La Madonna del Divino Amore a Torino

Presentata oggi a Torino la mostra Raffaello: La Madonna del Divino Amore organizzata dalla Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli e dalla già Soprintendenza speciale per il PSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Napoli e della Reggia di Caserta.

Sono molto orgogliosa di questa mostra – dichiara Ginevra Elkann, presidente della Pinacoteca Agnelli.  Il legame tra la Pinacoteca Agnelli e il Museo di Capodimonte è molto stretto. La prima mostra che ho organizzato in Pinacoteca nel 2007 è stata Sovrane Fragilità”, che svelava la bellezza dei capolavori delle Manifatture Reali Borboniche di Capodimonte e di Napoli. E’ un bel ritorno! Anche miei nonni erano molto legati a Capodimonte e fecero restaurare alla fine degli anni ‘90 l’Arazzo di D’Avalos.

Siamo contenti - dichiara Fabrizio Vona, già Soprintendente del Polo museale di Napoli – di presentare proprio qui in Pinacoteca, continuando questa collaborazione che dura da anni, i risultati di un importante restauro e campagna diagnostica che hanno dimostrato definitivamente che il concetto dell’opera è di Raffaello.

Giorgio Vasari con molta passione e termini ammirativi, nella Vita di Raffaello (1550) citava l’opera fra le più belle opere del periodo romano del maestro, eseguita per Leonello Pio da Carpi signore di Meldola e passata poi in possesso del cardinale Rodolfo, suo figlio.

"vedendosi nel viso della Nostra Donna una divinità e ne la attitudine una modestia che non è possibile migliorarla"

La descrizione del dipinto fatta da Vasari già metteva l’accento sul carattere devoto della rappresentazione e sul delicato scambio di affetti che la anima:

Il gruppo della Sacra Famiglia - spiega una delle curatrice del Museo di Capodimonte Marina Santucci - con il san Giovannino nella sua semplicità e nella poetica degli affetti, è diventato un simbolo dell’iconografia cristiana.

Come tutte le grandi opere d’arte ha vari livelli di lettura; e così si può entrare in relazione con i massimi esponenti della pittura e della cultura dell’Umanesimo e del Rinascimento, pur mantenendo un forte impatto emotivo. Questo dipinto è sempre stato messo in relazione con il dipinto della Santa Cecilia in Estasi che si trova alla Pinacoteca di Bologna, per il senso di religiosità che esprime e che in qualche modo è collegato ai fermenti religiosi che attraversarono la chiesa prima della pubblicazione delle tesi di Lutero del 1517.

In mostra alla Pinacoteca Agnelli fino al 28 giugno 2015 lo straordinario  dipinto La Madonna del Divino amore, i disegni e gli schizzi preparatori del maestro urbinate, provenienti dall'Albertina di Vienna e dal museo delle Belle Arti di Lille, e i risultati degli studi che svelano le indagini riflettografiche e consentono di leggere – anche al grande pubblico - la struttura interna del dipinto e le numerose varianti e pentimenti dell’artista durante la stesura dell’opera,

Per tutta la durata della mostra il Dipartimento Educazione ha ideato una serie di attività e workshop per bambini e adulti e per le scuole di ogni ordine e grado.

L'allestimento della mostra è stato curato da Marco Palmieri.

Il catalogo è edito da Corraini

Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli Torino dal 17 marzo al 28 giugno 2015

Info

Martedì - domenica ore 10.00 - 19.00 | Chiuso lunedì

Biglietti: 10€ intero, 8€ ridotto gruppi, over 65, convenzionati; 4€ ridotto scuole, ragazzi 6/16 anni;

gratuito 0/6 anni, disabili, Abbonati Torino Piemonte Musei

Lingotto - Via Nizza 230/103 , 10126 Torino Tel + 39 011 0062713

www.pinacoteca-agnelli.it

2015 New Museum Triennial

Ed eccoci ad una nuova edizione della nota triennale newyorchese, al New Museum, da non perdere per le tante interessanti proposte, c'è tempo fino al 24 Maggio. 

The Triennial’s predictive, rather than retrospective, model embodies the institution’s thirty-seven-year commitment to exploring the future of culture through the art of today. This third iteration of the Triennial is titled “Surround Audience” and is co-curated by New Museum Curator Lauren Cornell and artist Ryan Trecartin.

“Surround Audience” explores the effects of an increasingly connected world both on our sense of self and identity as well as on art’s form and larger social role. The exhibition looks at our immediate present, a time when culture has become more porous and encompassing and new considerations about art’s role and potential are surfacing. Artists are responding to these evolving conditions in a number of ways, from calculated appropriations to critical interrogations to surreal or poetic statements.

