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Indepth Arts News:
"Alighiero Boetti: Almost Everything"
2004-04-06 until 2004-07-18
Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
Bergamo, ,
IT Italy
From April 6 to July 18, GAMeC - Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo - will present Alighiero Boetti. Quasi tutto, a retrospective exhibition dedicated to one of the most influential artists of the postwar era. Boetti managed to grasp the complexity of the world we live in, to the point of overcoming the barriers of a cultural universe that today seems closed off by insurmountable obstacles - Afghanistan, where Boetti lived and commissioned many of his works.
The exhibition, organized by the GAMeC together with Fondaciun PROA in Buenos Aires, is curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio - the Director of GAMeC - and Corrado Levi, combines over one hundred works by the artist, starting from 1962 with unpublished drawings, than the Arte Povera period towards the end of the 1960's till 1994, the year of his death. The exhibition project privileges all the works in which we can perceive a very close relationship between the observer and each individual work, going beyond any chronological or thematic approach, in particular mural works where the sign becomes the means of communication and the two-dimensional surface becomes the ideal support for this form of communication.
The exhibition and catalogue were conceived according to a dual approach that considers the complexity of Boetti's works both in terms of the wealth of his output and of the themes and concepts that he developed. The aim of this project is to show the public how the artist, over the course of his life, not only speculated about the very concept of complexity but also implemented it on the formal level.
At first sight, the exhibition appears to be structured according to the techniques and materials that the artist used to create his works (drawing, ballpoint pen, embroidery, tapestry, mixed media on paper, sculpture, installation, telegram, letter, rug...); at the same time, the exhibition also offers a journey back in time through the years and phases of his creative activity in light of the themes that he developed (comprehension of the world and its image, order and disorder, fragment and complexity, the functions of images in culture, the progression of time and extension of space).
At the same time, the catalogue is structured like a dictionary: each letter generates two entries: the first refers to a work of art (e.g. A for "Arazzo" [tapestry], B for "Ballpoint Pen"...), the second entry refers to vaster concepts that are intimately connected with Boetti's thought and art (e.g. A for "Afghanistan," C for "Complexity,", E for "Elenco" [list]). The first group of texts was commissioned from art historians, curators, and critics, while the second group was commissioned from philosophers, anthropologists, authors, and historians.
Boetti's approach to art and the historical period in which he lived are interwoven in the contents of the catalogue in the same way that he realized this link during his life. The catalogue thus becomes a genuinely systematic "map" using words and images to describe his work, explicitly recalling the importance that lists and system had as tools in Boetti's art.
The catalogne 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; Complessit‡ (Complexity), Mauro Ceruti; Disegno (Drawing), Gianni Romano; Doppio (Double), Antonio Sparzani; Elenco (List), Angela Vettese; Esecuzione (Execution), Antonio Scurati; Fregio (Frieze), Francesca Pasini; Flessibilit‡ (Flexibility), Alessandro Dal Lago; Gioco (Play), Chiara Bertola; Geografia (Geography), Franco Farinelli; Hotel, Massimiliano Gioni; Humor, Marco Giusti; Identit‡ (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; Quantit‡ (Quantity), Franco La Cecla; Ripetizione (Repetition), Giulio Ciavoliello; Ritratto (Portrait), Ippolita Avalli; Sciamano (Shaman), Teresa MacrÏ; Serendipity, Carlo Antonelli; Timbro (Stamp), Chiara Parisi; Tempo (Time), Tiphaine Samoyault; Universale (Universal), Loredana Parmesani; Unit‡ (Unity), Marc AugÈ; 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
In September, the exhibition will be shown at the Fundaciun PROA in Buenos Aires.
IMAGE
Alighiero Boetti
Verbi Riflessivi, 1983
ball-point pen ink on paper
2 panels; 39 3/8 x 55 1/8 inches
100 x 140 cm overall
Private Collection
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