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	<title>Castello di Rivoli &#187; Thomas Ruff</title>
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		<title>Beyond the wall</title>
		<link>http://www.castellodirivoli.org/en/mostra/oltre-il-muro/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=oltre-il-muro</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 May 2012 10:00:25 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Beyond the wall The Museum’s holdings: projects, special itineraries and recent acquisitions from 5 June 2012 curator: Beatrice Merz Opening+Summer Party Friday 15th of June from 6 pm.   The Museum: the walls, ceilings and wings that are the signs...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Beyond the wall </strong></p>
<p><strong>The Museum’s holdings: projects, special itineraries and recent acquisitions</strong></p>
<p>from 5 June 2012</p>
<p>curator: Beatrice Merz</p>
<p>Opening+Summer Party Friday 15th of June from 6 pm.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Museum: the walls, ceilings and wings that are the signs of the unfulfilled dream of Victor Amadeus II and of his architect, are often the exorcised evidence – decayed by time and history – of other artists who worked in the Castello’s rooms when it was a royal residence. Today, they offer a challenge for contemporary artists willing to confront themselves and explore their capacity and willingness to go beyond physical, conceptual and political barriers, and prophetically overcome the logic of distance and separation. In the interpretation of art, walls erected to separate are used as elements of extreme communication, places and epiphanies of painful situations of cohabitation, conflict or oppression, of hope or disquiet. The blocks and walls can be mental, physical, cultural or economic. Through personal itineraries that cross and meet, <strong><em>Beyond the wall</em></strong> offers not only a fresh view of the collection but also of the very role of the Museum in contemporary society. A sort of game upsets the roles of curator and visitor, leading the latter to seek the key to establish a discourse between the works and concept of limit, frontier, place and memory. As part of the rehanging of the collection, <strong><em>Voyage around my room</em></strong>, a special project by Marzia Migliora is shown here. The project maintains a dialogue not only with the spaces and history of the Museum, but also – through an invitation to active participation – involves the <em>living</em> structure of visitors. Local citizens are asked to loan a personal object: an armchair from their living room. About ten chairs selected by the artist wille be temporarily housed in the Museum, entering in relationship with the works in the collection. During the visit, the public will be able to use them for a rest or for contemplation, bringing to bear a process of exchange between the public and private dimensions. Marzia Migliora’s project is realised in collaboration with the Museum’s Education Department.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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		<title>Thomas Ruff</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:49:34 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thomas Ruff]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev In the late 1980s, Thomas Ruff (born in Zell am Harmersbach, Germany, 1958, currently lives and works in Düsseldorf) was among the first artists working with photography as an artistic medium to be fully recognized within...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev</p>
<p>In the late 1980s, Thomas Ruff (born in Zell am Harmersbach, Germany, 1958, currently lives and works in Düsseldorf) was among the first artists working with photography as an artistic medium to be fully recognized within the contemporary art world. In 1992 he took part in Documenta Kassel, and in 1995 he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. Yet Ruff has always treated the medium of photography with skepticism: for him, the photographic surface is a thin foil which tricks the viewer with its illusion of extreme realism and at the same time reveals the fundamental impossibility of experiencing the world in our digital age. Ruff’s images seem emphatically to deny photography’s main attribute &#8211; that is, the offer of a reliable record of reality. Instead, through his mute images devoid of all emotion, Ruff presents us with a contemporary subjectivity defined by amnesia. The exhibition in the Manica Lunga gallery opens with the artist’s most recent works, the series zycles (cycles, from 2007), digital inkjet prints on canvas in which Ruff investigates the virtual image of space and the demise of photography, now inseparable from painting. The <em>zycles</em> represent computer-generated subjects created with a 3-D modelling program. The <em>Nächte </em>(<em>Nights</em>, 1992 and 1996), on the other hand, are the artist’s response to the nocturnal images broadcast on television during the first Gulf War. With their characteristic green tinge, Ruff’s shots of ordinary urban locations around Düsseldorf instantly evoke televised war images. In his next series entitled <em>Substrat </em>(<em>Substratum</em>, from 2001), Ruff manipulates images of popular Japanese manga cartoons downloaded from the internet to obtain abstract, almost psychedelic results. Ruff uses images of the night sky for the <em>Sterne</em> (<em>Stars</em>, 1989-1992), while the small photographic portraits of the series <em>Retuschen</em> (<em>Retouched</em>, 1995) derive from color pictures of patients found in medical reference books, which he retouched by hand. The series <em>l.m.v.d.r</em>. (1999-2001) comprises photographs of buildings designed by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose initials provide the title. Ruff’s next series of architectural photographs is <em>m.d.p.n.</em> (2002-2003) dedicated to the Naples fish market by Luigi Cosenza, two images of which are on display in Room 30 of the Castello.</p>