Featuring fifty-one artists [http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/the-generational-triennial] from over twenty-five countries, “Surround Audience” pursues numerous lines of inquiry, including: What are the new visual metaphors for the self and subjecthood when our ability to see and be seen is expanding, as is our desire to manage our self-image and privacy? Is it possible to opt out of, bypass, or retool commercial interests that potentially collude with national and international policy? How are artists striving to embed their works in the world around them through incursions into media and activism? A number of artists in the exhibition are poets, and many more use words in ways that connect the current mobility in language with a mutability in form. The exhibition also gives weight to artists whose practices operate outside of the gallery—such as performance and dance—and to those who test the forums of marketing, comedy, and social media as platforms for art. The building-wide exhibition encompasses a variety of artistic practices, including sound, dance, comedy, poetry, installation, sculpture, painting, video, one online talk show, and an ad campaign.

A Kassel, 60 anni fa', Documenta

Come scorre il tempo son già sessant'anni di Documenta, vai con una grande festa, ovviamente in puro stile tedesco, ordinata, storica e approfondita. 

English

60 Years of documenta – Program

Founded by Arnold Bode, the documenta opened in Kassel for the first time on July 15, 1955, and thirteen editions of the documenta have been presented since then. Preparations for the documenta 14 are currently in progress, and the exhibition is scheduled to open in Kassel and Athens in 2017. The 60th anniversary of the documenta, which is now regarded as the most important exhibition of contemporary art in the world, will be celebrated with an impressive program of accompanying events:

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Official transfer of the documenta Archive

The anniversary celebration begins with a symbolic act honoring the official transfer of the documenta Archive currently managed by the City of Kassel to the documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH. The archive was established on the initiative of Arnold Bode in 1961. Today, it comprises one of the world’s most important special libraries devoted to the art of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as an extensive collection of valuable materials, photographs, and correspondence from all thirteen previous documenta exhibitions. Beginning in 2016, the work of the archive will continue under the supervision of the documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH, which is owned by the City of Kassel and the State of Hesse. The resulting increase in financial support to be provided for the archive in the future will serve to enhance and underscore the international stature of this unique scholarly institution.

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Thursday, July 16, 2015

Marcel Broodthaers

Fridericianum

The Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976) is one of the most significant representatives of the art of the 20th and 21st centuries, as evidenced not least of all by the presentation of his art at four documenta exhibitions (documenta 5, 6, 7 and documenta X). On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the documenta, the Fridericianum is pleased to present an extensive survey exhibition of Broodthaers’s works from all of his creative periods. The exhibition features his first piece, Pense-Bête (1964), numerous sculptural works, five sections of his Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (1968–1972), and the rooms entitled Un Jardin d’Hiver II (1974), Salle Blanche (1975), and Décor, A Conquest (1975).

Having begun as a writer, Marcel Broodthaers decided to become a visual artist in 1964. From the outset, he posed fundamental questions about visual art and forms of demonstration, presentation, and representation. In the process he questioned the fundamental mechanisms involved in the social production of meaning and departed from the supposedly universal validity of existing orders of knowledge. In an age characterized by our faith in the capacity of visual images to explain scientific and political phenomena, the oeuvre of Marcel Broodthaers, in which the unspoken dissonance of images, words, and meanings becomes clearly visible, assumes striking explosive power and relevance.

Curated by Susanne Pfeffer

Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel

Exhibition opening: July 16, 2015

Duration of the exhibition: July 17 to October 11, 2015

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Friday, July 17, 2015 and Saturday, July 18, 2015

Symposium

documenta 1997–2017: erweiterte Denkkollektive / expanding thought-collectives

Contributors include:

Catherine David (documenta X, 1997)

Okwui Enwezor (Documenta11, 2002)

Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack (documenta 12, 2007)

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (dOCUMENTA (13), 2012)

Adam Szymczyk (documenta 14, 2017)

The notion of what a documenta exhibition can be and what it should accomplish has changed considerably over the past twenty years. Art exhibitions have evolved into a global format that aims not only to present art, but also to communicate the most recent theories and conceptual models to an increasingly international public. This development and the questions and issues it raises will be the focus of attention during the two-day symposium. They will be discussed by the artistic directors of the past four documenta exhibitions and the artistic director of the upcoming documenta 14 in dialogue with international guests from the fields of art, science and theory. What were the underlying theoretical concepts for the last four documenta exhibitions, and how are they assessed today? How do these exhibitions realize their global orientation? What new ideas about the world do they convey? Subsequent to the public symposium a workshop for students at German universities will be held at the School of Art and Design Kassel.

