GAMeC: the 2023 program with exhibitions and events in Bergamo

In the year of Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture, the museum program will open in February with Salto nel vuoto. Arte al di là della materia (“A Leap into the Void. Art Beyond Matter”): the third and final chapter of the Trilogia della Materia (“Trilogy of Matter”) project, revolving around the theme of dematerialization. This will be followed in the summer by the first solo exhibition in an Italian museum by the Swiss-Argentinian artist Vivian Suter, the site-specific intervention for Palazzo della Ragione by the British artist Rachel Whiteread, and a new episode of the cycle La Collezione Impermanente.

In the fall, while the rooms of the museum will be occupied by the Italian performer Chiara Bersani, projects by the Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno dedicated to Giovanni Francia (in collaboration with Fondazione Meru-Medolago Ruggeri for Biomedical Research) and by Lebanese artist and filmmaker Ali Cherri, in collaboration with the Fondazione In Between Art Film, will be presented.

Completing the 2023 program, accompanied by educational activities and workshops for all audiences, are the urban installations by Objects of Common Interest and Salottobuono for Piazza della Libertà and Kilometro Rosso Innovation District respectively, arising from the synergy between the Municipality of Bergamo, Confindustria Bergamo and GAMeC, and the collaboration with the Donizetti Opera festival (organized by the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti) for the new production of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Il diluvio universale (“The Great Flood”), entrusted to the Italian artist duo Masbedo.

The exhibition, curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Domenico Quaranta, is divided into three thematic sections that frame the various ways of focusing on, representing and expressing the principles of dematerialization. The first will be dedicated to the representation of the Vuoto (“Void”) as an immaterial space, and will host a series of works by artists who, at different times and especially through painting, have worked on the principles of extreme reduction, minimum contrast and the imperceptible, recounting the void as an imaginative, ideal, or conceptual dimension. The Flusso (“Flux”) section will present a selection of works from various periods, stretching from the avant-garde to the present day, bearing witness to the radical impact of computerization and digital networks on the perception of material reality. Finally, the Simulazione (“Simulation”) section will focus on the junction between the real and the virtual, along a path showcasing both pioneering and recent works; it will bring works into dialogue that critically investigate the impact of simulations on our perception of concrete reality together with others that, through the medium of painting, broaden our perception by creating powerful visual illusions.

On show are works by some of the great protagonists of 20th-century art, as well as pioneers of digital art, together with artists from more recent generations: Carla Accardi, Josef Albers, Rebecca Allen, Cory Arcangel, Arte Programmata 1962, Gazira Babeli, Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Maurizio Bolognini, Agostino Bonalumi, Regina Cassolo Bracchi, Enrico Castellani, Paolo Cirio, Petra Cortright, Dadamaino, Jean Degottex, Aleksandra Domanović, Constant Dullaart, Richard Estes, Fluxus, John Gerrard, Elisa Giardina Papa, Duane Hanson, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Channa Horwitz, Ryoji Ikeda, Ann Veronica Janssens, JODI, John F. Simon Jr., Vladan Joler, František Kupka, Agnieszka Kurant, Yayoi Kusama, Sol LeWitt, Mark Lombardi, Francesco Lo Savio, Scott Lyall, René Magritte, Fabio Mauri, Agnes Martin, Eva e Franco Mattes, Aiko Miyawaki, Vera Molnár, MSHR, Katja Novitskova, Roman Opałka, Trevor Paglen, Pablo Picasso, Seth Price, Jon Rafman, Andrés Ramírez Gaviria, Casey Reas, Rachel Rossin, Manuel Rossner, Evan Roth, Robert Ryman, Antoine Schmitt, Lillian Schwartz, Jeffrey Shaw, Timur Si-Qin, Hito Steyerl, James Turrell, Gerhard von Graevenitz, Addie Wagenknecht, Ai Weiwei.

The Impermanent Collection is a research, exhibition and workshop platform that since 2018 has highlighted the hybrid nature of the GAMeC Collection, reflecting on its dynamic and at times contradictory character. In the light of the first chapter of the series (which told the story of the museum’s own Collections) and the second (which put the Collection in dialogue with a nucleus of works confiscated in Lombardy and destined for the Gallery) the third exhibition of the cycle was conceived as an active display to coincide with the celebrations dedicated to marking GAMeC’s 30th anniversary, and presented the public with a rich selection of works from the museum’s heritage created by artists of various generations, from the 1990s right up to the present day.

In 2023, La Collezione Impermanente #4, curated by Sara Fumagalli, Valentina Gervasoni and A. Fabrizia Previtali, will feature a series of works belonging to the heritage of the Municipality of Bergamo, including both historical and contemporary works, according to criteria arising from the suggestions, preferences and indications of the public gathered over the course of 2022, according to a principle of sharing the planning of museum itineraries.

Deserters is a live installation by Chiara Bersani (San Rocco al Porto, 1984), with which GAMeC won the 11th edition of the Italian Council: the program aimed at supporting Italian contemporary art in the world promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity within the Italian Ministry of Culture. Deserters stages a joining of bodies; it consists of a performance work for three actors with motor disabilities and a large sculptural environment in which the bodies act and interact, leaving signs of their passage. The work gets to grips with the themes of vulnerability and dependence, interweaving the languages of the visual and performing arts; it accompanies the audience on an engaging journey that undermines the stereotypes linked to the intimate, identitary and sexual sphere that frequently affect people with disabilities.

Through this work, Chiara Bersani not only explores new practices of inclusion that take plural prerogatives into account, but she also investigates the broader concept of accessibility, from an aesthetic perspective rooted in proximity and relationships. The work will be produced over the period of the artist’s residency in Bergamo, which will conclude with a series of event days, during which the public will be invited to attend the final rehearsals of the performance in preparation for its debut at the Kunsthaus Baselland in Muttenz/Basel, which will host Bersani’s first solo exhibition in a European institution in the autumn, curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Ines Goldbach. The promotion of the project also includes a talk and a workshop, respectively at the Galerie Stadtpark in Krems and the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan. At the end of the project, the performance score and the sculptural environment will become part of the GAMeC Collections.

In the autumn, a special project by the Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno (San Miguel de Tucumán, 1973) will be presented at GAMeC on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Fondazione Meru - Medolago Ruggeri Foundation for Biomedical Research, producer of the work in collaboration with GAMeC and BergamoScienza. The exhibition, curated by Anna Daneri and Carlo Antonelli, will shape the dialogue between the artist and the physicist and mathematician Giovanni Francia, a pioneer in the studies and applications of solar energy who designed the solar station in Sant’Ilario, Genoa in 1965: the world’s first solar-powered thermoelectric power plant.

On the occasion of his first solo exhibition in an Italian institution, curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi, the artist and director Ali Cherri (Beirut, 1976) will present a preview of a new video installation commissioned and produced by the Fondazione In Between Art Film. Through film, sculpture, drawing, and performance, Cherri constructs metaphorical narratives that explore the convergence of history, archaeological finds and cultural heritage, highlighting their material manifestations and ideological implications.