<p>In 2004 Ruff started working on the series <em>jpegs</em>. In a process which emphasizes the digital origin of the shots, the artist manipulates the pixel structure so that the images are still “legible” from a distance of five metres of more, but become progressively more grid-like and abstract at closer quarters. The resulting visual encyclopaedia is both frightening and compelling. This series also includes images of outstanding natural beauty, an expression of the collective imagination. Photographs of war and natural disasters blunt our sense of loss and pain, engendering a “pornographic” gaze which views the body purely as a surface, a mass of electrical impulses. The series of <em>nudes</em>, begun in 1999, consists of enlargements of low resolution pornographic images which the artist has pulled off the internet and modified. The works represent the extreme mechanistic fantasy of the digital age, in which sexual desire is blurred and ephemeral, constantly stimulated and constantly distracted by other images or details in the pixellated grid, which expands to fill the surface of the screen &#8211; an electronic stimulus where the figures meld with the flickering bytes, as if the bodies were connected to electrodes and desire were a mere electrical automatism.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>One of the dominant characteristics of Ruff’s art is his use of classification, or more precisely his use of the series in his working methodology. But Ruff does not attempt to categorize his subjects exhaustively, nor does he draw any conclusions. Rather, this is a collection of useless samples without any scope. Each classification creates a form of order, a formal organization, and in Ruff all that remains is this formal organization. His gaze is without quality, ideology, action or consequence, and is cast in all directions. Ruff’s art may not include everything, but it concerns everything, and our need to have everything.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev</p>
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		<title>From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel (Part I)</title>
		<link>http://www.castellodirivoli.org/en/mostra/dalla-terra-alla-luna-metafore-di-viaggio-parte-i/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dalla-terra-alla-luna-metafore-di-viaggio-parte-i</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 06:41:12 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Alighiero Boetti]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Curated by Marcella Beccaria    A force that can alter the course of history, the voyage constitutes a richly symbolic territory, capable of assuming many forms and bringing together multiple meanings. From nomadism to migrations, from mythological adventures to pilgrimages,...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Curated by Marcella Beccaria</p>
<p> </p>
<p> A force that can alter the course of history, the voyage constitutes a richly symbolic territory, capable of assuming many forms and bringing together multiple meanings. From nomadism to migrations, from mythological adventures to pilgrimages, from the crusades to wars of conquest, from the <em>Grand Tour</em> to mass tourism, from scientific explorations on land and sea to the conquest of space and virtual travel, the concept of the voyage changes depending on the era, mirroring its desires, ambitions, fears, and problems.</p>
<p>An activity tied to individual development, to the growth of knowledge, to the affirmation or loss of power, or even to the dramatic necessity of escape, as a shared and profoundly human experience, the voyage, in many cultures, represents a source of continuous reference, a broad metaphorical field used to indicate life, death, and the hereafter. At the same time, the concept of the voyage includes the freedom of mental journeys and the boundless territories of fantasy, replacing physical mobility with the ubiquity of the imagination.</p>
<p>In art, as in literature and cinema, the voyage is a theme that links numerous investigations and continues to inspire new ones.</p>
<p>The exhibition <em>From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel (Part I)</em> evokes the title of Jules Verne&#8217;s famous novel, now rendered even more prophetic by recent polemics regarding the actual conquest of the Moon. The exhibition presents important works by some of contemporary art&#8217;s leading figures who have found in the voyage a fertile motif of inspiration. The selected works investigate and probe the various accepted meanings of the concept of the voyage, demonstrating the power of the imagination to open up new territories and the capacity of art to furnish models for interpreting reality, or prefiguring it, anticipating issues that pertain to the future.</p>