Conceived by Dorothea von Hantelmann, documenta visiting professor at the School of Art and Design Kassel

An event by the German Federal Cultural Foundation in cooperation with the School of Art and Design Kassel

documenta-Halle, Du-Ry-Str. 1/am Friedrichsplatz, 34117 Kassel

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Friday, July 17, 2015 – Thursday, July 23, 2015

Ongoing Action

Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmuş: Public Collection of Modern Art

The recent work by Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmuş Public Collection of Modern Art (2014) proposes a subjective, non-exhaustive overview of Modern Art through the use of enactment. It is an attempt to claim history, to de-scale, de-monumentalize but also actualize and re-contextualize significant artworks and events from the history of modernity using only a few human bodies. Initially commissioned by the Van Abbemuseum for the Confessions of the Imperfect, 1848 – 1989 – Today exhibition, the work’s presentation in this context attempts a dialogue between the history of discourses and important moments of modernity and the history of the documenta exhibitions and their initial historical intention.

The format of the work, even though immaterial, is that of an ongoing action-exhibition and relies on the same convention as any display of material objects. It thus reflects on questions of immaterial production and its economy in museum and gallery space as well as on the very notion of a permanent material collection that is traditionally seen as the corner-stone of the museum as an institution.

An event by the documenta Archive of the City of Kassel

Fridericianum, Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel

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Friday, July 17, 2015

Concert

M.A. Numminen and defunensemble: Verliebte Philosophen

In conjunction with the documenta anniversary celebration, the cantata entitled Verliebte Philosophen by the Finnish artist, composer, and singer M.A. Numminen will be presented for the first time in Germany in a new, augmented arrangement. Numminen, well-known since the 1960s for his eclectic interests in such fields as philosophy, sociology, and linguistics as well as various musical styles, including jazz, classical and electronic music, tango, and new music, participated in dOCUMENTA (13). He previously presented a philosophically inspired music program under the title Wittgenstein Compositions in collaboration with defunensemble in Kassel in 2012.

Composed in 2010, his Verliebte Philosophen forges yet another link between music and philosophy. The work deals with the complicated relationship between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Major passages in the libretto were compiled from correspondence between Arendt (Ida Wallén, soprano) and Heidegger (Herman Wallén, baritone). M.A. Numminen serves as the narrator who embeds excerpts from letters relating to the couple’s first meeting in Marburg in 1925, Hannah Arendt’s emigration from Germany, Martin Heidegger’s admission to membership in the NSDAP in 1933, and their reunion after the war in a temporal framework. The music itself tracks the ups and downs of their relationship.

An event by the German Federal Cultural Foundation in cooperation with the documenta Archive, with the kind support of the Kulturhaus Dock 4 under the auspices of the City of Kassel

Kulturhaus Dock 4, Untere Karlsstraße 4, 34117 Kassel

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Sunday, July 19, 2015

documenta Festival

Kassel has planned a grand festival for all visitors to the documenta city under the patronage of Lord Mayor Bertram Hilgen. Numerous art and cultural institutions, individual performers, and international guests are putting together a program devoted to recounting and celebrating the 60-year history of the documenta in exhibitions, films, performances, discussions, readings, and tours conceived specifically for the festival. The festival will open at the Unterer Friedrichsplatz, and tours will embark from there to the various event sites in the city throughout the day. An open-air concert at the Friedrichsplatz in the evening of July 19, 2015 will bring the festival and the week of events in honor of the 60th anniversary of the documenta to a close.

An event by the documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH in cooperation with the City of Kassel

Unterer Friedrichsplatz and numerous other locations in the city

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October 30, 2015 to February 14, 2016

Exhibition: UTOPIEdocumenta – Unrealized Projects from the History of the World Art Exhibition

Focusing on a previously unexplored dimension of documenta history, the UTOPIEdocumenta exhibition takes a serious look at the “unfinished” as a genre of art in its own right. The documenta has gained international acclaim not only for the works acquired on loan from all over the world, but most notably for art projects developed exclusively for each documenta exhibition. Some of these projects were never or only partially realized due to technical or organizational constraints. The exhibition presents the wide range of media in which plans for these projects materialized. Conceptual drafts, sketches, models, and plans by such artists as Wolf Vostell (documenta 6) or George Trakas (documenta 8), by artists’ groups, including Archigram (documenta 5), Coop Himmelb(l)au (documenta 5), and Haus-Rucker-Co (documenta 6), and by documenta founder Arnold Bode document the utopian potential of the world art exhibition in Kassel.

