2018 exhibition program

Pirelli HangarBicocca presents the 2018 exhibition program, offering visitors a groundbreaking perspective on contemporary art that alternates exhibitions by established artists with younger talents in its two exhibition spaces, the Navate and the Shed.

The calendar, conceived by Vicente Todolí, Artistic Director of Pirelli HangarBicocca, includes four solo shows by Eva Kot’átková, Matt Mullican, Leonor Antunes, and Mario Merz, exploring different aspects and themes of installation art.

Exhibition program

Eva Kot’átková: The Dream Machine Is Asleep
Shed
February 15–July 22, 2018

Press preview: February 13
Opening: February 14

The work of Eva Kot’átková (born 1982 in Prague) investigates the internal and external forces that influence human behavior, in particular the institutional rules and educational systems that can manipulate and produce situations of control.

For The Dream Machine Is Asleep, Kot’átková presents a compelling selection of her installations, sculptures, collages, and performative works, focusing on the idea of the human body as a machine and an organ that continues to function while sleeping, creating parallel inner worlds.

Drawing on personal experiences and a recent body of works—like the video installation Stomach of the World (2017)—for this show in Milan, Kot’átková transforms the exhibition space into a labyrinthine organism in which to explore private thoughts, intimate visions, and dreams, as well as the anxieties and struggles of contemporary society.

Curated by Roberta Tenconi

Matt Mullican: The Feeling of Things
Navate
April 12–September 16, 2018

Press preview: April 10
Opening: April 11 

The Feeling of Things is the first major retrospective by Matt Mullican (born 1951 in Santa Monica) in Italy, conceived to plunge visitors into the artist’s composite universe and present an extremely rich selection of the artist’s seminal works, from the 1970s as well as more recent times.

In a continuous attempt to explain and structure what is around him, Matt Mullican has been working since the 1970s to develop a complex system of models and vocabulary that he calls the “five worlds,” corresponding to different levels of perception and represented by five colors: green for physical, material elements; blue for everyday life (the “world unframed”); yellow where objects become valuable, as in art (the “world framed”); black and white for language and symbols; and red for subjectivity and ideas.

Curated by Roberta Tenconi

Leonor Antunes
Shed
September 14, 2018–January 2019

Press preview: September 12 
Opening: September 13

Using traditional materials—such as rope, wood, brass, leather, rubber and cork—and employing ancient artisan or manual techniques, Berlin-based artist Leonor Antunes (born 1972 in Lisbon) creates elegant sculptures and installations that investigate the significance of everyday objects and the social role of art and design as a means to improve living conditions.

For her first exhibition in Milan, Leonor Antunes presents a new body of works and a site-specific installation for the Shed space. Engaging with the specific local context, Antunes reflects on the modernist tradition in Milan, and particularly on pioneering architects and designers such as Franca Helg (1920-1989), Bruno Munari (1907-1998), and Franco Albini (1905-1977), who become a source of inspiration for a series of floor, hanging, and standing pieces.

Curated by Roberta Tenconi

Mario Merz: Igloos
Navate
October 25, 2018–February 24, 2019

Press preview: October 23
Opening: October 24

The work of Mario Merz (1925–2003), a leading figure in Arte Povera, delves into the processes of transformation found in nature and in human life. One of the first artists in Italy to work in the medium of installation, he began in the 1960s to move past the two-dimensionality of painting by piercing his canvases and objects with neon tubing. In 1968, he introduced what became one of the most recurrent motifs in his work: the igloo, a structure he would continue to explore throughout his career. His igloos, a metaphor for inhabited places and spaces, often have metal frames covered in fragments of materials as varied as clay, glass, stone, jute, and iron.

The exhibition is realized in collaboration with Fondazione Merz in Turin and will bring together in the Navate space of Pirelli HangarBicocca over thirty igloos made between 1968 and 2003, examining the most significant facets and themes in this body of work: for instance, the relationship between inside and outside, between conceptual and physical place, between individual and collective space.

Curated by Vicente Todolí