Alighiero Boetti
Quasi tutto
6 APRIL – 18 JULY 2004
GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Via San Tomaso, 53, Bergamo
tel. +39 (0)35 399 528
OPENING: APRIL 5, 2004, 6:30 p.m.
Curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Corrado Levi
From April 6 to July 18, 2004, GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo will present the exhibition Alighiero Boetti. Quasi tutto (Alighiero Boetti. Almost Everything) dedicated to one of the most influential artists of the postwar period.
Exactly ten years after the artist’s death, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Director of the GAMeC, and Corrado Levi confront the figure of Boetti.
Alighiero Boetti is an extremely topical artist. The themes that he confronted over the span of his intense career, starting at the end of the 1960′s up through the mid-1990′s, are now at the center of a debate that involves all aspects of contemporary life: from the concept of the complexity of the relationship with the Other and foreigners, to overcoming boundaries and the role of communication in the society of reproduction. Boetti addressed these themes with a transversal approach, using different media and techniques. The originality of his artistic expression is also manifested in this: observing his works, we can identify totally unique series, each one different from the others, almost as if they were conceived by several artistic personalities. Boetti’s topicality also resides in this: in his ability to overcome boundaries – not just mental but also geopolitical ones – in a simple way and use himself as the starting point for his work. The centrality of Boetti’s ego derives strength from his capacity to delegate. One of the best known aspects of Boetti’s work is, in fact, that connected with the works whose execution was commissioned from others.
Alighiero Boetti. Quasi tutto (Alighiero Boetti. Almost Everything) combines over one hundred works by the artist, starting from his early work in connection Arte Povera towards the end of the 1960′s to 1994, the year of his death. The exhibition features a broad selection of works that cover the entire scope of his output, privileging a very close relationship between the observer and each individual work, going beyond any chronological or thematic approach. This curatorial choice, inspired directly by the Boetti’s oeuvre which, who, taken as a whole, goes beyond this thematic-temporal dichotomy, and continuously elaborating “old” and “new” themes in parallel, makes distant times and cultures coexist on the same level.
The exhibition presents several historical works from his debut, like the experiments from the second half of the 1960′s and a series of classics from Boetti’s oeuvre – well-known tapestries, maps, embroidered texts, and large ballpoint pen works, etc. – but also a large number of less known or unknown works that offer a glimpse at less typical aspects of the artist’s output.
The catalogue reproposes the structure of a dictionary and the alphabetic order so dear to the artist: each letter generates two entries, the first connected with his artistic output (e.g. A for Arazzo [Tapestry], B for Biro [Ballpoint Pen]), while the second refers to broader concepts that are intimately connected with Boetti’s thought and art (e.g. A for Afghanistan, C for Complessita [Complexity], and E for Elenco [List]). The first group of entries was commissioned from art historians, curators, and critics, while the second group was commissioned from philosophers, anthropologists, authors, and historians.
The underlying structure of this catalogue is based on the high degree of interdisciplinary approaches that always characterized Boetti’s art.
The catalogue includes a conversation between Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Corrado Levi, a text by Laura Cherubini, and a selection of writings by Alighiero Boetti that was edited by Emanuela De Cecco; the dictionary entries were instead written by: Arazzo (Tapestry), Mariuccia Casadio; Afghanistan, Giorgio Galli; Biro (Ballpoint Pen), Giorgio Verzotti; Bellezza (Beauty), Christophe de Ponfilly; Copia (Copy), Marco Senaldi; Complessita (Complexity), Mauro Ceruti; Disegno (Drawing), Gianni Romano; Doppio (Double), Antonio Sparzani; Elenco (List), Angela Vettese; Esecuzione (Execution), Antonio Scurati; Fregio (Frieze), Francesca Pasini; Flessibilita (Flexibility), Alessandro Dal Lago; Gioco (Play), Chiara Bertola; Geografia (Geography), Franco Farinelli; Hotel, Massimiliano Gioni; Humor, Marco Giusti; Identita (Identity), Barbara Casavecchia; Idea, Michel Maffesoli; Jet, Hans Ulrich Obrist; Jolly (Joker), Emanuela Audisio; Kabul, Cornelia Lauf; Know-how, Paolo Aite; Lettera (Letter), Barry Schwabsky; Linguaggio (Language), Diego Marani; Manifesto, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi; Moltiplicazione (Multiplication), Giulio Giorello; Numero (Number), Marco Tagliafierro; Natura (Nature), Nicola Setari; Ornamento (Ornament), Maria Luisa Frisa; Ordine (Order), Marc Guillaume; Parola (Word), Eric Bou; Progetto (Project), Jozeph Forakis; Quadrato (Square), Luca Cerizza; Quantita (Quantity), Franco La Cecla; Ripetizione (Repetition), Giulio Ciavoliello; Ritratto (Portrait), Ippolita Avalli; Sciamano (Shaman), Teresa Macri; Serendipity, Carlo Antonelli; Timbro (Stamp), Chiara Parisi; Tempo (Time), Tiphaine Samoyault; Universale (Universal), Loredana Parmesani; Unita (Unity), Marc Auge; Viso (Face), Francesco Bonami; Vedere (Sight/Vision), Nanni Balestrini; Work in Progress, Stefano Casciani; Weltanschaung, Horst Seidl; X, Jayant Narlikar; Yalta, Charlotte Laubard; Yoga, Roberto Cavalli; Zoo, Marcello Smarrelli; and Zeitgeist, Jeanette Zwingenberger.
Alighiero Boetti. Quasi tutto (Alighiero Boetti. Almost Everything) is a collaboration between GAMeC, Bergamo and Fundacion PROA, Buenos Aires.
In September, the exhibition will be shown at the Fundacion PROA in Buenos Aires.
On the same occasion it will be presented to the public for the first time the Raccolta Stucchi (Stucchi’s Collection) given to the Permanent Collection of the Gallery. The Collection consists of eighteen works by Italian and international masters of the twentieth century such as Filippo De Pisis, Mario Sironi, Alberto Burri, Anton Zoran Music, Hans Hartung, Jean Fautrier, Victor Pasmore, Ben Nicholson and Arturo Bonfanti.
GAMeC
Via San Tomaso, 53, Bergamo
tel. +39 (0)35 399 528 fax +39 (0)35 236962 www.gamec.it
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Thursday 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Free admission
Press Office
CLP Relazioni Pubbliche
tel. +39 (0)2 433403 – +39 (0)2 48008462 – fax +39 (0)2 4813841
e-mail: ufficiostampa@clponline.it