Curated by Harald Kimpel

An event by the Culture Office of the City of Kassel

Stadtmuseum Kassel, Ständeplatz 16, 34117 Kassel

Gli Haring di Skarstedt

Fino al 18 è in corso alla Galleria Skarstedt di New York una mostra su Keith Haring con dei pannelli particolarmente grandi 

English

Skarstedt announces an exhibition of work by American artist Keith Haring, at their Chelsea gallery this March. The exhibition will uniquely present 5 major works on canvas, all at a monumental scale and dating from 1984-1985, exposing a lesser-known side to the iconic artist. Keith Haring: Heaven and Hell will be on view at Skarstedt (550 W. 21st Street) from March 5 through April 18, 2015.

The exhibition’s title, Heaven and Hell, recalls William Blake’s 18th century poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell—a study in opposites of good and evil, angels and devils. As William Blake wrote, “Without contraries is no progression.” Haring similarly examined the duality between two sides of contemporary life in his 1984-1985 paintings. The apparent antagonism and struggle between the figures is one of the key features of Haring’s art.

Haring’s work is replete with paradoxical themes: life and death; religion and sexuality; innocence and experience; heaven and hell; good and evil. Haring often cited two veritable embodiments of such juxtaposition, Dante’sInferno and Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1503-1504, as two of the most profound influences on his art. Untitled (May 29, 1984) can even be read as a pared down, Pop Art version of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s detailed canvases, drawing comparisons to The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559. David Galloway wrote, "The key to Haring's work is not to be found in ‘chapters’ or in oppositions, but precisely in the mingling, the marriage of innocence and experience, good and evil, heaven, and hell." Haring’s deep black lines do more to complicate this dichotomy than demarcate. 

Best known for his cartoonish shapes and oversized red hearts, his more aggressive and at times provocative and sexually explicit imagery is often under-recognized. Incorporating seemingly childlike or naïve shapes, Haring’s art is more than just dancing figures, with much of his work exploring deeper societal issues and demonstrating a remarkable grasp of the ambiguities of his generation.

Haring’s work strikes a delicate balance between heavy and light, playful and serious—a balance intrinsic not only to his art, but to his life. Creating visual puzzles of iconography from the mythological to the mundane, Haring’s oeuvre draws on the influence of street art, with a visual language including his own alphabet of symbols and shapes.

With a strong background in social activism, Haring’s canvases respond to the street culture so integral to his artistic development, while making political statements still poignant to this day. Thirty years after these works were created, Haring’s paintings seem to anticipate the future with a prescient relevance to today’s society.

ARTInRETI e Assemblea Cavallerizza 14:45

ARTInRETI e Assemblea Cavallerizza 14:45 sono liete di invitarvi 

questo sabato 28 marzo 

alle ore 17.30

presso la Cavallerizza Reale

di via Giuseppe Verdi 7/9 a Torino

a partecipare in qualità di practitioner 

alla prima tappa del Gioco del Loco in tour

Che cos’è?

Il Gioco del Loco è una performance-dibattito volto ad attivare una discussione partecipata sullo spazio pubblico e sull’arte che opera nella sfera sociale.Trenta carte da gioco danno il via all’azione, ciascuna pone una domanda: Quando uno spazio è pubblico?Come possono l’arte e la cultura migliorarlo? Quali responsabilità ha l’artista?. Lo scopo del Gioco del Loco è il confronto collettivo – a partire dallo scambio e dalla condivisione di strumenti teorici, progettuali ed esperienziali – sui significati, sugli usi e sulle funzioni dello spazio sociale.

Che cosa fa il practitioner?

I practitioners portano la propria esperienza professionale a confronto con gli argomentatori invitati da ARTInRETI, esprimendo le proprie osservazioni sulle presentazioni ascoltate e assicurandosi che la discussione sia completa e le domande, almeno momentaneamente, esaurite.

A questa sessione prenderanno parte come argomentatori: 

• Donatella Della Porta (sociologa,direttore del centro di ricerca sui movimenti sociali Cosmos presso l’Istituto Universitario Europeo)
• Luca Molinari (curatore, critico e storico dell’architettura, docente presso la Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli. È head curator della rivista Abitare) 
• Peppino Ortoleva (studioso di storia e teoria dei mezzi di comunicazione, docente presso l'Università degli Studi di Torino)
• Marco Scotini (critico d’arte e curatore indipendente, studioso di architettura ed estetica, docente e direttore del Dipartimento di Arti Visive della NABA di Milano)

Come si gioca?

