From the Cavern to the Moon

There are two paths into the exhibition between the large wing of the new museum building and half of the old edifice. They are dialogically divided into eight sections and are linked to spectacular substantiations through unreleased reports and original comparisons among the works which—time after time—include or avoid philological combinations of artistic genres, stylistic groups or historical chronologies. They illustrate the first part of the contemporary art heritage collected by the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art over the last three decades which will finally be presented to the audience. This is the first exhibition put forward by the recently renovated Pecci Centre, focusing on a collection which is a reflection of the long operative activity and the effective opportunities in acquisition by seven directors and various curators who have successfully led the Tuscan museum from 1988 up to the present day. It is a glimpse at that which has been produced and left from both large and small exhibitions from the past and it also includes some works which have never been exhibited before or which have been recently acquired by the Pecci Centre.

On this occasion, works by 60 Italian and international artists represent a non-exhaustive yet particularly significant summary of art from the last half century. It was conceived and curated by Stefano Pezzato in collaboration with Umberto Borella for the staging and the artistic space of the Pecci Centre which, over the last ten years, has managed to organise, preserve and promote the collection, presenting many different aspects.

This new exhibition presents an itinerary through artistic forms that occupy and become part of the environment; an experience which seems a true immersion among works of art that develop and repeat over time in the form of videos, actions and performances. It is an invitation to partake in a direct experience and evolve like the heritage of the contemporary art museum of Prato and Tuscany. The public will have the opportunity to enter the collection to be stimulated by the encounter with the works or to let the proposed combinations engage them on an art tour full of suggestions and revelations. The exhibition develops between the ancestral time evoked by the legendary Caverna dell’antimateria by Pinot Gallizio and the cosmic space of Luna by Fabio Mauri, passing through the energy proliferation that emerges in La spirale appare by Mario Merz, the feasible habitat of Supersuperficie imagined by Superstudio, the integration between art and architecture experimented in Intercamera plastica by Paolo Scheggi. 

Exhibition Itinerary curated by Stefano Pezzato.

Works by
Vito Acconci, Vahram Aghasyan, Archizoom Associati, Marco Bagnoli, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paolo Canevari, Loris Cecchini, Marcos Chaves, Giuseppe Chiari, Fabrizio Corneli, Enzo Cucchi, Gino De Dominicis, Ulan Djaparov, VALIE EXPORT, Jan Fabre, Factory of Found Clothes, Sylvie Fleury, Michael Fliri, Lucio Fontana, Pinot Gallizio, Rainer Ganahl, Marco Gastini, Nan Goldin, Franco Grignani, Pietro Grossi, Shirazeh Houshiary, Ilya Kabakov, Anish Kapoor, Dani Karavan, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Ketty La Rocca, Sol LeWitt, Francesco Lo Savio, Amedeo Martegani, Fabio Mauri, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Maria Mulas, Ugo Mulas, Bruno Munari, Marco Neri, Lamberto Pignotti, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Chris Sacker, Remo Salvadori, Paolo Scheggi, Julian Schnabel, Keith Sonnier, Esther Stocker, Superstudio, David Tremlett, UFO, JCJ Vanderheyden, Luigi Veronesi, Massimo Vitali, Andy Warhol, Erwin Wurm, Gilberto Zorio

Special projects by
Carlos Garaicoa, Henrique Oliveira (from the exhibition The End of the World)