Getulio Alviani
antologica
22 October 2004 – 27 February 2005
John Armleder
Voltes IV
22 October 2004 – 25 April 2005
Anish Kapoor
Gouaches
22 October - 28 November 2004
GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo (Italy)
HOURS: Tuesday – Sunday 9:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., 2:30 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. Closed Mondays.
Via San Tomaso, 53
Bergamo
tel. +39 (0)35 399 528 – fax +39 (0)35 236962
www.undo.net/Pressrelease/pdf/focus38.PDF
www.gamec.it
GAMeC presents three artists in three different exhibitions according to their generation and geographical origins but linked by three common themes: geometry, abstraction, and light.
OPENING: Thursday, OCTOBER 21, 2004, 6:30 p.m
getulio alviani. antologica
October 22, 2004 – February 27, 2005
curated by: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
john armleder. Voltes IV
October 22, 2004 – April 25, 2005
curated by: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Alessandro Rabottini
anish kapoor. gouaches
October 22- November 28, 2004
curated by: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
getulio alviani. antologica
From October 22, 2004 to February 27, 2005, GAMeC will present the first retrospective that have ever been dedicated to Getulio Alviani from an Italian museum. Alviani is one of the most important artists at the international level during the 1960′s and early 1970′s, as a leading member of the current that was alternately labeled Optical Art, Kinetic Art, and Programmed Art.
The exhibition at the GAMeC in Bergamo, curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, focuses attention both on the environmental dimension of Alviani’s work through the reworking of kinetic environments in the 1960′s and research on the technical synthesis of light and dynamism in more traditionally formatted works.
Getulio Alviani’s artistic training was close to masters like Josef Albers, Konrad Wachsmann and Max Bill, who, in developing the theoretical and practical premises of the Bauhaus, nudged artistic innovation and creative work in a scientific direction, basing aesthetic work on expansion of the field of perception and the verifiability of solutions to problems. Alviani has been conducting research on materials and their organization in programmatic compositions for over forty years: his interest in the use of art for plastic structures and visual knowledge deriving from the industrial field began in the 1960′s with the production of his first works in aluminum, one of which was acquired for the permanent collections of the MOMA in New York starting in 1965, the year when the artist was invited to participate in the group show The Responsive Eye. Alviani was one of the principal promoters at the international level of an approach to art as a form of knowledge that, through the study of optical phenomena, investigates the structures of perception.
His works manifest a continuous search for rules and geometric proportions generated by mathematical calculations and contrasts between primary or complementary colors: art and science become the fields of research for an aesthetic rigor that denotes both of them.
Alviani’s works are always conceived in relation to the observer’s point of view and stimulate it by using the refraction of luminous effects on metallic surfaces and the observer’s movements with respect to the objects in front of him as artistic materials: the result is that these objects change physically, while the space that contains them and the individual’s visual perception become part of the work. Alviani has always proposed an approach that remains extremely topical by challenging the traditional significance of artistic representation and illusion and presenting an idea of work as the dynamic center of relation with the public.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a monographic catalogue published by Skira Editore, with texts by Loredana Parmesani, Beppe Finessi, and a conversation between the artist and Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Director of the GAMeC and curator of the exhibition. The catalogue will be rounded out by complete documentation of the artist’s writings and biographical and bibliographical apparatus.
HOURS:
Tuesday – Sunday, 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Thursdays, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
closed Mondays
john armleder. Voltes IV
From October 22, 2004 to April 25, 2005, GAMeC will continue its series of Special Guest – one-man shows with unique works conceived for the unusual structure that hosts them – with the new work by John Armleder entitled Voltes IV. This project by the Swiss artist, one of the most famous members of the post-conceptual generation, who has been active since the end of the 1960′s as co-founder of the group of artists inspired by Fluxus ECART.
The project, Voltes IV, envelopes the visitor in a play of lights and graphic elements: the entire wall closing the end of the hall is covered by a target with a diameter of over 6 meters, realized exclusively in white neon light that blinks on and off. The artist uses the spectrum of light and movement, thereby creating a work charged with hypnotic and abstract beauty, transforming a common element like neon into a motif of rarefied elegance.
In his works, Armleder proposes a lucid and ironical reflection that ranges across the history of artistic forms of the 20th century, mixing painting, sculpture, environmental and sound installation, video, and ready-made. All his works investigate the close relationship between daily life, functionality and theory, avant-garde and commonly used objects. Thanks to his ability to dissimulate a clearly conceptual attitude behind an ornamental surface, the artist creates works that fuse sophisticated irony with an almost pop fascination for the world of spectacle and entertainment, the aesthetic of consumption with reflection on the role and position of art in the contemporary cultural system. Nearly always brightly coloured, and presented either individually or as a serially repeated motif, these luminous targets transform the motif of the circle – a constant form in the history of abstract art and a archetypal figure – into a play of light and seductive, hypnotic movement.
Every possible artistic and cultural reference exists within a synthesis which, as occurs in all Armleder’s work, produces an effect of sophisticated elegance and enigmatic beauty that is always poised between the simplicity of pure geometric form and the excesses of playful decoration.
In the tradition of the Special Guest series, the exhibition catalogue, published by Silvana Editoriale, is itself an “artist’s project,” conceived and designed by Armleder and containing texts by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio – Director of GAMeC – and Eric Troncy – Director of Le Consortium in Dijon. The catalogue is closed by an interview with the artist conducted by Alessandro Rabottini, Curator of GAMeC.
The exhibition has been realized with the contribution of Art Council of Switzerland Pro-Helvetia.
HOURS:
Tuesday – Sunday, 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Thursdays, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
closed Mondays
anish kapoor. gouaches
From October 22 to November 28, 2004, GAMeC will host a one-man show by the Anglo-Indian artist Anish Kapoor, one of the most influential artists of his generation. A series of gouaches executed by the artist between 1995 and 2000 will be featured. The gouaches exhibited at GAMeC offer a glimpse of a lesser known and almost “private” aspect of Kapoor’s activity, as he is generally known amongst the general public for his monumental sculptures, one of them, new and commissioned by Banca Popolare di Bergamo Gruppo BPU Banca, is at the Cloister of Santa Marta. Kapoor’s gouaches, like his sculptures, are focused on subjects of particular interest to him, such as the interpenetration of solid and void, the notion of the infinite, the dimension of the sky, and ambivalences like concave-convex, presence-absence, and tangible-intangible.
Color in Kapoor’s work becomes material and assumes a sculptural dimension: dust blurs the boundaries, eliminating the clear distinction between form and background and rendering the depth of the different planes in the form of space that can be occupied by the observer’s imagination.
Anish Kapoor is one of the most important artists on the international contemporary art scene. Born in Bombay in 1954, he has lived and worked in London since the 1970′s, he has been considered a leading exponent of New British Sculpture. His works investigate the dialectic of opposites: man and woman, light and shadow, interior and exterior, and his use of pure colour became a constant feature in his works and symbol of the synthesis between East and West. His works have been showed all over the world at museums and private galleries, for example: Tate Modern in London, Reina Sofia in Madrid and Stedlijk Museum in Amsterdam.