Susan Philipsz: A Song A Part A CIELO APERTO 2022

Four contemporary artworks and new commissions to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Fondazione CRC

Artists: Susan Philipsz; Olafur Eliasson; Michelangelo Pistoletto; Otobong Nkanga

Venues: Mondovì; Grinzane Cavour; Cuneo; Bra

A public art project commissioned by Fondazione CRC in collaboration with Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. It is curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev with Marcella Beccaria and Marianna Vecellio

Susan Philipsz’s A Song A Part is presented at Museo Civico della Stampa Ex Collegio delle Orfane di Mondovì

Description

Microsoft Word – PR (ENG)_4 progetti Fondazione CRC_29.06.2022.docx

A CIELO APERTO 2022, which renews the long and fruitful collaboration built over the years with Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, offers the opportunity to bring the works of four great international artists in the area of Cuneo. A unique cultural operation, promoted to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our institution, which will leave a mark in four emblematic places in the history of Fondazione CRC

A CIELO APERTO 2022. Four contemporary artworks and new commissions to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Fondazione CRC is curated and supported by Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea.

The project presents four public artworks created by four international artists and located in four locations – the Piemontese towns of Alba, Bra, Cuneo and Mondovì – in the area of Cuneo where Fondazione CRC operates. The project is part of the program La generazione delle idee (The Generation of Ideas) by Fondazione CRC to celebrate its 30th anniversary, and it is designed to be enjoyed by the community in a spirit of renewed freedom in the open air, in contrast with the limitations that have characterized the last few years of cultural activities.
The initiative intends to establish a new balance between local communities, history, international artistic life and nature, with particular attention to the themes of ecology which today are articulated in an effort to slow down climate change, to seek a quality and sustainability in food production, as well as in the cultural memory that constitutes the identity of the places. The combination of art and land of the A CIELO APERTO 2022 project enhances the gastronomic and in particular enological culture, in relation to the refined and experimental culture of contemporary art.

The project, which involves four internationally renowned artists, intends to place in dialogue different cultural and generational fields. The works of Olafur Eliasson (Copenhagen, 1967), Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, 1933), Otobong Nkanga (Kano, 1974) and Susan Philipsz (Glasgow, 1965) are acquired by Fondazione CRC and are presented respectively at Castello di Grinzane Cavour (Alba), Cuneo, Bra and Mondovì.

The President of Fondazione CRC, Ezio Raviola, states “A CIELO APERTO 2022, which renews the long and fruitful collaboration built over the years with Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, offers the opportunity to bring the works of four great international artists in the area of Cuneo. A unique cultural operation, promoted to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our institution, which will leave a mark in four emblematic places in the history of Fondazione CRC.”

The Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, states, “After two and a half years of pandemic, it’s time to go out into the open air. A project like this, strongly supported by Fondazione CRC, reminds us how art has healing and beneficial effects on the public and also calls us to our responsibility towards the environment, so rich in aesthetic stimuli and so open to welcoming the works of art.”

Fondazione CRC thanks Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea for the scientific curatorship and technical implementation of the project.

The artworks

**Olafur Eliasson**, The presence of absence pavilion, 2019, installation 2022 | Photo Luca Privitera | Courtesy Studio Olafur Eliasson and Fondazione CRC© Olafur Eliasson

**Michelangelo Pistoletto**, *Terzo Paradiso*, 2022, rendering
Courtesy the artist

**Otobong Nkanga**, *Of Cords Curling around Mountains*, 2021-2022, installation detail, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte | Contemporanea Rivoli-Torino | Photo Andrea Guermani | Courtesy the artist and Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Rivoli-Torino

A CIELO APERTO 2022 is developed in four phases, the first of which began on Saturday 25 June 2022 with the presentation of the work The presence of absence pavilion, 2019-2022, by Olafur Eliasson at Castello di Grinzane Cavour (Alba).

The presence of absence pavilion by Olafur Eliasson is a rectangular bronze sculpture, which contains a hollow organic form that represents the void produced by the melting of a glacier, in reference to the climate crisis and global warming. The work evokes an ice cube hollowed out from within and was created by melting a block of ice from the Nuup Kangerlua fjord, off the coast of Greenland, an area where the ice sheet formed over millions of years and today loses tens of thousands of similar blocks every minute. In The presence of absence pavilion the melted ice is present only as an absence or as a memory. The placement of the work on the lawn next to the Castello di Grinzane Cavour, not far from the vineyard belonging to the Fondazione CRC, also establishes a relationship with the erosion created by water on the surrounding hills and the melting of the ancient glaciers that once covered this region and created the valley.

