Expositions
II edition of 6ARTISTA 2011: Adelita Husni-Bey / Elisa Strinna
On display the works by Adelita Husni-Bey and Elisa Strinna, winners of the second edition of 6ARTISTA, the prize promoted by the Associazione Civita and the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere .
On display the works by 15 great Indoneasian asrtists: Agus Suwage, F.X. Harsono, Yuli Praytno, Melati Suryodarmo, Mella Jaarsma, Heri Dono, Made Wianta, Eko Nugroho, Entang Wiharso, Ugo Untoro, Titarubi, Astari Rasyid, Arya Pandjalu, S. Teddy Darmawan and Budi Kustarto.
Contemporary Chinese art is the fruit of a long pictorial journey, which evolved from an initial manual skill and remains in the same tradition.The current relevance of abstract painting by Chinese artists lies in the powerful flow of a work that has found a balance between conceptual process and formal outcome. American minimal and conceptual art, which tends towards dematerialization of the object, has generally favoured the moment of planning over that of execution.
On display about 30 works, paintings and photographs, by Marco Tamburro.
MACRO Museum hosts in its foyer the new extension of the Postcard from... project, sponsored by the Pastificio Cerere Foundation and created by its Artistic Director Marcello Smarrelli. On display Massimo Grimaldi's Finally, a poetic tale about the artist's figure in the written on a large billboard.
Rome’s International Photography Festival reaches its 10th edition this year with a project that confirms the event’s growing national and international prestige and its ever more concrete attention to original productions and strong initiatives. Its overall purpose is to promote contemporary photography in its different forms and languages, and to support talents now emerging at the national and international levels.
On September 20, 2011 Massimo De Carlo, together with Ludovico Pratesi as coordinator, brings to Rome Three Amigos, a unique and unpublished project which includes three different solo shows of three young, internationally renowned American artists, Dan Colen, Nate Lowman and Dash Snow, at Palazzo Rospigliosi, at the American Academy in Rome and at MACRO. Three significant places that symbolize Rome’s historical, influential and contemporary soul, thus become specialized venues in which the artists develop three distinct projects appositely studied and realized for this specific occasion.
1900-1959: the places of 'contemporary' art in Rome from the CRDAV collections.
A selection.
Curated by MACRO - CRDAV, Centre for Research and Documentation of Visual Arts. Library, Level II.
An exhibition that highlights the vitality of "contemporary" art in the capital from 1900 to 1959 using he extraordinary documentary material of MACRO’s Centre for Research and Documentation of Visual Arts, on display in the library. The exhibition is a chronological sequence of rare catalogues, brochures, invitations, and flyers, which reconstruct "a world": one in which, by going to exhibitions, galleries, cafés, libraries, and restaurants you could meet the entire literary and artistic world of those years. The exhibition is divided into two sections: 1900-1959: from the Palazzo delle Esposizioni to the Obelisk and 1950-1959: the original year. The exhibition also includes anthologies published by the galleries about their activities over the years, anastatic reproductions of published exhibition catalogues, monographs on exhibition themes and art periodicals (from Emporium to Spazio).
Adrian Tranquilli: All is violent. All is bright
Curated by Gianluca Marziani. Conference room and terrace.
Adrian Tranquilli’s project "All is violent. All is bright" is a narrative which, in two large installations full of surprises and bewildering effects, transforms the museum into a theatrical performance of the fight between Batman and Joker, archetypal characters from the artist’s iconographic universe. The figure of Batman, which is visible from outside the museum because it is placed at the highest point on the terrace above the new Via Nizza entrance, stands on sinuous surfaces, designed by architect Odile Decq, as a mysterious figure in an amphitheatre of surrounding buildings. On the roof of the conference room, the heart of the museum, the other half of the narrative emerges unexpectedly: Saint Peter’s Basilica made of thousands of playing cards depicting different ‘faces’ of the Joker, repeated and alternated to the point of obsession, creating a quasi hypnotic effect. By exploiting the outside and inside of MACRO, Tranquilli suspends time and recreates atavistic feelings, mysterious rituals, revelations and wanderings. A sculptural vision of the universal themes and values that characterize human nature.
Carlo Bernardini: La rivincita dell’angolo (the corner’s revenge)
Elevator shafts
For the elevator shafts of the historic wing of the MACRO building, Carlo Bernardini has created an installation, on different floors, consisting of two stainless steel sculptures, placed in the corners of the shafts; a spatial drawing is then created using optical fibres. The installation redraws the areas, literally sculpting the darkness, thus totally changing the perception and completely reconfiguring the space to create a new architecture of light. The real material used in Bernardini’s work is indeed "space", which, shaped by the medium of light, is taken by the hand to “another” dimension: the place of thought.
Esther Stocker: Destino Comune (common destiny)
Curated by Elena Forin. I Floor.
MACRO presents Common destiny, Esther Stocker’s new installation, produced in collaboration with Oredaria Arti Contemporanee. In Common Destiny, Esther Stocker creates a structure made of black sticky tape, which covers the room and marks out shapes. The starting point of the artist's work is a regular geometric grid, which is broken by the insertion of appropriate "errors", representing "damage to the system." Walking across the room thus transformed, the viewer enters a dimension that is no longer fully recognizable, an area where it is the errors that give the coordinates and capture one’s attention: the individual thus becomes part of this imprecision, a system of rules that is no longer defined but characterized by a kind of vagueness.
Flavio Favelli: The Empress Theodora
Special Project for MACRO. Curved walls, first floor.
