Exhibition Program 2016
PRESS RELEASE
Exhibition Program 2016
Giovanni Anselmo
Mentre la mano indica, la luce focalizza, nella gravitazione universale si interferisce, la terra si orienta, le stelle si avvicinano di una spanna in più…
Inauguration: April 5, 2016
On view: April 6 – September 25, 2016
curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Marcella Beccaria
Among the first artists displaying work at the Castello di Rivoli when it opened in 1984, Giovanni Anselmo (Borgofranco d’Ivrea, Turin, 1934) holds his first-ever solo exhibition in a museum in Turin. One of Italy’s most internationally acclaimed artists, Anselmo debuted as part of the Arte Povera movement during the second half of the 1960s while engaged in research aimed at highlighting the potential presence of the invisible in the visible. This constant dialogue between the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial, makes Anselmo’s work as pertinent as ever and of increasing interest to younger generations who have grown up in the age of the Internet. His materials visible to spectators are natural elements and industrially made products, often seemingly modest: slide projectors, magnetic needles, granite stone, photographs, dirt, and bands of ultramarine blue. Instead, his invisible materials include magnetic fields, electromagnetic waves, and the surrounding space we find ourselves in.
Conceived in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition unfolds on the third floor of the Manica Lunga. Starting with the work Interferenza umana nella gravitazione universale (1969), Anselmo has put together a unique itinerary that enhances the building’s architectural flow and its orientation with respect to the apparent motion of the Sun along the east-west axis. As part of this itinerary, which, overall, actually constitutes a new installation, there will also be some other works by the artist, including a few important ones from the past. Moreover, the project will also be accompanied by the publication of a scholarly and artistic catalogue as well as a re-edition of the rare artist’s book, Leggere (1971–1972).
Ed Atkins
Inauguration: September 26, 2016
On view: September 27, 2016 – January 29, 2017
curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Marianna Vecellio
The important retrospective dedicated to Ed Atkins (Oxford, 1982) at the Castello di Rivoli, organized in collaboration with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (a section will also be installed here), is the first exhibition in Italy on this artist, one of the most interesting and active on the current international scene.
By experimenting with sophisticated digital post-production, editing, and video techniques, Atkins gives life to audio-video installations that explore the conditions of contemporary man’s existence in the world in the digital era.
The exhibition, which will take place on the third floor of the Castello, is conceived like an imposing immersive video installation, with Atkins’s key works from the past. It will enshroud the viewer in a hypnotic and hyper-realistic atmosphere, by joining images, space, sound, words, and color in an indistinct narrative that outlines the fate of a melancholic, emotional, Western man wandering in search of meaning and direction, but unable to escape the technological box defining him. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, which constitutes the first important publication on this artist, with chronology and anthology. This event inaugurates a new collaborative phase between the Castello di Rivoli and Turin’s private foundations devoted to contemporary art.
Wael Shawky
Inauguration: November 2, 2016
On view: November 3, 2016 – May 14, 2017
curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Marcella Beccaria
The Castello di Rivoli presents the first retrospective in Italy on the work of Wael Shawky, born in Alexandria in Egypt (1971) where he currently lives and works. This exhibition will showcase the artist’s main works, including the complete trilogy of Cabaret Crusades (2010–2015), a series of films that – inspired by the writings of Amin Maalouf – tell the story of the Crusades from an Arab point of view, also drawing upon primary source documents of Arab history. By rejecting the common idea of historical eras, these works move beyond the more traditional notions concerning the clash of civilization between the Western world and Islamic cultures. In addition to a complex historical framework, Cabaret Crusades outlines in-depth psychological research, investigating the multiple protagonists of the events described through the use of marionettes.
If in the first episode of the series The Horror Show File (2010) the wooden marionettes are from the Lupi collection at the Museo della Marionetta in Turin, the subsequent episodes The Path to Cairo (2013) and The Secrets of Karbala (2015) use marionettes made by the artist, respectively, in ceramic in the South of France and in glass in Venice, with the collaboration of highly skilled French and Italian artisans. By including other recent work and some made specifically for this event at the Manica Lunga in the Castello, the exhibition aims to offer a positive point of view on cultural exchange during this precise and dramatic moment in history.
In conjunction, the Fondazione Merz will also showcase Wael Shawky, the winner of the first edition of the Premio Mario Merz, curated by Abdellah Karroum.
Also, for the exhibitions Organismi (April 20 – September 26, 2016) and Colori (October 26, 2016 – February 28, 2017) held at the GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, the Castello di Rivoli will present other works and collateral events on topics treated in a way that is scholarly, radical, and of advanced artistic research.
Organismi (April 20 – September 26, 2016) investigates the relations between the deep organicistic impulses nurturing the art nouveau of Emile Gallé and the biocentric aspirations of an ecological relationship with the world of contemporary art. As an example of this, the Castello di Rivoli will display, among others, Pierre Huyghe’s work, A Journey That Wasn’t (2005).
The group exhibition Colori (October 26, 2016 – February 28, 2017) addresses the history of color in modern and contemporary art through various innovative perspectives, from neuroscience to anthropology, from Goethe to today. The Castello di Rivoli will also install works pertaining to the topic, art by Carla Accardi (Trapani, 1924 – Rome, 2014) from the permanent collection, and a recent work by Simon Starling, Red, Green, Blue, Loom Music (2015-2016).