Le alleghiamo il breve regolamento del gioco così da poterne comprendere come si svolge in tutte le sue fasi (dura in tutto un'ora e mezza). 

Perché in tour?

Stiamo portando il Gioco in diversi luoghi in Italia, come prima tappa abbiamo scelto di giocare questo 28 marzo in Cavallerizza Reale a Torino, in parallelo al Festival Biennale Democrazia, che attraversa trasversalmente temi a noi molto vicini. 

Aspettando una vostra gentile conferma, ringraziamo in anticipo.

A presto,

ARTInRETI*

*ARTInRETI è una piattaforma discorsiva cui partecipano soggetti singoli e collettivi, istituzionali e non, che operano nella sfera pubblica attraverso pratiche e metodologie artistiche. Partecipano: Assemblea Cavallerizza 14:45 (Torino), a.titolo (Torino), Matteo Balduzzi (Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea di Cinisello Balsamo), Maurizio Cilli (Torino), Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella), Eco e Narciso (Torino), Fosca (Firenze), KaninchenHaus (Torino), Par coii bsogna semnà (Frassineto Po), PAV-Parco Arte Vivente (Torino), Progetto Diogene, (Torino) Urbe-Rigenerazione Urbana (Torino), Silvia Simoncelli (Dencity, Milano), viaindustriae (Foligno), zerotremilacentro (Frosinone)

Stelle nel cortile

Suggestive e spendenti le sculture nel cortile della Royal Academy di Frank Stella, visibili fino al 12  Maggio. 

Exhibited in the UK for the first time, Inflated Star and Wooden Star has been fabricated from aluminium and teakwood. Conceived digitally, the image is modelled and refined by Stella to the verge of minimalism before it goes into production. The contrasting materials employed in the sculpture, the natural wood against the highly finished metal, the differing treatments of space in the line-drawn star and the round curves of the solid star, create a tension and sense of the works being both repelled and attracted to each other at a fixed distance by an invisible force field.

Best known for his abstract painting, prints and sculptures, Stella’s early preoccupation with creating illusions of space within two dimensions has developed and evolved from ‘sculptural wall-based paintings’, to large free standing works that continue to employ his particular language of painting and spatial exploration. After graduating from Princeton University in 1958, Stella moved to New York City, where he absorbed the vibrant contemporary art scene founded by Abstract Expressionist figures such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. By 1970, with his post-painterly, Minimalist vision, Stella became the youngest ever artist to have a retrospective show in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Stella was made an Honorary Royal Academician in 1993 and his work can be found in prestigious international collections. He has been the subject of several retrospectives in the United States, Europe, and Japan. A major retrospective of Frank Stella’s work is due to take place at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in autumn 2015.

Sun Tunnels con Nancy Holt

Nancy Holt, una delle più affascinanti artiste applicate alla land art, qui scatti del progetto Sun Tunnels in Lucin, Utah.

Serpentine Pavilion

Luminoso, solare come i madrileni che lo hanno progettato, è il prossimo Padiglione estivo della Serpentine ideato da SelgasCano

English

Revealed today: the designs for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion! The render by Madrid-based architects SelgasCano shows an amorphous, double-skinned, polygonal structure consisting of panels of a translucent, multi-coloured fabric membrane (ETFE) woven through and wrapped in webbing. Visitors will be able to enter and exit the Pavilion at a number of different points, passing through a ‘secret corridor’ between the outer and inner layer of the structure and into the Pavilion’s brilliant, stained glass-effect interior. 

Premio Mario Merz 2015

Sta per concludersi la mostra sulla prima edizione del Premio Mario Merz alla fondazione omonima di Torino, un bel progetto articolato in una serie di opere molto impegnative. Il vincitore sarà segnalato a fine Aprile. 

english below

La mostra, curata da Beatrice Merz, si tiene dal 29 gennaio al 12 aprile 2015 alla Fondazione Merz di Torino e raccoglie due o tre opere per ciascun autore, scelte tra le più significative del loro percorso artistico.

Lida Abdul, Glenn Ligon, Naeem Mohaiemen, Anri Sala e Wael Shawky,  sono i cinque finalisti selezionati tra le 512 candidature da una giuria composta da Claudia Gioia (curatrice indipendente), Beatrix Ruf (direttrice dello Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) e Marisa Merz.

Il pubblico può esprimere la propria preferenza visitando la mostra o collegandosi al sito.  Al voto del pubblico si aggiungerà il responso della giuria composta da Manuel Borja-Villel (Direttore Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid), Massimiliano Gioni (Capo Curatore New Museum, New York – Direttore artistico Fondazione Trussardi, Milano), Lawrence Weiner (artista) e Beatrice Merz.