<p>Presenting the public with a new itinerary, through works that for the most part belong to the Castello&#8217;s collection, the exhibition offers a preview of a significant number of new acquisitions. Wishing to adequately convey the breadth of the cultural project that the Museum is building, with the help and generous support of the Fondazione CRT Progetto Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, the exhibition is organized in two parts (part I opening on April 4, part II on May 23).</p>
<p>If nomadism was the first condition known to human civilization, within the of poetic research. Anticipating a tendency that defines the methodology of many artists working today, in the late 1960s, Merz was already theorizing a parallel between the artist and the nomad, emphasizing how both are motivated by the constant need to move from one place to another, endowed with the ability to operate in relationship with new spaces. Merz identified the igloo -an archetypal house and form of transitory architecture &#8211; as an ideal artistic form. <em>Igloo (Tenda di Gheddafi)</em> (<em>Igloo &#8211; Gaddafi&#8217;s Tent</em>), 1968-1981 (room 18), covered with jute and as spacious as a real habitable tent, is characterized by the presence of painted spears, another element identified by Merz as a dynamic image. A symbolic creative force, the concept of movement is investigated by Gilberto Zorio in works that open up new possibilities for the language of sculpture. In many of his pieces, the artist introduces conditions for triggering physical transformations, sometimes manifested through mutations of form. Identified as a vector that has traversed history and has characterized cultures belonging to different eras and places, the canoe is a recurring element in Zorio&#8217;s oeuvre.</p>
<p>In <em>Barca nuragica</em> (<em>Nuraghic Boat</em>), 2000 (room 18), a boat made from woven reeds, traditionally used by Sardinian fishermen, is arranged to initiate a new voyage. The centrality of the concept of the voyage appears in many cultures that define the structure of life as a path or temporary passage, considering experiences such as the entry into adult life, marriage, or the birth of a child to be &#8220;steps&#8221; along that path. Metaphorically, death is a &#8220;passage&#8221; and, ideally, the voyage of the spirit can continue on to another existence beyond the earthly realm. Fundamental questions about the human condition, inserted into a broad cosmic context, appear throughout the work of Anselm Kiefer. In <em>Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles</em> (<em>That Obscure Clarity that Falls from the Stars</em>), 1996 (room 18), the artist investigates the inexorable path of matter, from decay to new birth. Quoting a verse written in the 17th century by French playwright Pierre Corneille, Kiefer celebrates the poetic force of the oxymoron &#8220;obscure clarity,&#8221; which unites in a single vision the opposing concepts of darkness and light, symbols of death and life.</p>
<p> In ancient epics, the voyage is above all a trial, test, or circular path punctuated by continuous obstacles and dangers, from departure to longed-for return. Since Homer&#8217;s Ulysses, the voyage has transformed those who undertake it, and no hero can call himself such without having brought to completion a complex itinerary through the terrestrial world and beyond the frontiers of the supernatural. Myth is the broad field to which Enzo Cucchi&#8217;s imagination turns in Eroe senza testa (Headless Hero), 1981 and <em>La deriva del vaso</em> (<em>The Drift of the Vase</em>), 1984-1985, (room 19). Vitebsk-Harar, 1984, instead, links a reference to two cities, destinations for voyages motivated by different purposes. If, indeed, for Malevich Vitebsk was the place where, in 1919, he aligned himself with the new Soviet government, accepting an administrative post, the Ethiopian city of Harar is the remote destination where Rimbaud arrived in 1880, having transformed himself into a dealer of hides and ivory, following a crisis of faith in poetry. For numerous artists, travelling represents a way to fuel research and to achieve new inspiration. Following his innate cultural nomadism, in 1971 Alighiero Boetti went on his first journey to Afghanistan, which he would then choose as his second home. In Kabul he began working on his maps of the world, embroidered planispheres where each nation is indicated by its flag. The series as a whole can be considered as a work in progress, since each new map mirrors the slight changes in the geopolitical order, due to new political alliances, wars, or revolutions.</p>
<p><em>The Map</em> in the exhibit (room 20), is one of the first two monumental versions made by Boetti between 1971 and 1973. If the idea of elsewhere is always and primarily a mental image, in some of Giovanni Anselmo&#8217;s works, the artist employs physical laws, such as gravity, weight, motion, and oscillation, to express tensions toward ideal places. Magnetic needles, as an expression of forces that seem to provide a direction, appear in some of his pieces as early as the late 1960s. Throughout the 1980s, the artist also developed a series entitled <em>Verso oltremare</em> (<em>Towards Ultramarine</em>), 1984 which includes the work exhibited here, made up of a slab of granit and a blue rectangle painted on the wall (room 20). Like a quest for an undefined elsewhere, mentally beyond the walls, the work indicates a desire never satisfied and therefore constant. Throughout his ceaseless cognitive investigations, articulated as an itinerary capable of traversing space and time, Gino De Dominicis finds an ideal correspondence in religious and philosophical concepts pertaining to ancient cultures, particularly Sumerian, civilization.</p>
