GAMeC – Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo launches a new program of exhibitions and events for the public under the direction of newly-appointed Lorenzo Giusti.
The diversified calendar evolves against the backdrop that has always characterized the museum’s mission: dedication to research, attention to interdisciplinary dialogue, support for the talent of emerging artists and curators, enhancement of collections, international outlook.
The season opening on June 7 will offer innovative exhibitions, experimental projects involving the GAMeC Collection, educational activities, and a calendar of public events, with the museum playing a key role in prestigious new partnerships.
Program
Gary Kuehn
Il diletto del praticante (Practitioner's Delight)
June 8–August 26, 2018
The GAMeC opens its new season with the first solo exhibition in Italy of the American sculptor Gary Kuehn (Plainfield, New Jersey, 1939).
The exhibition, curated by Lorenzo Giusti, will comprise four sections, hosted by the museum’s display areas and Palazzo della Ragione’s prestigious Sala delle Capriate, in Bergamo Alta’s medieval heart. It will present a significant core of about 70 works, including sculptures, drawings, paintings, and installations, among the most important in the artist’s corpus, dating from the early 1960s to the most recent pieces, with a series of new items specifically made for this occasion. The show explores a multidirectional path that aims to review the evolution of Gary Kuehn’s artistic language and highlight the surprising relevance of his work.
Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte - EnterPrize – 9th Edition
Enchanted Bodies / Fetish for Freedom
June 8–September 9, 2018
Developed from the epistemology and cosmovision of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion, which sees the profound influence objects may have on people and their surroundings, the exhibition—curated by Bernardo Mosqueira—explores human ability to create objects that generate new freedom and strength.
After researching the permanence and transformations of African heritage in Brazilian culture following diaspora and slavery, Mosqueira conceived a project that highlights the power of the migrant body and the foreign subject as users and creators of culture. This show brings together works by 16 artists, including Abbas Akhavan, Tania Bruguera, Meschac Gaba, Carlos Alejandro Motta, Daniel Steegmann, Danh Vō and Haegue Yang, themselves temporary migrants, nomads, refugees, deportees, immigrants, or exiles whose daily lives are far now from their place of birth.
La Collezione Impermanente (The Impermanent Collection)
June 8–September 9, 2018
A new research, exhibition and workshop platform will constitute a scientific tool to study the GAMeC’s own artwork heritage, a space for pondering the art of collecting and institutional acquisition policies, and a space for curatorial experimentation.
The first appointment of this project—curated by Valentina Gervasoni and Fabrizia Previtali—will describe how the Collection began and how it continues to grow, presenting selections from its core in relation to the period in which they came to the museum.
Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi has been invited to launch the platform by designing a stimulating advertising campaign that aims to raise awareness of the crisis in the traditional museum model linked to collections, as well as the problematic transformation of cultural institutions into spaces for spectacularizing events.
Artists’ Film International – 10th Edition
June 8–September 9, 2018
The GAMeC continues its participation in the prestigious worldwide network dedicated to video art, involving leading international contemporary art institutions since 2008. For this tenth edition (on the theme of “Truth”), curators Sara Fumagalli and Valentina Gervasoni selected Italian artist Elena Mazzi (Reggio Emilia, 1984) and her work I’m Talking to You (2016–18), which will open the screening agenda.
The video is specially edited for the occasion and comprises a series of recordings made by the artist in the homes of people living in the Maunula district of Helsinki while they listened to news on the radio, read it on a PC, or watched it on TV. Mazzi filmed many reactions to the news, including sighs of resignation, sarcastic comments, howls of disapproval.
Black Hole. Art and Materiality from Informal to Invisible
October 5, 2018–January 6, 2019
This ambitious multiyear project—conceived by Lorenzo Giusti and developed with Sara Fumagalli, with the scientific support of BergamoScienza—will include contributions from art historians, curators, philosophers and scientists to address a transversal debate around the theme of matter.
Black Hole. Art and Materiality from Informal to Invisible, the first of a trilogy of exhibitions, will explore the work of those artists who have interpreted matter as an original element, a primordial substance constituting the whole. The show will make use of contributions offered by Meru-Medolago Ruggeri Foundation for biomedical research for the activation of the new Meru Art*Science Research Program that will fund the work of artists invited to create a site-specific project for GAMeC’s Spazio Zero.
A central role in 2018 planning is also entrusted to the Public Program project, a new platform of meetings, presentations, debates and conferences open to the public, and the result of cooperation between the GAMeC and Bergamo’s Accademia di Belle Arti G. Carrara. The program will involve prestigious figures from the national and international art scene, creating a strategic point of convergence between the Bergamo Fine Arts Academy’s teaching policies and the museum’s commitment to modernization and mediation.
Identity
Just launched, a new logo and a new corporate identity—designed by Bergamo-based Studio Temp—which will hallmark all museum communication, including exhibition venues.