All’artista vincitore, proclamato a fine aprile 2015, sarà dedicata una mostra personale negli spazi della Fondazione Merz di Torino con il supporto per la realizzazione di un nuovo progetto. La mostra, accompagnata da una ricca monografia, sarà poi ospitata in uno spazio in Svizzera nell’ambito del nuovo progetto “Nomade” della neonata Merz Foundation Svizzera.

La mostra è a ingresso gratuito.

“Il premio, che non riceve finanziamenti pubblici ma si sostiene unicamente grazie all’iniziativa privata, sin dalla sua nascita è caratterizzato da uno spirito di apertura e inclusione e infatti chiediamo al pubblico un coinvolgimento fattivo attraverso il voto. - Affermano Beatrice e Willy Merz – Proprio per questo motivo, con il Comitato Organizzatore abbiamo deciso di non prevedere un biglietto di ingresso né per la mostra né per il concerto”.

English

The exhibition, curated by Beatrice Merz, is from January 29 to April 12, 2015 at the Fondazione Merz  and showcases two or more pieces by each of the finalists, selected among their most significant works.

Lida Abdul, Glenn Ligon, Naeem Mohaiemen, Anri Sala and Wael Shawky are the five finalists selected from 512 nominees from the jurors Claudia Gioia (independent curator), Beatrix Ruf (director of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) and Marisa Merz.

The public is invited to vote when visiting the exhibition or by logging onto the prize website www.mariomerzprize.org and cast their vote online. To evaluate the works and determine the winner there will also be a Jury of Experts. Members of the Final Jury for the Art Section are: Manuel Borja-Villel (Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de arte Reina Sofía, Madrid), Massimiliano Gioni (Head Curator New Museum, New York – Art Director Fondazione Trussardi, Milan), Lawrence Weiner (artist) and Beatrice Merz. 

The winning artist’s work will be featured in a solo show to be set up in the exhibition spaces of the Fondazione Merz in Turin. The artist will also receive support to create a new project. The exhibition, accompanied by a publication, will subsequently be showcased at the recently established Merz Foundation Switzerland.

The exhibition is free of charge.

“The Prize—which is not state-funded, but relies solely on private funding—originates from an idea of openness and participation”— say Beatrice and Willy Merz . “For this reason and since we ask the public to actively participate by casting their vote, we chose, together with the Organizing Committee, not to charge an admission fee for the exhibition nor the concert”.

The winner of this first edition will be announced by end of April 2015

HangarBicocca "Double Bind & Around" di Juan Muñoz,

HangarBicocca, lo spazio per l’arte contemporanea sostenuto da Pirelli, presenta Double Bind & Around la prima mostra personale in Italia dedicata a Juan Muñoz, a cura di Vicente Todolí.

L’intero progetto espositivo, che si espande nei 5.300 metri quadrati delle “Navate” di HangarBicocca, propone 15 opere (con oltre 150 figure scultoree) di uno degli artisti più significativi del panorama contemporaneo e comprende i suoi lavori più rilevanti, tra cui The Wasteland (1986), Waste Land (1986), Ventriloquist Looking at a Double Interior(1988-2000), Conversation Piece, Dublin (1994), The Nature of Visual Illusion (1994-1997) e Many Times (1999).

Centrale nel percorso della mostra, si configura la sua opera più imponente, Double Bind, installazione realizzata per la Turbine Hall della Tate Modern di Londra nel 2001 e da allora mai più esposta.

Definito dalla critica uno degli artisti più complessi e singolari del nostro tempo, Juan Muñoz era solito parlare di sé come di un “storyteller”.

Tra gli artisti più significativi a emergere nel periodo che segue la dittatura franchista in Spagna, è stato un interprete visionario e artefice di un’arte che pone al centro la figura umana. Capace di creare contesti stranianti, mondi fittizi abitati da bizzarri personaggi come acrobati, ventriloqui, ballerine e nani solitari, le sue opere danno forma a possibili narrazioni.

“La scultura avvolge lo spazio che occupa, restringendolo dall’estremità al centro in tutta la sua estensione, come un foglio che volteggia nell’aria prima di posarsi sul tavolo o sul suolo” (da Juan Muñoz, “Writings/Escritos”, a cura di Adrian Searle, ediciones de la Central, Madrid 2009).

