Hamish Fulton and Michael Höpfner
Canto di strada (Street Song)
6 February–6 April 2015
MAN Museum
via S. Satta 27
08100 Nuoro
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–1pm and 3–7pm
T +39 0784 25 21 10
info [at] museoman.it
www.museoman.it
Curated by Lorenzo Giusti
Canto di strada (Street Song) is the title of the personal double by Hamish Fulton and Michael Höpfner, booked at the MAN Museum in Nuoro, starting on 6 February.
The exhibition is a dialogue stemming on the shared concept of walks as a motor of artistic experiences. Curated by Lorenzo Giusti, it introduces a series of new works—photographs, wall drawings, drawings and installations—born out of the common experience of travel in the mountains of central Sardinia. Hamish Fulton (b. 1946, London) is one of the most representative figures of English art in recent decades. Along with Richard Long he is considered the founding father of an international movement of “walking artists,” with Michael Höpfner (b. 1972, Krems) currently one of the most radical members.
The exhibit at the Nuoro MAN places the two artists work side by side for the first time, identifying a common ground for comparison in a 14-day walking journey over the Supramonte and Gennargentu mountains. An experience of total immersion in the harsh nature of the eastern Barbagia which has hosted the two artists for two weeks in the same environment, without ever meeting. Bound by the same passion for the mountains and a common vision of artistic practice as an expression of personal experiences (even when done in groups), Fulton and Höpfner, through the use of different ways of communication—the former more conceptual with texts or graphics of the path and the latter more visual with photographs and installations—open up a significant reflection on the role of art, on concepts of experience and creation, as well as the relationship between man and the environment.
Hamish Fulton (b. 1946, London) began his career in the late sixties, defining himself as a “Walking Artist,” a way to distinguish his work from Land Art with which it was initially lumped together. His art is defined by experience, in nature, along foot paths, particularly in the mountains, from Europe to South America, from Tibet to Japan. Beginning of the nineties, he structured part of his work in a participatory dimension, aimed at sharing the experience of the walk, which found application and development even in city settings. His works are in the collections of important museums in the world: the MoMA in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris and The Tate Modern of London.
Michael Höpfner (b. 1972, Krems / Donau, Austria) lives between Vienna and Berlin. His works focuses on the experience of foot travel through desert landscapes or sparsely inhabited areas from the Ukraine to Tibet, from Kirghizistan to South Korea. His work started with physical and mental explorations of geographical spaces and continued on the reflection of concepts of reality and location. Some of his most recent exhibits have been at the Kunstforum Bank Austria, the Kunsthalle of St Gallen, the Kunstverein Salzburg, ar/ge Kunst of Bolzano, with Olaf Stüber Gallery, Berlin and Hubert Winter Gallery, Vienna.
The project is completed by a catalogue published by NERO, with text by Lorenzo Giusti, Giovanni Carmine and Muriel Enjalran.