<p>In numerous works he plumbs the mysteries of myths that date back to the dawn of civilization, frequently drawing inspiration from the figures of Gilgamesh and Urvasi. Gilgamesh is the protagonist of the most ancient epic in the history of mankind, a story that is also one of the first known tales of a voyage. The mythical king of Uruk, an ancient city in present-day Iraq, Gilgamesh made a long and difficult journey in search of the secret of immortality. The experience of the quest is also part of the Indian legend of Urvasi, an immortal creature loved by a mortal man. The exhibited piece (room 21), created in 1988, is part of a group of works inspired by the hypothetical coexistence of the Sumerian king and Urvasi. In the early 1970s, new electronic technology in the form of portable video cameras provided artists with a new tool for self-awareness and for interpreting the world. Video became a means through which it was possible to investigate reality and attach meaning to voyages that have been undertaken. In <em>Island Song &#8211; Island Monologue</em>, 1976 (room 23) Charlemagne Palestine focuses the video camera on his own motorcycle and travels the roads along one of the Hawaiian islands. The sounds of his voice mix with the incessant roar of the motor, transmitting the euphoria of the journey and the idea of escape. Along with concrete movement, the idea of the voyage can also include a mental component, on the basis of which it is possible to go someplace else without moving, devoting one&#8217;s energies to investigations carried out in theshelter of one&#8217;s own city or even in one&#8217;s own home. In the early nineteenth century, Goethe and Schlegel were among those who initiated a method of ethnographic analysis, carried out from their desks, or at most from the library. Before spending long periods of time among the populations of South America, the artist Lothar Baumgarten was inspired by this tradition and created a series of works, including <em>Yurupari (Stanza di Rheinsberg)(Yurupari &#8211; Room in Rheinsberg)</em>, 1984 (room 26). The work presents a view of tropical America, that the artist had initially developed in 1969, within the confines of his studio. In <em>This Is a History of New York</em>, 1988 (room 24), Jem Cohen journeys through New York, the city where he lives.</p>
<p>The video is structured as a succession of moments, indicated as Prehistory, the Middle Ages, the Industrial Era, the Age of Reason, and the Space Age. Each temporal section corresponds to different neighborhoods in the city, according to a viewpoint that unites the documentary element with a poetic interpretation. If the power of the mind can make any situation dynamic, in <em>Pavimento a occhi chiusi</em> (<em>Floor with Eyes Closed</em>), 1997 (room 25), Massimo Bartolini presents the conditions for mental evasion. In this installation, the artist reverses the floor&#8217;s use to support and enclose the space and the potential function of the window to illuminate and communicate with the outside world. Rebecca Horn creates parallel universes dominated by mechanical forces and in <em>Le Miroir du lac </em>(<em>Mirror of the Lake</em>), 2004 (room 22), she utilizes information taken from sensory experience to suggest an adventure of the imagination. The work results from a horizontally pivoted mirror with a reflective surface which movement seems to recreate the image of a well. The experience of the passage from life to death is investigated in numerous works by Bill Viola. <em>Isolde&#8217;s Ascension</em> <em>(The Shape of Light After Death)</em>, 2005 (room 27 &#8211; chapel), belongs to a recent series of video installations that refer to the story of Tristan and Isolde, a medieval epic characterized by constant flights and displacements.</p>
<p>The video, which is set in a floating aquatic dimension, depicts the final moments of Isolde&#8217;s life. Covered in a pure-white garment, the protagonist&#8217;s body exhales its last breath, before starting out on a final journey, ascending toward unknown depths. Wars and invasions are among the causes that force individuals, families, and entire populations to abandon their homes, embarking on suicidal voyages or traversing prohibited frontiers. The destruction of war and the disquieting suspension of the frenetic activity of daily life are the features that emerge from the images of Beirut shot by Gabriele Basilico (room 28). Interested in urban landscapes, Basilico&#8217;s extensive travels include a period spent in Beirut in 1991, a time when political conditions seemed to favor the beginning of a rebuilding process. In his video installation <em>Dengdai she de suxing / Waiting for the Snake to Wake Up</em>, 2005 (room 29), Yang Fudong stages an epic event that could belong in any era.</p>
<p>The protagonist is a fleeing soldier, perhaps a prisoner who has suffered defeat, or a deserter, captured and punished by his own army. The cinematographic frames and the soundtrack come together to create an intensely emotional ambience, making palpable the condition of every human fragility. In <em>Notti e nebbie</em> (<em>Nights and Fogs</em>), 1998 (room 30), Mario Airò delineates the image of a lighthouse at night.</p>
