Gabriel Kuri: Soft Information in Your Hard Facts
5 June – 15 August 2010
Nico Vascellari
5 June – 22 August 2010
Opening: 4 June 2010, 7 pm
Via Dante 6
39100 Bolzano
Italy
Gabriel Kuri
Soft Information in Your Hard Facts, Gabriel Kuri‘s (Mexico City, 1970) solo exhibition conceived for Museion, brings together a number of sculptural works, both existing and specially commissioned for the occasion.
The show comprises works that feature a range of materials, such as plastic shopping bags, cast concrete, a working conveyor belt, rocks, painted plywood, printed nylon, and ready-mades, altered only by their contextual associations.
As the title suggests, Soft Information in Your Hard Facts broadly revolves around the tension created by the dialectical opposition of hard and soft. Indeed, like most of Gabriel Kuri’s works, those featured here draw their meaning from their material properties as well as their semantic implications, articulating a trope of everyday grammar rooted in the logic of exchange.
Curated by Vincenzo de Bellis
Catalogue published by Mousse Publishing. Texts by Vincenzo de Bellis, Letizia Ragaglia, Catherine Wood, 112 p.
Aside from his solo show at Museion, in 2010 Gabriel Kuri will be featuring in three other solo exhibitions at international institutions: the show join the dots and make a point is a cooperation between Kunstverein Freiburg (11.06 – 08.08.2010) and Bielefelder Kunstverein (03.09 – 01.11. 2010), while Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab is the title of the solo exhibition that the artist is staging at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston (28.08 – 13.11.2010).
Nico Vascellari
The project by Nico Vascellari (Vittorio Veneto, 1976) revolves around an imposing monolith created from the cast of a piece of mountain detonated to form the starting point for the work. At the exhibition opening this cast bronze piece will act as the resonance chamber for the percussion instruments played by the artist, amplified by the musicians Aaron Dilloway and C. Spencer Yeh. Alongside the sculpture the exhibition presents a series of collages dedicated to the theme of sunset and intended as studies for the lighting of the sculpture – together with other new works. After the opening the soundtrack of the opening performance will be played in the venue.
In the project at Museion Vascellari’s hardcore approach and its translation into artistic language exert a powerful physical presence, from the monolith itself to the artist’s action and the expansion of the sound. In this work Nico Vascellari tackles a dimension he feels a particular affinity with – the arcane world of the mountains, a symbol of transcendence and the dividing line between visible and invisible. Forest-clad mountains and vegetation in general often form the backdrop for his performances, as well as providing “raw material” for his works: the natural world is the source for his nidi (nests) – also on display – meticulously dissected into countless fragments, and for the rock exhibited at Museion – which also featured in a performance at the opening of the Lambretto Art Project in Milan in 2009 – which comes straight from the belly of a mountain.
Curated by Letizia Ragaglia
In 2010 the artist will be involved in various initiatives, including a project for the Centre International d’Art & Du Paysage in Vile de Vassiviere in France, the group exhibition Terre Vulnerabili at Hangar Bicocca in Milan, and a three month artist residency at the Marina Abramovic Institute in San Francisco, which ends in a solo exhibition.
SAVE THE DATE: opening of the solo exhibition of Isa Genzken at Museion, 10 September 2010
Museion’s institutional partners: Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano – Alto Adige, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Bolzano
