The great thing about teaching in a city that you haven’t been to before is that your free time usually turns into one big discovery tour. I love to hunt down the best coffee spots, the tastiest eateries, a city’s essential shopping spots and of course the most inspirational art. I was lucky enough to see a whole bunch of exhibitions last week in Turin, Italy. During two afternoons I visited the photography museum Camera, Turin’s Modern Art Gallery GAM and the private collection of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and was somewhat surprised to find so much great art in this rather small city. Thanks NOD for inviting me over, I’m already looking forward to my next stay.
Camera: CAMERA POP
Pop Art was a worldwide phenomenon, one which exploded in the 1960s in the United States and in Europe, and which rapidly spread to the rest of the world, and which in the words of Walter Guadagnini, director of CAMERA and curator of the exhibition, “revolutionised the relationship between artistic creation and society, recording the present in a neutral, photographic fashion, adopting the same models as those of the mass media to create artworks. In this sense, for Pop artists, not only was photography a source of inspiration, but also a key working tool, an essential part of such research.”
At the same time, the establishment of Pop culture also unleashed surprising energies within the world of photographers themselves, who began to come to terms directly not only with the contemporary visual panorama, but also with the transformation of the photographic document into a work of art. The exhibition CAMERA POP. La fotografia nella Pop Art di Warhol, Schifano & Co shows more than 150 works, including paintings, photographs, collages and graphic art, illustrating the variety and the extraordinary liveliness of this major trend.
Featured Artists
Claudio Cintoli, Jim Dine, Brian Duffy, Tony Evans, Richard Hamilton, Gerald Laing, Ugo Mulas, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Robert Rauschenberg, Mimmo Rotella, Mario Schifano, Joe Tilson, Andy Warhol and others
Details
Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino: PERMANENT COLLECTION (20th Century)
The recent rehang of the permanent collections of Turni’s GAM was carried out under the direction of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: the 19th century section was curated by Virginia Bertone, Fabio Cafagna and Filippo Bosco, and the 20th century section by Riccardo Passoni together with Giorgina Bertolino.
It has been arranged following three perspectives: the history of art, the history of the museum, and the historical, social and economic position of Torino. Due to current construction works I was only able to see level 1, which displays works from the early years of the 20th century up to the Pop Art of the 1960s.
Featured Artists
Mario Sironi, Carlo Carrà, Alberto Savinio, Giorgio de Chirico, Giacomo Balla, Otto Dix, Francis Picabia, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Giorgio Morandi, Fausto Melotti, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Hans Hartung, Hans Jean Arp, Alberto Burr, Asger Jorn, Pinot Gallizio, Mario Schifano, Andy Warhol and others
Details
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo: BRAZIL / TELL ME STORY: LOCALITY AND NARRATIVE / COMING SOON
BRAZIL is a collective exhibition that explores different strategies and approaches for individual and collective emancipation in the contemporary age, drawing narrative inspiration from Brazil, Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film.
TELL ME A STORY: LOCALITY AD NARRATIVE draws on artists from across Asia to share 12 stories from distinct regional cultures as they have evolved throughout the modern era. Through the exploration of personal ties between artist and environment, each work exhibits multiple facets of local life, revealing in the process a side of Asia often left unseen and unheard.
Curated by Mira Asriningtyas, Nora Heidorn and Kari Rittenbach, COMING SOON is a spotlight on the contemporary Italian art scene. The fetish for the “now” and the false urgency of the contemporary – to be always-already up-to-date, on trend, on-the-move – reward instant gratification at the expense of the laborious and the longer term, leaving little space for reflection, retraction, failure, or even a wasted afternoon. Yet value appreciates in time – how do you choose to spend it?
Featured Artists
BRAZIL – Sophie T. Lvoff, Lou Masduraud, Irène Mélix, Georgia René-Worms, Maha Yammine
TELL ME A STORY: LOCALITY AND NARRATIVE – Chen Po-I, Lucy Davis, Guo Xi & Zhang Jianling, Hae Jun Jo & Kyeong Soo Lee, Hsu Chia-Wei, Koki Tanaka, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tomoko Yoneda and others
COMING SOON – Lisetta Carmi, Leone Contini, Giulia Crispiani, Alessandra Ferrini, Kinkaleri, Beatrice Marchi, Marinella Pirelli, Francesco Pozzato, Davide Stucchi