<p> An indispensable guide for the navigator the lighthouse is depicted at reduced scale, almost as if to suggest that the tranquility of the port is still far off. A reflection that heightens the poetic value of light in opposition to darkness, the work is made using simple materials, including a slide projector, a wood silhouette, and a light bulb, components intentionally left exposed. The allusions the work suggests open up a dense network of references, ranging from literature to cinema, from art history to everyday experience. While for some the so-called &#8220;horror of domicile&#8221; represents an existential choice, for others the abandonment of one&#8217;s home is a violent and dramatic constraint. The psychological impact of uprooting is one of the themes addressed by Kim Sooja.</p>
<p>Exposing herself to experiences she deems essential to the creation of her works, the artist travels continually, and her titles often include the word Bottari, a Korean term for the knotted bundle inside which everyday items are transported. During a trip to Africa, on a Nigerian beach whose name is tied to the slave trade, she shot <em>Bottari Alfa &#8211; Beach</em>, 2001 (room 31). In this work, the inversion between the position of the sky and that of the sea suggests the loss of the most basic coordinates, evoking the drama of those who, abducted from their own world, have been forced to face voyages toward totally unknown destinations.</p>
<p> The complexities of colonialism and the failures of western culture are some of the themes investigated by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in <em>From the Entropic Library</em> (room 32). When they conceived the work, the artists hypothesized an earlier narrative and, thinking about an explorer traveling in Africa with his western cultural baggage, they created a library with books and sheaves of letters. As if it had been abandoned in the midst of the jungle, the library is irremediably eroded by time and about to succumb to entropic disintegration. In <em>Mbube</em>, 2005 (room 33), Roberto Cuoghi investigates the transformations and irremediable misunderstandings inherent to encounters between different economic powers. The artist used his voice and a series of makeshift tools to improvise an interpretation of a song, choosing it as his &#8220;material&#8221; because of the way its travels tell a significant story. While the song, in fact, is an extremely familiar piece of popular music, recognized throughout the world, its story is less well-known. Written in the 1940s by Solomon Linda, a Zulu singer and songwriter, <em>Mbube</em> was an immediate success in its author&#8217;s homeland of South Africa. In the 1950s, the rights to the song were acquired by a United States record company, and in the States the song was frequently interpreted and modified by others. Beginning in the 1960s, with the title <em>The Lion Sleeps Tonight</em>, it became a worldwide hit. Linda earned 10 shillings for the sale of the song and died with 25 dollars in his bank account. It is estimated that over the years the song has generated over 55 million dollars for the American recording industry.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Marcella Beccaria</p>
<p> </p>
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		<title>From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel (Part II)</title>
		<link>http://www.castellodirivoli.org/en/mostra/dalla-terra-alla-luna-metafore-di-viaggio-parte-ii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dalla-terra-alla-luna-metafore-di-viaggio-parte-ii</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 06:28:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Alighiero Boetti]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anselm Kiefer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Viola]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charlemagne Palesatine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Claes Oldenburg - Coosje van Bruggen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Enzo Cucchi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gabriele Basilico]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gilberto Zorio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gino De Dominicis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Giovanni Anselmo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Grazia Toderi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jem Cohen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kim Sooja]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lothar Baumgarten]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mario Airò]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mario Giacomelli]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mario Merz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Massimo Bartolini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pierre Huyghe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roberto Cuoghi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roni Horn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thomas Demand]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thomas Ruff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thomas Struth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[William Kentridge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yang Fudong]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.castellodirivoli.org/?post_type=mostra&#038;p=1261</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Curated by Marcella Beccaria   From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel (Part I and II) includes works by: Mario Airò, Giovanni Anselmo, Massimo Bartolini, Gabriele Basilico, Lothar Baumgarten, Alighiero Boetti, Jem Cohen, Enzo Cucchi, Roberto Cuoghi, Gino...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Curated by Marcella Beccaria</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel (Part I and II)</em> includes works by:</p>
