The striking thing about the culture of Florence is that contemporary art is noticably absent. Talking to various Florentine artists and curators the common theme is the necessity to leave the city to work. So a tiny light in the contemporary darkness is Base (http://www.baseitaly.org/basenglish.htm) - a small two room art project space on Via San Niccolò. The current installation is a beautiful video projection called Fantasia by Grazia Toderi: http://www.baseitaly.org/Grazia%20Toderi.html. Accompanied by the sound of a light breeze, Fantasia is a gentle shifting panorama of Florence at night, or a dreamed collage of Florentine lights, horizons, districts or parks or groups of buildings slowly illuminate and drift mesmerically; overlaying this circles of lights dance and poetically spin in the imagined sky space. Brilliant.
