Rachel Whiteread / Vivian Suter

Solo exhibitions by Rachel Whiteread and Vivian Suter open GAMeC’s summer season, in the year of Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture.

…And the Animals Were Sold is the new installation conceived by British artist Rachel Whiteread for the city of Bergamo, in conversation with the architecture and history of the Palazzo della Ragione. Furthermore, the Gallery spaces host Home, the first solo exhibition in an Italian museum by the Swiss-Argentinian and Guatemala based artist Vivian Suter. 

The summer program also includes The Impermanent Collection #4, the fourth episode of the research, exhibition and workshop platform that has been reflecting on the hybrid nature of GAMeC’s collection and its possibilities for development since 2018.

Rachel Whiteread: …And the Animals Were Sold
June 23–October 29, 2023

For the Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo, the renowned British artist Rachel Whiteread (London, 1963) presents a brand new environmental installation conceived in relation to Bergamo territory and its history, and in conversation with the architecture of the venue hosting the exhibition.

It is made up of sixty sculptures, constituting the materialization of the empty space lying between the legs of two different models of chairs. The sculptures are produced using various types of stone found in the building materials of both Palazzo della Ragione and Piazza Vecchia, which are still extracted from quarries near Bergamo. 

The title of the installation is evocative both of the pandemic—the words “And the Animals Were Sold” bring to mind the image of Asian markets where animals of all sorts are traded and which many scholars claim to be at the origin of the coronavirus mutation—and of any passing conversation of which one might almost inadvertently catch a few words. 

Indeed, the exhibition constitutes Whiteread’s first opportunity to express herself artistically about the experience of the pandemic, particularly dramatic for the Bergamo community.

The chairs evoke the presence and at the same time the absence of as many people: the arrangement devised by the artist refers to the requirement of social distancing or, on the other hand, allude to a newfound proximity. The sculptures ultimately constitute an invitation to visitors to pause and bring to life the Sala, experiencing it as a place of exchange and relationship, of closeness and sharing.

A short film by director Joe Juanne Piras will document the creative process that led the artist to conceive the exhibition project for Palazzo della Ragione. The film is produced as part of MADE IN, the creative residency program of MADE: a project promoted by the Bergamo Chamber of Commerce.

Curators: Lorenzo Giusti, Sara Fumagalli

Vivian Suter: Home
June 23–September 24, 2023

Home is the first solo exhibition in an Italian museum by Vivian Suter (Buenos Aires, 1949), which brings together nearly 200 canvases produced by the artist throughout various stages of her career.

Suter settled in Guatemala in the early ’80s, on the shores of Lake Atitlán. Since then, her work has developed through an increasingly close exchange with the elements of the extraordinary natural and anthropological context in which her home-studio in Panajachel fits, amid indigenous communities, rainforests and volcanic peaks. 

Open to the infinite possibilities of chance, Vivian Suter’s canvases tell of the intimate bond that couples them with the life forces of the environment from which they spring. Nature intervenes as a co-author in her works, which come across as a spontaneous grafting of shapes and colors that recall the forest’s tangle of lights, as well as the glimpses of landscape framed by the windows of her home, in a continuous cross-reference between inside and outside.

At the center of the exhibition space, a wooden structure evokes this domestic dimension, while the canvases hanging on it, along with those distributed along the walls of the large room that houses them, simulate the intertwining of forms, lights, and colors so characteristic of the environment in which the works originate and are transformed. The show restores a visual dimension in which art and nature are seamlessly blended into one another.

The exhibition is accompanied by a monographic publication co-produced by GAMeC and Secession, with texts by Lorenzo Giusti, Jeanette Pacher, Dieter Roelstraete, and Vivian Suter.

Curator: Lorenzo Giusti

The Impermanent Collection #4
June 23–September 17, 2023

The Impermanent Collection #4 is the fourth episode of the research, exhibition and workshop platform that has been reflecting on the hybrid nature of GAMeC’s collection and its possibilities for development since 2018.

In 2022, the visitors of The Impermanent Collection #3.0 were called upon to play an active role through the declaration of their preferences in relation to the works on show: which work they would have liked to see again in a subsequent display, and why. The materials collected were subjected to careful analysis by the museum, and on the occasion of The Impermanent Collection #4, a new display will be presented on the basis of this fruitful exchange.

The new exhibition path will feature nine thematic rooms each revolving around one of the works chosen. They will thus spearhead innovative dialogues with other works part of the GAMeC collection, selected in order to highlight different perspectives on each work and possible new interpretations of it.

Among others, the exhibition features works by: Pier Paolo Calzolari, Enrico Castellani, Piero Cattaneo, Mario Cresci, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Ettore Favini, Gianfranco Ferroni, Lucio Fontana, Anna Franceschini, Daiga Grantina, Christiane Lӧhr, Eva and Franco Mattes, Ornaghi & Prestinari, Yan Pei-Ming, Cesare Pietroiusti, Pablo Reinoso, Victor Vasarely, Vedovamazzei, and Alberto Zilocchi.

Curators: Sara Fumagalli, Valentina Gervasoni, A. Fabrizia Previtali