<p>Mario Airò, Giovanni Anselmo, Massimo Bartolini, Gabriele Basilico, Lothar Baumgarten, Alighiero Boetti, Jem Cohen, Enzo Cucchi, Roberto Cuoghi, Gino De Dominicis, Thomas Demand, Mario Giacomelli, Rebecca Horn, Roni Horn, Pierre Huyghe, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Kim Sooja, Mario Merz, Claes Oldenburg &#8211; Coosje van Bruggen, Charlemagne Palestine, Giulio Paolini, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Grazia Toderi, Bill Viola, Yang Fudong, Gilberto Zorio</p>
<p>And if man had never set foot on the Moon? For nearly forty years, polemics regarding the truthfulness of the lunar landing by the Americans in 1969 have aroused public interest. Those who most fervently support yet another conspiracy theory utilize the analysis of photographs and footage that were disseminated at the time to back up their thesis, revealing incongruities related to light and shadow, apparently more like effects one might achieve in a film studio than those found on the Moon.</p>
<p>Whatever the truth might be, the question, and above all its relationship to the history of voyages and the myths that surround them, and the possibilities for interpreting the images, is fascinating. <em>From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel (Part II)</em> continues to plot a new course through works in Castello di Rivoli’s collection, further investigating the ubiquity of the theme of the voyage in works by some of the leading figures in contemporary art.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The selected works attest to artists’ ability to articulate original interpretations of reality, thereby inventing new worlds to explore and new mythologies to pass down.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The articulation of new viewpoints can transfigure even the most quotidian reality. This is what happens in the landscape studies of Mario Giacomelli (room 34), who has returned frequently to this subject throughout his career. Just as many of his images frame the large themes of existence, including time, memory, suffering, and love, for this photographer the earth is also an interior place whose signs recount the continuity of human activity, defined as wrinkles that compose a memory accumulated over generations. At the same time, the view from above and the strong contrasts of black and white which Giacomelli uses in his images abstract the landscapes from their terrestrial associations, making the Earth a place more like the Moon.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Grazia Toderi’s works, which make visible the breadth of the mind’s horizons, suggest a spatial dimension that tends toward the infinite. Investigating reality, but presenting a sublimated version of it, the artist combines an intimate vision of historical individual memory and a fantastic dimension that alludes to the collective imagination. Starting metaphorically with her own memories tied to the television viewing of the lunar landing, Toderi has created works whose context is the universe and its sidereal spaces. In more than one video, the artist has analyzed places linked to social encounter and entertainment, such as stadiums, arenas, and theaters, in which she emphasizes oneiric values. Television footage of the stadium in Paris that hosted the Soccer World Cup Final in 1998 is the basis for her video <em>Il decollo</em> (<em>The Take Off</em>), 1998 (room 35). The artist’s elaboration of the subject frees the image from its defined value as a historical document, as she transforms the closed ellipse of the stadium into a sort of space vehicle, a spinning spaceship, ready for a voyage far from Earth and removed from the contingency of events.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Journey to the Moon</em>, 2003 (room 36), by William Kentridge was created, along with other video works by this South African artist, in homage to Georges Méliès, the French filmmaker, actor, and producer who, as early as 1896, experimented with cinema’s magical potential, and who was the first to transform Jules Verne’s novels into images. <em>Day for Night</em>, 2003, which was shot at the same time as Kentridge’s other works dedicated to Méliès, captures the movements of some ants as they follow one another along a path traced by the artist using sugar. The inversion indicated in the title refers to the reversal between positive and negative image, achieved the development of the film. Like a small fantastic story, the video represents the response to a narrative impulse that originated from a true invasion of ants the artist experienced in his studio.