| During my daily walk down Bleeker Street, heading towards 7th Avenue, I deliberated bypassing my favorite patisserie in favor of the hip Mud coffee truck positioned just across West 4th in Sheridan Square. My inner “cool barometer” lobbied for this new, convenient, efficient, and chic-as-Apple alternative. Coffee on wheels has taken on a fresh new look in the city of hedonistic caffeine fiends, and established yet another insiders’ social arena, amidst the frenzy of morning commuters. Could it be that art on wheels could likewise be the new platform to curate with urbanity? I decided to put the concept of portable art into practice by trotting the globe with a conveniently light and miniature array of artworks packed into a rolling suitcase. | 
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Stefania Carrozzini is an artist and curator based in Milan and New York.
During my daily walk down Bleeker Street, heading towards 7th Avenue, I deliberated bypassing my favorite patisserie in favor of the hip Mud coffee truck positioned just across West 4th in Sheridan Square. My inner “cool barometer” lobbied for this new, convenient, efficient, and chic-as-Apple alternative. Coffee on wheels has taken on a fresh new look in the city of hedonistic caffeine fiends, and established yet another insiders’ social arena, amidst the frenzy of morning commuters. Could it be that art on wheels could likewise be the new platform to curate with urbanity?
I decided to put the concept of portable art into practice by trotting the globe with a conveniently light and miniature array of artworks packed into a rolling suitcase. When I came up with ART BITES, my portable exhibition, I was fascinated by the many meanings emanating from this title. It suggests something fun, yet also strong. We can think in terms of “sound bites” or “mega bites” and so on, but it also suggests that the art has teeth. It’s something alive and vital, like an animal that can bite you. It’s even a little sexy, as in the phrase “love bites.” Of course, literal meanings are not too important for show titles; they should be subtle and suggestive, leaving room for subjective interpretation on the part of the viewer, poetry not prose. Above all, they should be catchy, like the hook in a pop song. This approach seems to have worked, at least in China. While on view at Beijing’s NY Arts Gallery, ART BITES gave the locals a much longed-for insight into the coveted Western Pop aesthetic.
Filling the spacious halls of the Bauhaus-esque gallery, it included works of mixed-media from Italian artists Gianluigi Alberio Fiorenzo Barindelli, Stefania Carrozzini, Franco Di Pede, Antonio Massari, Alessandro Paseri, Antonietta Procopio, Giampiero Reverberi, Andrea Schianchi, Micaela Tornaghi, and Roberto Angelotti. Although contemporary Western art in China has received a lukewarm welcome at best, it seems that slowly, the surge of European and American artists moving into the Beijing art scene are creating some interest around their work at last. While the art market in China is soaring through the roof with success, visitors and artistic expats from abroad are taking advantage of the lack of competition for gallery space and the still developing economy. Works of art that may never make it into an established gallery in the West are finally finding alternate venues in the East to serve their needs, plunging them into the frenzy of art that exists in Beijing’s multiple art districts such as Factory 798 and Songzhuang.
Portable art may be just the micro-model of what the future holds for emerging talent. Despite the universal reach of the Internet, many artists and curators still feel that international gallery exposure is the essential means to making a name for themselves, and participating in the timeless dialogue surrounding the act of viewing art. While the concept of compact, transportable art seems more like a gypsy bandwagon of high-brow goodies, and rather far from the institutions so revered in artistic communities, there is little to say that portable, delectable “art bites” are not an exciting new commodity.
