up thinking that the dust bin is an art piece” (note that this phrase exists in “urinoir” version) or “I’ve seen enough shit for today, if you want to stay here, feel free. I go home!” As befits my happy-go-lucky nature, i just ignored the crap (there was a fair dosis of it i guess, but i’m not an expert) and focused on what made me smile.

Here’s a selection of the gadget-related art pieces. A warning, first. None of them were doing anything interactive. Either because they were out of order or because they were not meant to. But Artissima is an art fair, the traditional kind, so at least the pieces had some eye-pleasing value.

Amplified Pair, by Leslie Deere, which wasn’t working when i took the headphones.

Patrizia Giambi, Ci facciamo in quattro per servirvi meglio.

Space LED, by Antonio Cavadini (aka Tonylight), is a tiny monitor that the artist has created by assembling 192 blue LEDs. The screen is controlled by an old computer and features animations from the 8bit period, in this case Space Invaders.

My big favourite was the painting cum joystick by Belgian artist Franky D.C. There’s a few more images of his work on the website of the Hoet Bekaert gallery.

Artissima set on flickr.