Andreas Fogarasi: 1978

Quartz Studio is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Turin by the Austrian artist Andreas Fogarasi (Vienna, Austria, 1977). Andreas Fogarasi’s work focuses on points of contact between visual culture—fine art, design, architecture—and social reality. What do society, politics, or history “look like”? Where and how do the basic parameters of our communities become apparent in the thoroughly designed settings of our everyday lives? The city with its manifold surfaces is a central object of Fogarasi’s observations. Scrutinizing its ever-changing fabric, he analyses the emergence and visible expression of political, economic, cultural, and sociological structures.

Processes of urban transformation and their manifestations in surfaces are also at the heart of his series “Nine Buildings, Stripped” (ongoing since 2019)—wall-mounted “material packages” composed of fragments of buildings that no longer exist (façade elements, floor tiles, windows, bricks, etc.), they offer radically abstract portraits of specific urban situations, reduced to materiality, colours, and tactile qualities. Between image and sculpture, surface and depth, document and construct, they embody examples of how we constantly build and rebuild: material freeze-frames that capture the complexity of the city’s genesis in vivid tableaux.

For his solo show at Quartz Studio, entitled 1978, Fogarasi has created five new works from building materials found in the city of Turin—an apartment door, an industrial wire-glass window from the Officine Grandi Motori, tiles, wallpapers and an iron lattice create geometric compositions that are abstract, yet site-specific. Strapped together with iron bands and hung on the wall, they are concrete material portraits of the city.

One work is specifically dedicated to a building near Quartz Studio, the Cavallerizza Reale, a building complex designed around 1740 by the architect Benedetto Alfieri for the horses of the royal court. Today the Cavallerizza is an urban space in transformation, after years of abandonment it was reappropriated in 2014 and opened to the cultural life of the city. Several fires and changing owners make its future as a public space uncertain. With a burnt wooden beam at its core, Fogarasi’s work functions as a kind of totem for the complex’s current, precarious state.

Another iconic building sparked Fogarasi’s interest during his preliminary research on endangered Turin architecture, the “Centro Congressi Regione Piemonte” on Corso Stati Uniti, originally the “Istituto Federale di Credito Agrario per il Piemonte e la Liguria”, built on the design of the architect Amedeo Albertini completed in 1973. When Fogarasi came to the site in November 2022, the building was already in the process of being demolished, making place for a luxury apartment building. As he could not secure any parts or fragments from the building, photographs are the only remnant of its impressive modernist structure.

A photograph taken by the artist (printed in the exact screen-size of the mobile-phone it was taken with) is included in the show and will be available as an edition to support Quartz Studio.

Andreas Fogarasi (Vienna, Austria, 1977) lives and works in Vienna. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions internationally, including at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; MUMOK, Vienna; Times Museum, Guangzhou; Kunsthaus Graz; New Museum, New York; Kunstverein Düsseldorf; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; CAC, Vilnius; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Fondazione Fotografia Modena; Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Solo exhibitions include: Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2020); Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna (most recently in 2022, with Mariana Castillo Deball), Galeria Casado Santapau, Madrid (2019); FL Gallery, Milano (2018); Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2016); MAK Center, Los Angeles (with Oscar Tuazon); Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo; GfZK – Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig; Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich (2014); Trafó Gallery, Budapest; Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2012); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2011); Ludwig Forum für internationale Kunst, Aachen (2010); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2008) and at the Hungarian Pavilion at the 52. Biennale di Venezia (2007), where he was awarded the Golden Lion Prize for best national participation.

Quartz Studio would like to thank Austrian Cultural Forum, Milan for its support and Irene Dorigotti, Mattia Macchieraldo, Beatrice Forchini, Flavio Palasciano, Antonio Rava, and Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna for their collaboration.