David Lamelas: I Have to Think About It

The Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare presents I Have to Think About It, the first Italian retrospective exhibition of the Argentinean artist David Lamelas (Buenos Aires, 1946). Author of one of the most fascinating artistic researches with a conceptual imprint dating back to the end of the 1960s, Lamelas’ practice ranges from installation to sculpture, drawing, photography, film, video, sound and textual works that address the defining contexts and conditions of our perceptions and cognitions. His is an art, more often than not, made of almost nothing.

The exhibition, curated by Andrea Viliani with Eva Brioschi, develops in space across all the floors of the Fondazione and extends in time over several months. Throughout, the show takes on different configurations and activates comparisons with a selection of works from the Fondazione’s collection. Some of the artist’s key historical works will be presented together with new productions and a programme of live events.

As its title gives away by way of its conscious self-irony (“I have to think about it”), Lamelas questions the very format of the exhibition, and in particular of the retrospective, whose the artist formulates in a personal interpretation that frames the exhibition context and the institution as elements of an ongoing discourse challenging notions of temporariness and accommodating different viewpoints. This, against the backdrop of the context wherein the experience of the exhibition unfolds, which comprises both the artist and the visitor.

By way of reviewing and dimming the format of the retrospective, Lamelas conceives of the exhibition as a further exploration of the concepts of space and time central to all of his research. The artist invites us to consider space and time as interpretable, and therefore variable dimensions. He does so by working on a setup that is not confined to a defined space, and by rhythmising the time of the exhibition on the longer and more mobile time of perception and thought. To Lamelas, space and time are concepts bound to context or contingency, i.e. experience and narrative multiplicity. The artist’s own interpretation integrates that of others (namely the public, often made up of other artists or participants to his exhibitions), whom Lamelas invites to become co-authors of the work in the very moment of its production.

From October 2023 to February 2024, the exhibition layout will be subject to change. A public programme of events will also run.