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The continuous shifting between reality and fiction is fundamental to Thomas Demand’s works, life-size photographs of paper models he has made in his studio. Personal memories, collective history, and images taken from the media compose a rich network from which Demand often draws. However, precisely by virtue of the method he has adopted, every image by the artist declares the potential for fiction that is hidden behind each photograph. With the intention of developing new working methodologies, he began using digital technology to support a more precise construction of his paper models. This led to the idea to reproduce the image, found on a commercial postcard, of a cave in Majorca that is characterized by stalactites and stalagmites. A precise description of an architectural complex, the resulting work, <em>Grotto</em>, 2006 (room 37), succeeds in pushing vision beyond the specific method employed to create the image, thus describing a place that seems to be the result of fantasy more than of reality.</p>
<p> In his novels, Jules Verne indicated Iceland as the entryway to the center of the Earth. If, for the French writer, the island was the starting point for a fantastic voyage, for Roni Horn, Iceland, instead, is the realm through which she positions herself in the world. In fact, since 1975 the American artist has returned with migratory regularity to this island, a place that has become one of the cardinal points around which her human and artistic experience revolves. For Horn, the geography of this extreme land has become, symbolically and literally, an inner geography, gradually brought to light over the course of each new voyage. Almost as if she were a cartographer, but working with a camera, over the years she has developed an encyclopedic project entitled <em>To Place</em>, made up of books and installations. The images that compose Pooling You, 1996-1997 (room 37), belong to the chapter dedicated to Jules Verne. In these, views of waves of primordial power alternate with close-up shots of the water, at such close range they become abstract. As in all Horn’s work, the observer is involved as a participant in the experience.</p>
<p>Pierre Huyghe is interested in the relationship between the real and the imaginary, in the stratification of interpretations, and in experience as a territory of new types of narrations. Following certain rumors about the existence of a creature and an island not yet charted on maps, in February of 2005 Huyghe organized an expedition to Antarctica. His film <em>A Journey That Wasn’t</em>, 2006 (room 38), describes the voyage by sailboat, the encounter with the new island, and the appearance of the mysterious creature. While Huyghe and his fellow adventurers sail the seas, a group of musicians, in Central Park in New York, play a piece whose structure evokes the island for which the artist is searching. Intentionally positioned at the boundary between documentary reality and narrative fiction, the work investigates conditions related to the birth of a story and possibly a new myth.</p>
<p>Returning to the concreteness of the present, the exhibition concludes with works that address the experience of tourism, a phenomenon that pertains to a precise category of travel. The works, <em>Audience 9</em>, and <em>Audience 11</em> (Galleria dell’Accademia), Florence, 2004 (atrium Castello &#8211; floor 3), are from an analysis of museum interiors that Thomas Struth has been conducting for many years, focusing particularly on popular tourist sites. In these images, he turns his attention to the museum-going public and the relationship between people and works of art on display. Set in Florence, the photographs are part of a series Struth took of the public at the Galleria dell’Accademia, shot at the moment of the spectators’ encounter with Michelangelo’s David. Excluding the subject of the public’s attention from his lens, Struth focuses on the individuality of each visitor, the body language, clothing, and details of posture, gestures, and expressions. Creating images of almost epic monumentality, Struth captures the disorganized contingency of people within the presumed, almost sacred immobility of the museum context.</p>
<p> Studio per “<em>A perdita d’occhio</em>” (Study for “<em>As Far as the Eye Can See</em>”), 2007 (atrium Castello &#8211; ground floor), by Giulio Paolini is the symbolic beginning and end point for the exhibition From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel. A study that refers to other projects, the work describes the voyage of ideas at three different moments. The first is represented by the image of a boat containing sheets and canvases not yet touched by the artist’s hand. The second moment consists of a series of drawings, sketches where Paolini explores, analyzes, and investigates the variables related to each project. The third moment, finally, is that that in which the works take (and loose) shape. Thus the voyage is described as a progressive fall, from the infinite sea of possibilities to a point where it materializes in precise forms. As the implementation of the idea, the work of art also represents its end, but based on a life cycle, it is also the point for a new beginning, thanks to which the entire voyage can begin again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Marcella Beccaria</p>
<p>© the author and Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art</p>
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