Renaissance art flourished in 14th-century Florence on the back of powerful patrons, and art patronage by businesses continues to play a pivotal role in Italian art.

The exhibition “We Love Art. Vision and Creativity Made in Italy” organized by the Italian Institute of Culture and the Embassy of Italy in Seoul on Wednesday, aims to show how businesses’ art patronage functions today.

The exhibition of eight works by emerging Italian artists supported by the country’s corporations will run through Nov. 19 at High Street of Italia, a space dedicated to Italian culture in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul.

The exhibition’s eight young Italian artists -- Benni Bosetto, Giulia Cenci, Tomaso De Luca, Lulu Nuti, Amedeo Polazzo, Alice Ronchi, Giulio Saverio Ronch and Namsal Siedlecki -- were also selected for the art project “Under 35” organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy, according to the Italian Institute of Culture. 

Eight Italian companies -- Fincantieri, Terna, ENI, Webuild, CDP Immobiliare, SNAM, TIM and Ansaldo -- funded the exhibition and the artworks. After Seoul, the exhibition will go on a world tour to China, the US, Mexico, Egypt and Germany. The artists’ commissioned works will be owned by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, an Italian investment bank founded in 1850, after the tour.

Bosetto’s “Fuocil*Dens*R.P.,” a sculpture created with ceramics, cables, iron and copper explores the body and its role in expressing human imagination. Another installation, Cenci’s “Progresso Scorsoio - A Figure That Devours Itself,” is suspended in mid-air, created with casts of fragments of animal carcasses and pieces of machinery, which seem to belong to a post-human, science fiction imagination.

Polazzo is presenting an untitled triptych created with crayon and oil on canvas. The painting depicts architectural fragments and domestic objects in apparently random combinations. The painting juxtaposes the monumentality of the settings with the banality of everyday objects.

The exhibition at the High Street of Italia is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. It is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.