A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s
&
From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel
CASTELLO DI RIVOLI
MUSEO DARTE CONTEMPORANEA
Piazza Mafalda di Savoia – 10098 Rivoli (Torino) – Italia
tel. 39/011.9565222 9565280
fax 39/011.9565231
e-mail: info@castellodirivoli.org
www.castellodirivoli.org
A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s
Curator: Constance M. Lewallen
Dates: May 23 September 9, 2007
Press preview: Monday May 21, 2007 11.30 a.m.
The Castello di Rivoli will host, as the sole European venue, the first major exhibition to focus solely on the early works of Bruce Nauman (Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941). The exhibition began its tour in January 2007 at the Berkeley Art Museum and will be followed, after Rivoli, by a last presentation at The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas in October 2007. Amongst the foremost experimental artists of the 1960s and 1970s, Nauman created sculpture, drawing, performance work, videos, films and environments in works that continue to echo in innumerable younger artists round the world. This exhibition is the fruit of research in close conjunction with the artist and many of those who were his friends in the mid to late 1960s, with a particular focus on the years he spent in California as a student. In the 17th century galleries of the Manica Lunga at Castello di Rivoli, some of Naumans most significant early works will be exhibited, including some that have never been seen before. Amongst the artworks on view are some of the artists first fiberglass and resin sculptures of 1965, some of his works in rubber of 1966 and his first work using neon the mapping of his body Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body Taken at Ten-Inch Intervals (1966). The exhibition continues with the challenging neon spiral The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967), considered today amongst the most iconic works of art of the twentieth century. In his performances and films of the 1960s, Nauman highlights the complexity of the processes of perception both in its psychological and physical manifestations and he explores obsession, claustrophobia, disorientation and confusion. At the end of the 1960s, the artist shifted his research towards the creation of sculptural spaces that cause effects in the audience similar to those experimented earlier in his performances. He created the first Performance Corridor in 1969, also on view in this exhibition.
The exhibition in Berkeley was made possible thanks to support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
We are particularly grateful to the Terra Foundation for American Art for the presentation in Rivoli.
The exhibition has been organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel
Curator: Marcella Beccaria
Part I. Dates: April 4 August 26, 2007
Part II. Dates: May 23 August 26, 2007
Press preview Part II: Monday, May 21, 2007 11:30 a.m.
Evoking the title of Jules Vernes novel, which recent polemics on the actual conquest of the Moon seem to make made even more prophetic, From the Earth to the Moon: Metaphors for Travel presents works that investigate, each in its own original way, the different meanings of the voyage. The exhibition proposes a new interpretation of some works in the permanent collection, many of which were recently acquired and are being presented to the public for the first time. In order to adequately exhibit the breadth of the cultural project that the Museum is developing, with the continuous and generous support of Fondazione CRT Progetto Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, the exhibition is organized into two sections. After Part I, which opened to the public on April 4, Part II of the exhibition will open on May 23, 2007.
The works exhibited in the second part of the show investigate the imaginations power to open up new territories and arts capacity to provide models for interpreting or even presaging reality. The exhibition includes over fifty works and large-scale installations by Mario Airò, Giovanni Anselmo, Massimo Bartolini, Gabriele Basilico, Lothar Baumgarten, John Bock, Alighiero Boetti, Jem Cohen, Enzo Cucchi, Roberto Cuoghi, Gino De Dominicis, Thomas Demand, Mario Giacomelli, Rebecca Horn, Roni Horn, Pierre Huyghe, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Kim Sooja, Mario Merz, Claes Oldenburg – Coosje van Bruggen, Charlemagne Palestine, Giulio Paolini, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Grazia Toderi, Bill Viola, Yang Fudong and Gilberto Zorio.
The exhibition has been made possible through the support of Fondazione CRT Progetto Arte Moderna e Contemporanea.
For information
Press Office, Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, tel. 39/011.9565209 – 211, fax 39/011.9565231
e-mail: press@castellodirivoli.org, s.bertalot@castellodirivoli.org