The presence of absence pavilion recalls both the artist’s exhibition Your waste of time held in 2006 at neugerriemschneider, in which Icelandic ice blocks were exhibited in the cooled exhibition space, and the public art work Ice Watch, in which twelve immense blocks of ice collected from a fjord outside Nuuk, Greenland, were placed in the shape of a clock in public spaces in Copenhagen, Paris and London between 2014 and 2019, and remained for several days to slowly melt. Eliasson’s works are created to reproduce the power of natural elements, as well as produce perceptive and aesthetic phenomena of great quality.

On October 14 th 2022, Michelangelo Pistoletto presented a new commissioned work in Cuneo. Open to exchange, Pistoletto’s art is the meeting and dialogue of multiple voices, an aesthetic founded on relationships and participation thanks to the ability to go beyond the confines of the work to bring art back to social life and life in art. The monumental work represents the infinity-like symbol of the Terzo Paradiso, a concept of Pistoletto that refers to a balanced connection between the man-made and natural realms. The piece promotes the idea of community participation, youth talent and collective work. It was created with the contribution of local communities and in particular through the combination of 122 drawings made by children and collected by the Education Department of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in synergy with various people from the city of Cuneo.

Started in 2003, Terzo Paradiso is a set of works and actions, sometimes temporary and always shared, which express the further evolution of the artist’s responsibility towards society. Between the two contiguous circles of the mathematical sign of infinity, which indicate the two opposite poles of nature and artifice, the artist has inserted a third central circle that represents the generative womb of a new humanity, an ideal overcoming of the destructive conflict that causes characterizes the anti-ecological present.

In 2003, Pistoletto theorized in the manifesto of the same name: “Terzo Paradiso is the third phase of humanity, which takes place in the balanced connection between artifice and nature. Terzo Paradiso means the passage to an unprecedented stage of planetary civilization, indispensable for ensuring the survival of mankind. To this end, it is first of all necessary to reform the ethical principles and behaviors that guide common life. Terzo Paradiso is the great myth that leads everyone to assume a personal responsibility in the global vision.” Since 2004, Terzo Paradiso has been publicly announced by Pistoletto as the next phase of his work, becoming a great collective and participatory work. Between 2018 and 2020, thanks to the development of an international network of Embassies and Forums to spread these ideas, the activity of the Terzo Paradiso has further intensified.

On December 15th the new work by Otobong Nkanga Of Sundials, Lines and Weights, 2022, will be presented in Bra. For the public art project, the artist drew a landscape in which curved lines in relation to a sundial connect sculptural elements with organic, almost anthropomorphic shapes, potential containers of food, agricultural materials and products of the earth. Nkanga’s artistic research deals with urgent issues related to the climate crisis and the exploitation of resources and sustainability, in line with the philosophy of Slow Food, the international non-profit association born in Bra in 1986. Founded by Bra resident Carlo Petrini, Slow Food’s aim is to restore the organic relationships between food, ecology, and cultures and to give food its correct value by respecting those who produce it, in harmony with the environment and ecosystems, preserving the knowledge of local territories and traditions. In this context, the relationship with the African continent and in particular the artist’s native country Nigeria, is key, as it enables the expansion of the imaginary of a sustainable future, where Piedmont relates happily with locations in the Global South. Nkanga’s empathic relationship with the earth and the environment produces an unprecedented cosmogony for the future in those who experience her works.

Biografie

Olafur Eliasson (Copenhagen, 1967, vive e lavora a Berlino) espone al Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea nel 1999. Nel 2003 ha rappresentato la Danimarca alla 50a Biennale di Venezia. Nello stesso anno ha installato The weather project nella Turbine Hall di Tate Modern, a Londra. Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, la mostra antologica organizzata da SFMOMA – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art nel 2007, è stata presentata al MoMA – Museum of Modern Art di New York. Nel 2016 Eliasson ha creato una serie di interventi per il palazzo e i giardini di Versailles e ha allestito due mostre su larga scala: Nothingness is not nothing at all, al Long Museum, Shanghai e The Parliament of possibilities, al Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. Green light, un laboratorio artistico, creato in collaborazione con TBA21 offre una risposta alle sfide degli spostamenti di massa e della migrazione. Ospitato da TBA21 a Vienna nel 2016, il progetto ha fatto parte di Viva Arte Viva, la 57a Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte – La Biennale di Venezia, nel 2017. L’installazione site-specific Reality projector è stata inaugurata alla Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, nel marzo 2018, contestualmente alla personale The unspeakable openness of things al Red Brick Art Museum di Pechino. Nel 2019 è stata inaugurata alla Tate Modern di Londra la retrospettiva In real life, presentata l’anno successivo al Guggenheim di Bilbao. Nel 2020 sono state inaugurate le mostre Olafur Eliasson: Symbiotic seeing alla Kunsthaus Zürich e Sometimes the river is the bridge al Museum of Contemporary Art di Tokyo. Nel 2021 l’artista ha presentato Life alla Fondazione Beyeler, Basilea.

Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, 1933) inizia a esporre nel 1955 e nel 1960 tiene la sua prima personale alla Galleria Galatea di Torino. Nel biennio 1961-1962 approda alla realizzazione dei Quadri specchianti. Tra il 1965 e il 1966 produce Oggetti in meno. Tra il 1975 e il 1976 realizza Le Stanze. Nel 1978 si ricorda Divisione e moltiplicazione dello specchio e L’arte assume la religione. Nel corso degli anni Novanta, con la creazione a Biella di Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto e dell’Università delle Idee, mette l’arte in relazione attiva con i diversi ambiti del tessuto sociale al fine di ispirare e produrre una trasformazione responsabile della società. Nel 2003 è insignito del Leone d’Oro alla Carriera alla Biennale di Venezia. Nel 2013 il Museo del Louvre di Parigi ospita la personale Michelangelo Pistoletto. Anneée 1 – Le Paradis sur Terre e lo stesso anno riceve a Tokyo il Praemium Imperiale per la pittura. Nel maggio del 2015 la Universidad de las Artes de L’Avana gli conferisce la laurea honoris causa. Nello stesso anno realizza un’opera di grandi dimensioni, intitolata Rebirth, nel parco del Palazzo delle Nazioni di Ginevra sede dell’Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite. Tra il 2018 e il 2020 è attivo in vari paesi dell’America Latina con mostre personali e diverse iniziative legate al Terzo Paradiso.

Otobong Nkanga (Kano, Nigeria, 1974, vive e lavora ad Anversa) ha lavori presenti nelle collezioni di numerose istituzioni internazionali tra cui Centre Pompidou, Parigi; Tate Modern, Londra; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli–Torino e ha esposto in mostre e biennali in tutto il mondo, così come si sono tenute sue mostre personali al Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) di Chicago (2018), alla Tate Modern e Tate St. Ives, Regno Unito. Le sue mostre personali si sono svolte presso Zeitz Mocaa, Città del Capo e Tate St. Ives, Regno Unito (2019-2020) e Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), Regno Unito (2020-2021). Nel 2019 ha ricevuto una Menzione Speciale alla 58a Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Biennale di Venezia; le è stato assegnato il Premio per la migliore installazione permanente alla 14 Biennale di Sharjah (con Emeka Ogboh); ha vinto il prestigioso Peter-Weiss-Preis ed è stata inoltre insignita del Flemish Cultural Award for Visual Arts – Ultima. Sempre nel 2019 l’artista è stata la prima destinataria del Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme e nell’autunno del 2020 ha presentato la personale Uncertain Where the Next Wind Blows all’Henie Onstad Kunstsenter di Høvikodden, Norvegia. Nel giugno 2021 l’artista ha presentato al Centre d’art contemporain di Villa Arson a Nizza la retrospettiva When Looking Across the Sea, Do You Dream? organizzata in collaborazione con il Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, dove fino al 3 luglio 2022 è in corso la personale Otobong Nkanga. Corde che si arricciano attorno alle montagne.

Susan Philipsz (Glasgow, 1965) usa la voce umana come unico strumento, trasmettendo registrazioni di se stessa che canta canzoni popolari o pop a cappella. Nel novembre 2010 ha dichiarato all’Observer come il passaggio da scultrice a cantante avesse un senso: “Si tratta di come gli effetti emotivi e psicologici del suono possono aumentare la consapevolezza dello spazio in cui ci si trova. […] Sembrava una progressione molto naturale passare dalla scultura al suono”. Philipsz ha realizzato il suo primo lavoro sonoro a Belfast nel 1994. Ma la svolta arriva nel 2000 quando invitata a contribuire con un pezzo alla mostra internazionale Manifesta 3, a Lubiana, in Slovenia. Il suo lavoro è stato presentato in mostre personali presso ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Londra (2008); Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus (2009); Museo di Arte Contemporanea, Chicago (2010); e IHME Project 2010, Pro Arte Foundation, Helsinki (2010). Ha inoltre creato le commissioni Carried by Winds, Radcliffe Observatory, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2008-2009); Appear to Me (Hazte ver), Monastero di Silo, Burgos (2009); Lowlands, Glasgow International (2010). Il suo lavoro è stato presentato in numerose mostre collettive tra le quali si ricordano quelle presso Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2008); Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis (2009); Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010), a cui Philipsz ha contribuito con un’opera commissionata appositamente per la mostra, così come quella presso la Tate Britain, Londra (2010). Nel 2010 ha vinto il Turner Prize. Nel 2012 partecipa a dOCUMENTA (13) a Kassel; successivamente espone al Museum of Modern Art e Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2013), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlino (2014); Tate Britain, Londra (2015); Kunsthaus Bregenz, (2016); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (2019); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2021).