Ouverture 2024 | Gabriel Orozco – Shade Between Rings of Air

From Thursday 19 December 2024

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Museum, two major exhibition projects are being held: a new display of the permanent collection, titled Ouverture 2024, dedicated to works produced since the 2000s, and the monumental installation Shade Between Rings of Air by Gabriel Orozco.

On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, Castello di Rivoli presents two major new exhibitions, opening on Thursday 19 December 2024: the reinstallation of works from the museum’s collections, titled Ouverture 2024, in homage to the inaugural project of the Castello, curated by Rudi Fuchs; and the monumental installation Shade Between Rings of Air, 2003, by Gabriel Orozco.

Francesco Manacorda, Director of Castello di Rivoli, says: ‘The 40th anniversary of Castello di Rivoli represents a moment of great reflection on the path the museum has taken, on the role it has played in the evolution of contemporary art, and on how the trail it has blazed so far should be inscribed in a future where we want to place contemporary art at the centre of life and society. Through various projects, we wish to pay tribute to the vision that brought the museum to life, but also to launch it into the future, proposing a model of a museum that is relevant today, capable of providing reflections on our time and speaking to a broader audience.’

Ouverture 2024

Participating artists: Maria Thereza Alves, Marwa Arsanios, Micol Assaël, Ed Atkins, Nairy Baghramian, Lothar Baumgarten, Anna Boghiguian, James Lee Byars, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Maurizio Cattelan, Cooking Sections, Roberto Cuoghi, Nicola De Maria, Olafur Eliasson, Sara Enrico, Lara Favaretto, Chiara Fumai, Mario García Torres, Robert Gober, Roni Horn, Pierre Huyghe, Ingela Ihrman, Anne Imhof, Zhanna Kadyrova, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Nalini Malani, Reinhard Mucha, Otobong Nkanga, Maria Nordman, Francis Offman, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Michael Rakowitz, Anri Sala, Hito Steyerl, Alexandra Sukhareva, Jenna Sutela, Alessandra Tesi, Adrián Villar Rojas, Lawrence Weiner

Curated by Marcella Beccaria and Francesco Manacorda

Ouverture 2024 celebrates the 40th anniversary of Castello di Rivoli by creating a proposal for a 21st-century museum: rooted in Europe, but open to a broader global vision that gathers voices that have profoundly shaped the artistic discourse, drawing inspiration from principles of inclusion, social participation, and cultural engagement.

The title Ouverture intentionally references the one used for the inaugural exhibition at Castello di Rivoli, curated by its first director Rudi Fuchs and opened to the public on 19 December 1984. The exhibition was conceived as a survey of contemporary art, a proposal for a future collection, and at the same time, a model for an ideal museum. The works on display, resulting from loans or commissions, highlighted the value of the individual artistic research of the artists. The new version reactivates the same principles, but with the exceptional collection that the institution has since built. Ouverture 2024 primarily focuses on works from the collection produced since the 2000s—with some loans, as in the case of Fuchs, included as desired additions—to reaffirm the institution’s primary focus on contemporary art. The exhibition project conceived for the occasion unfolds through the two grand floors of Castello di Rivoli and traces numerous urgencies that characterise contemporary life.

On the first floor, the ecological crisis and possible forms of empathy between species are the basis of works by Ingela Ihrman, Otobong Nkanga, Anri Sala, and Roni Horn. Issues related to truth in representation and the role of images in the media-driven society are central to the research of Hito Steyerl and Pierre Huyghe. History, memory, and conflict situations define the works of Michael Rakowitz, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, and Marwa Arsanios, while the darker aspects of the past are explored by Roberto Cuoghi and Chiara Fumai. The fallibility of the human body inspires Nairy Baghramian, connecting to the awareness expressed by Robert Gober through works specially loaned for the occasion.

The Ouverture 2024 journey continues on the second floor with the investigation by Cooking Sections into the relationship between food and environmental pollution, a theme further explored by Anna Boghiguian. The contrast between digital experience and the physicality of the body is addressed differently by Anne Imhof, Alexandra Sukhareva, Sara Enrico, and Ed Atkins. The consequences of colonialism are reflected in the works of Nalini Malani, Francis Offman, Maria Thereza Alves, and Zhanna Kadyrova. The themes of disappearance and absence reverberate in the research of Lara Favaretto, with a significant work loaned for the occasion, while Mario García Torres delves into the obsession with places and artistic practices of previous generations. The relationship between scientific research, imagination, and the human condition drives the works of Jenna Sutela and Micol Assaël. The exhibition path concludes in the Manica Lunga with Olafur Eliasson, whose investigation embraces the memory of the encounter with nature, the responsibility of ecological thinking, and scientific and technological experimentation.

The exhibition project marks the continuation of a journey toward the creation of an open, inclusive museum designed to engage diverse viewpoints and narratives. Ouverture 2024 aims to be a prelude to something yet to come, while being firmly rooted in what has preceded it, conceived as a journey through specific chapters of the history of Castello di Rivoli and its future, renewing its function as a device for knowledge, reflection, and personal and social growth.

Gabriel Orozco – Shade Between Rings of Air

Curated by Marcella Beccaria

As part of the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of Castello di Rivoli, starting Thursday 19 December 2024, the large installation Shade Between Rings of Air, 2003, by Gabriel Orozco (Xalapa, Mexico, 1962) will be on display in Room 18 of Castello, curated by Marcella Beccaria.

Held in the Museum’s Collections since 2023 thanks to a generous donation by the artist, the work is inspired by the masterpiece of Italian architecture La Pensilina, created in 1952 by Carlo Scarpa for the Central Pavilion at the Giardini of the Venice Biennale. Invited to participate in the 2003 Biennale, Orozco found Scarpa’s structure in a state of semi-abandonment and became interested in the history of the piece, designed for an inner courtyard, created by Scarpa by demolishing the roof of an exhibition hall in the Central Pavilion and removing the plaster from the walls to expose the underlying bricks. The architect’s idea was to create a Japanese-inspired garden for sculptures. The extreme cohesion of Scarpa’s project, which, as Orozco notes, is already a sculpture in itself, perhaps contributed to its brief use as an exhibition space.

Shade Between Rings of Air is the 1:1 scale replica of Scarpa’s structure. Orozco embraces the original project, in whose features he recognises balances and relationships that belong to his own research, starting with a preference for circular forms. By using wood instead of the concrete that characterises Scarpa’s La Pensilina, Orozco seems to suggest that his work Shade Between Rings of Air can be interpreted as a model, triggering an unexpected temporal relationship, in which it follows the finished architecture rather than preceding it. This extraordinary donation enriches Castello’s collections with a work capable of intertwining a set of cultural, temporal, and stylistic relationships, offering visitors an experience that captures the ephemeral temporality of light and air, declares Marcella Beccaria, Deputy Director of the Museum and Chief Curator of the Collections.

After its initial presentation at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, Shade Between Rings of Air was exhibited at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid and later at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 2004. The new installation is developed specifically for Castello di Rivoli and is created in dialogue with the artist.

Details:
Shade Between Rings of Air, 2003
wood and metal, 280 x 800 x 1400 cm
Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino
Acquired by Marian Goodman and the artist as a partial gift, 2023

Special thanks to Gianfranco D’Amato and Intesa Sanpaolo for their support of Ouverture 2024 exhibition