Affascinato dalla statuaria romana e dall’architettura barocca del XVII secolo, (trascorre un anno a Roma nel 1991), Juan Muñoz ha indagato il rapporto tra la figura e il contesto espositivo. Egli ha esplorato nuove possibilità di distorsione dello spazio, utilizzando prospettive ardite e cambiamenti di scala, non solo per coinvolgere le capacità sensoriali e percettive dello spettatore, ma anche e soprattutto per creare una tensione psicologica nell’individuo che fruisce delle opere.

Il suo interesse per l'arte dell’illusione lo ha portato a trasmettere un forte senso di ambiguità ed enigmaticità, dove i confini tra realtà e finzione si assottigliano, accrescendo un articolato gioco di contraddizioni e paradossi.

In una riflessione che attraversa il linguaggio della scultura, dell'architettura, del disegno, dell'installazione, del suono e della scrittura, e attingendo da riferimenti legati al cinema, alla fotografia e anche alla magia, l'artista ha aperto il campo d’indagine all’emozione e ad una maggiore interazione psicologica con lo spettatore.

L'installazione Double Bind rappresenta la più significativa creazione dell'artista, morto nel 2001 all'età di 48 anni, pochi mesi dopo la sua realizzazione. Concepita ed esposta negli spazi della Turbine Hall all'interno del progetto Unilever Series presso la Tate Modern (Londra, 2001), non è mai più stata ricostruita.

Double Bind viene ripresentata riadattandola completamente su una superficie di 1.500 metri quadrati e intervenendo sui volumi verticali dello spazio ex industriale di HangarBicocca. Formata da una serie di scenari oscuri e da elementi architettonici che giocano sul contrasto tra visibile e invisibile, tra realtà e illusione, essa si compone strutturalmente di tre piani e due ascensori in continuo movimento. Dal piano superiore, il visitatore fruisce della visione di una superficie con forme geometriche che contiene buchi e condotti reali e illusori. Al livello intermedio, invece, appaiono figure scultoree singole o in gruppo bloccate nei loro atteggiamenti in una dimensione temporale e spaziale indefinita. Muñoz crea un insieme architettonico asettico attraverso elementi strutturali, come griglie e finestre sbarrate. E’ l’artista stesso a definire l’esperienza dello spettatore come se si trovasse in una città anzichè in un museo (da Double Bind at Tate Modern, Tate Publishing, Londra 2001).

La mostra Double Bind & Around, nel suo complesso, modifica gli spazi di HangarBicocca, e raggruppa alcune delle opere più importanti di Juan Muñoz, tra cui The Wasteland (1986), formata da un pavimento di pattern geometrici colorati e dal manichino di un ventriloquo poggiato su una mensola, Waste Land (1986), dove il ventriloquo è collocato su un muro di fronte a un pavimento optical, e Many Times (1999), formata da una “folla” di figure dal volto orientale disposte nello spazio le cui espressioni raffigurano dei ghigni taglienti.

Sono presenti inoltre diversi Conversation Piece, gruppi scultorei sviluppati dai primi anni Novanta. Essi sono composti da figure anonime collocate in spazi altrettanto generici. I personaggi, le cui forme ricordano quelle umane, hanno delle strutture sferiche al posto delle gambe. Ciascuna figura occupa lo spazio, assumendo pose diverse, mentre conversa, osserva o ascolta fatti ed eventi che rimangono taciuti e incomprensibili allo spettatore. I personaggi di Hanging Figures (1997) sono invece raffigurati in pose inverosimili mentre fluttuano nell’aria come acrobati. Quest’opera è ispirata al capolavoro di Edgar Degas Mademoiselle La La al Circo Fernando del 1879 in cui l'artista rappresenta un’acrobata con un ardito scorcio dal basso.

Juan Muñoz (1953 – 2001)

Nasce a Madrid, secondo di sette figli. Cresce nell’era franchista e a metà degli anni Settanta si trasferisce in Inghilterra dove studia al Central School of Art and Design e al Croydon College of Design and Technology,città in cui conosce la sua futura moglie, la scultrice Cristina Iglesias. Nel suo percorso professionale ha modo di incontrare molti artisti tra cui Richard Serra e Mario Merz. Ma nonostante abbia conosciuto il Minimalismo e l’Arte Povera, egli imbocca un percorso diametralmente opposto che lo porta ad affermare un’arte del tutto peculiare nella scultura contemporanea.

