Museum of the Twentieth Century. The exhibition season reopens with Franco Guerzoni
Milan, September 8 2020 – The Museo del Novecento reopens the exhibition season by inaugurating the Franco Guerzoni exhibition on the occasion of the Milan Art week 2020 (7-13 September). The stolen image, curated by Martina Corgnati, an insight into the work of the Modena artist scheduled from 9 September to 14 February 2021.
The exhibition marks Franco Guerzoni's return to the city where some of his main exhibitions took place and continues the investigation conducted by the museum on the protagonists and movements that marked the Italian artistic panorama in the second half of the twentieth century.
On the fourth floor of the Museo del Novecento, mainly works created by the artist in the last decade are exhibited: an itinerary around the wall, a topos for Guerzoni. Old and peeling walls, full of plaster and swelling, precarious due to cracks, scratches, outcroppings, mold and saltpetre, were the protagonists first, in the early days, of photographic shots used as support for his work; then they will be evoked on the canvas: palimpsest walls with multiple, evocative outcrops on which all the sophisticated personal archeology of the Modena artist was articulated.
The images, real ruins or more frequently simulated and evocatively reconstructed through painting, are placed in dialogue with works from the very early Seventies born from the collaboration with photographer friends Luigi Ghirri and Franco Vaccari.
The exhibition continues with Franco Guerzoni's latest research entitled Intravedere: small rooms of chalky material that float like open books, but whose image is hidden, precisely "subtracted" from the observer's gaze.
These works are accompanied by the book-works that have punctuated Guerzoni's itinerary since the Seventies: from the Book of Dreams of 2009 to the Ideal Museum of 2013. Books not only to look at but to "act", precious in their rarity, which contain the reflections of the many poets, critics and writers, friends who have always followed the artist's path.
In the exhibition itinerary, a noticeboard is reserved for a labyrinth of photographic sequences, often unpublished, which tell of projects and aspirations dating back to his restless origins which the artist calls Unrisolved, the immature and tender fruit of his entry into artistic research.
Finally, a video, created specifically for the occasion by Eva Marisaldi and Enrico Serotti, recounts Guerzoni's work as a whole in exemplary stages and with irony, affection and rigor, including that part that cannot be represented in the exhibition.
The solo exhibition is enriched by a rich volume, published by Skira, with images of the works on display, texts by the curator Martina Corgnati and Adele Ghirri and useful materials to delve deeper into the artist's work with a reconstruction of the ten-year and important relationship he maintained with Milan , home to exhibitions, galleries important in the history of Guerzoni, as well as adventures and decisive meetings.
Biography
Franco Guerzoni was born in 1948 in Modena, where he lives and works. In 1970 he undertook various, non-traditional and often ephemeral artistic production practices, very experimental and close to photography; the context is of strong conceptual influence and intense exchange with other young artists, Franco Vaccari, Claudio Parmiggiani, Giuliano Della Casa, Carlo Cremaschi, Luigi Ghirri. In 1973 he held his first solo show at the Studio G7 Gallery in Bologna, Archaeology. In recent years the artist has paid great attention to the archaeological world and memory, also developing book-works that address the themes of travel, the image and its ambiguity. He travels to Türkiye, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal; passages witnessed by exhibitions such as Blow-Up (1976), Foto-grafia, curated by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle in '77, and Il Tesoro di Begram (1978) at Trisorio in Naples. In the early 80s he approached painting understood as the materialisation and non-representation of the wall or "remnant" where his personal archaeological operation was carried out: large chalky papers were created, exhibited in Travel papers, at the Roman Villa in Florence, What they do today the conceptual ones?, at the Rotonda della Besana, and Superficial excavations at the Galleria civica of Modena. At the end of the decade Guerzoni undertook large cycles of works such as Decorations and ruins, presented at the 1990 Venice Biennale, and Temporary restorations, at the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna in Bologna. A large retrospective was held in 1996 at the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea in Trento, while the solo exhibition Orienti took place in 99 at Palazzo Massari in Ferrara. In 2002 he held a solo show at the Ettersburg Schloss in Weimar, in 2004 at Palazzo Forti in Verona and in 2006 at the GAM in Turin. In 2011 his work was included in the Italian Pavilion of the LIV Venice Biennale while in 2013 Palazzo Pitti organized the anthology The Forgotten Wall. Among his most recent solo exhibitions are Nowhere, Nowhere. Stray travels with Luigi Ghirri, at the Milan Triennale, Archeologies without restoration at the MAMbo in Bologna.
Updated: 08/09/2020