Isa Genzken
11 September 2010 – 16 January 2011
-2+3. Stefano Arienti Massimo Bartolini: the Museion Collection
30 October 2010 – 16 October 2011
Via Dante 6
39100 Bolzano, Italy
More than fifty works from major European private collections and the Museion collection will be on show in Bolzano for the artist’s first survey exhibition in an Italian museum. One of the most interesting artists from the post-war period, Isa Genzken (Bad Oldesloe, 1948) has established herself as an undoubted point of reference for the developments in the field of plastic art – the theme that Museion has dedicated various appointments to in its exhibition programme this year.
The Museion exhibition aims to offer an insight into Genzken’s heterogeneous oeuvre unencumbered by a chronological framework, taking in the various fundamental nuclei that in her work. It starts on the ground floor of Museion, with the important installation Oil XI, presented for the first time in the German pavilion at the 2007 Biennale, and continues on the fourth floor of the museum with works representative of her engagement with architecture, such as the Säulen (1998 – 2000) and Soziale Fassaden (2002). The various areas play host to groups of works which are highly characteristic of her production, from the Ellipsoiden (1978), to the sculptures in cement, plaster and epoxy resin positioned on pedestals (1985 – 1988), up to the pieces in the series Basic Research (1989-91) and More Light Research (1992).
Isa Genzken’s multiple vision of reality is actually not that different to filmmaking technique. The series Empire/Vampire (2003 – 2004) springs from her love of New York. In her more recent series Wind, she reasserts some of the dominant themes in her art: the involvement of highly personal and emotive components, and subjective associations in the relationship between sculpture and reality. The new works in the series Wind are partly dedicated to Michael Jackson, an artist that Isa Genzken was passionate about. The pop star’s movements become a sort of metaphor for the wind that blows through the works, lending them great sculptural power.
curated by Letizia Ragaglia
Multilingual catalogue with contributions from Monica Bonvicini, Simon Denny, Liam Gillick, Jutta Koether, Mark Leckey, Nick Mauss, Elizabeth Peyton, Lawrence Weiner and Cerith Wyn Evans
Published by Mousse Publishing, Milan
-2+3. Stefano Arienti Massimo Bartolini: the Museion collection
Following the exhibition of Enea Righi’s private collection, Museion has invited the artists Stefano Arienti and Massimo Bartolini to work together as curators, tackling the Museion collection and its history. The invitation sprang from a desire to explore the museum’s identity, and the idea that artists can act as contemporary humanists, using the collection as a workshop for their own ideas. For the show Arienti and Bartolini will be “staging” the Museion collection, taking inspiration from the look and feel of the storerooms. Indeed the title represents the complicated job of moving more than 1300 pieces in the collection from the storerooms (in the basement at level -2) to the exhibition space (floor +3). Gratings from the museum archives – not usually open to the public – will be used to create partition walls in the rooms of Museion, to display a selection of works from the collection, some of which have never been exhibited before. The collection features various nuclei: from Art Informel to the members of Gruppo Zero, from Pop Art to Arte Povera, Kinetic Art to Conceptual Art and numerous works from the Archivio di Nuova Scrittura, Paolo Della Grazia’s private collection deposited in Museion. For the occasion Arienti and Bartolini will be presenting two specific projects which explore the concepts of collection and authorship.
curated by Letizia Ragaglia and Frida Carazzato
Multilingual catalogue published by Mousse Publishing, Milan
Museion’s institutional partners: Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano – Alto Adige, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Bolzano