Conosciuto soprattutto per le sue sculture in papier maché, resina e bronzo, Juan Muñoz si è interessato anche alle arti sonore, creando composizioni per la radio e audio pieces. Egli ha inoltre sviluppato un'intensa produzione testuale – diversi suoi scritti sono stati pubblicati in cataloghi, quotidiani e riviste, tra cui Domus e Figura – e ha collaborato con musicisti e attori per la creazione di performance sonore, alcune delle quali saranno presentate in HangarBicocca. Gli sono state dedicate retrospettive in importanti istituzioni, fra cui: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2009), Tate Modern, Londra (2008), Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble (2007), Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2003), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2003) e The Art Institute of Chicago (2002).

Sam Falls alla Fondazione Giuliani

Presso la Fondazione Giuliani è in corso un'esposizione delle opere Sam Falls

“As the moon orbits the earth it tries to pull everything toward it, the only thing the earth can’t hold on to is water. People can hold on to everything but time. The ocean moves up and down, it cleanses the rocks and sand. Time heals our wounds but it ages our bodies. There’s a beauty and a sadness in the moon, in time. There’s eternal return in the cycle of the tide, it defies time while time defines us. This show merges natural elements and artistic processes to highlight our relationship to time, the intrinsic lightness and darkness of aging, the gravitational pull of life, and the shifting spectrum of melancholy.

The angle of light that illuminates the moon, or location of the moon to the earth, which obscures it, changes month to month depending on the axis of the earth. The moon artworks in the show illustrate an abridged cycle of the moon in October 2014. The phases of the moon were lit up with handmade beeswax candles, each candle a different color, photographed, printed on linen, and then leaned on the wall below the candles, which were re-lit and allowed to burn for their duration, dripping wax onto the print below. The candles were sticking out horizontally from the wall in the shape of the moon, so as they burnt down along their horizontal axis emitting the image of the moon, the wax dropped and landed higher up the vertical axis on the print below, the closer the flame came to the wall, the higher up on the print the wax landed. This vertical movement or wax going up the print describes time, like the tide moving up the beach, while the horizontal placement describes the geography of the moon and the waxing and waning light. The black prints illustrate the various cycles of the moon and the time it takes a candle to burn, while their respective counterparts in white, which were the bottom border of each print, illustrate the phases of the moon, an abstract timeline of a month.

Now is always the golden moment of time, unlike the past and future, which decay or unnerve. In my work I’ve always been concerned with how to translate time honestly and understand it more through art. One way of doing this was employing natural elements like the sun and rain to take the helm of the production. With less mediation on my behalf the viewer interacts immediately with time, such as with a piece of fabric left outside for a year with a tire on it to create an image of the tire by fading the fabric around it. The final image floats between an abstract circle and indexical image of a tire, and the productive process creates a rewarding artwork for myself and the viewer in the present, but it speaks to the past. The optimism of production also holds the melancholy of age.

The tide however moves in a relentless cycle, unlike the forward persistence of time. The same way I’ve always been interested in the duality in art between abstraction and indexicality, nihilism and optimism, I’ve also been interested in life, the personal and the universal. This idea is defined well by the linguistic “shifter”, a word like ‘this’ or ‘that’ which is filled with a different meaning dependent upon its referent every time, or proper pronouns like ‘I’ or ‘you’ which are filled with the person who holds them at the time. The heart of this issue is best said in Rosalind Krauss’ Notes on the Index Part 1 with a quote from Roman Jakobson “A shifter is ‘filled’ with signification’ only because it is ‘empty’”. ‘Now’ is a temporal shifter as I see it, it never refers to the same moment since time is fleeting, and the empty, non-existent future is “filled” when it becomes now. This simple idea holds great weight for me and the video illustrates this. Like polaroids of a flower, now blossoms and then dries up.

The helium pieces came about in trying to expand upon the idea of the shifter, not only how it functions temporally, but in the physical world beyond language. The glowing light is charged helium, and the floating balloons are helium filled. Helium here is acting in two very dramatic physical states but remains the same natural element. Most excitingly, the electricity lets us see the color of helium and the balloon gives it form, it is truly representational and quite abstract – I don’t know which one tips the scale and this back and forth gives the work its gravity. The forms of the glass are line tracings of the sides of my family and friends, myself, my dogs. The works show the microcosm of aging; buoyed up in the beginning, full of energy and life, dropping down to a perfect state with time, then eventually resting on the ground, deflated. What has been continues to burn and the balloons serve as a memory of what was.”

- Sam Falls, January 2015

Born in San Diego, USA, Falls currently resides in Los Angeles. He will open a solo exhibition at Franco Noero Gallery in Turin in March 2015. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include Ballroom Marfa, Texas (upcoming, 2015); Pomona College Museum of Art, California; Public Art Fund, New York (2014); LA>