Flavio Favelli continues the cycle of projects specially designed for the curved walls of the atria of the historic wing of MACRO, twin spaces at the entrance of the exhibition halls.
Conceiving these walls as areas for images, and to make use of unconventional environments as exhibition areas, MACRO selects Italian artists from the international scene to implement this project. After Francesco Simeti, Luca Trevisani, and Nico Vascellari, it is now Favelli’s turn, whose installation - two large pvc tarpaulins - entitled The Empress Theodora, transforms these architectural elements in new spaces for the imagination and memory.
The hall of the museum thus becomes a place for the expression of emotional tensions and conflicting forces, involving the public in the artist’s private and universal memories.
Giovanni De Angelis: Water Drops
Curated by Costanza Paissan - III Floor.
Giovanni De Angelis’s photographic project, "Water Drops", looks at the theme of twin births from two perspectives, social and anthropological, embarking on an in-depth exploration of the ideas of identity, uniqueness of the individual and relationships with others. Intrigued by the stories and news from Candido Godo, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, the photographer left for the South American town to see with his own eyes what is called "the land of twins", developing the project together with the psychotherapist Luisa Laurelli, who met and interviewed a number of twins. The two faces of research, artistic and scientific, have thus been integrated in a thorough investigation of the social, psychological and individual reality of this place and its inhabitants.
Giuseppe Stampone: Saluti da L’Aquila (Greetings from L'Aquila)
Sala Bianca - I floor.
Giuseppe Stampone presents the next phase of his project: "Greetings from L'Aquila," an opportunity for visitors to participate actively in his work through a brand new installation. The images of the new architectural face of the city devastated by the earthquake are the subject of thousands of postcards that Stampone has created and sent all over the world since January. For MACRO, the artist has chosen some new images that were sent from Rome: these pictures tell the story of an aesthetic development blacked and locked in the scaffolding which for more than a year has enclosed buildings that are still in a state of disrepair.
MACROradici contemporary art: Bice Lazzari. The balance of space
Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero and Francesca Pola. II floor.
The fourth exhibition of "MACROradici contemporary art" features Bice Lazzari: one of the most complex figures in the international abstract art scene, whose work spans the twentieth century from the lyric abstraction of the twenties and thirties to the minimalist sixties and seventies, and who in this exhibition is again brought to the attention of the general public, her articulate and groundbreaking artistic vision as topical as ever. The exhibition brings this artist back to the city of Rome, where she produced some of her most extraordinary works, and like a great autobiography of Lazzari’s work it confirms the anticipatory role she played in different periods and highlights her international importance. Thanks to the cooperation of the Bice Lazzari Archive, the exhibition includes a significant selection of her works on canvas and paper, many of them never seen or exhibited before. Looking at these secret images, on the walls or in the special MACRO cabinets, the visitor is astounded by Bice Lazzari’s extraordinary creativity, her structural rigour, refined chromatic sensitivity and intense humanity.
MACROwall: EIGHTIES ARE BACK! Vittorio Messina
Curated by Ludovico Pratesi - III Floor
Vittorio Messina is featured in this edition of MACROwall: Eighties are Back! The project involves a review of Italian art in the eighties in a series of solo exhibitions of artists representing different types of artistic production in the decade. Each artist is invited to exhibit two works on one wall, an early work and one that is recent, to allow the public to rediscover the vitality of the artist’s production over the years. The works are accompanied by fact sheets written by two art critics of different generations: the younger critic reviews the early work and vice versa. On this occasion, the two works being compared are "Balconi Meridionali" (southern balconies) of 1987, reviewed by Guglielmo Gigliotti, and “Melancolia verticale” (vertical melancholy) of 2011, reviewed by Laura Cherubini.
Pietro Fortuna: GLORY II. The tears of an angel
Hall
On display in the MACRO hall is Pietro Fortuna’s Tears of the angel, the second part of "Glory," a project divided into a series of major exhibitions and stemming from the artist’s reflections on the concepts of good, sharing and common space. After exhibiting in August 2010 at the Tramway in Glasgow, Fortuna presents at MACRO a large installation in the hall, an area of fundamental importance for the osmotic relationship that the museum has with the city and the neighbourhood.
Riccardo De Marchi: Roman Forum
Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero and Elena Forin . III Floor.
Riccardo De Marchi’s installation is a blend of irony, quotation, writings, individuality and work space. Focusing on the narrative as an outline of content, a representation of really and a method to penetrate it, the artist presents a series of works, such as album covers, directly on the museum surfaces, making holes in the back wall of the room, which then becomes, like works in aluminium, steel and plexiglass, a surface area for his "Martian" writing. A hole or a perforation is De Marchi’s starting point for an analysis of things. He has fun "freely mapping various famous artists - from Fontana to Derrida and Pollock", developing an indecipherable language. To the accompaniment of the notes and rhythms of new musical recordings, areas of light and shade, and playing with the presence nothingness on the surfaces, he communicates new and curious biographies to the public.
roommates/coinquilini: Guendalina Salini / Marinella Senatore
Curated by Benedetta Carpi de Resmini / Benedetta di Loreto . Project conceived and coordinated by Constance Paissan . II floor.
This is the fourth in the series of roommates/coinquilini exhibitions, a project in which the Museum opens its doors to the works of young artists and curators from the Roman scene. On this occasion, Guendalina Salini and Marinella Senatore transform the exhibition area into a theatre of the soul and memory, a reflection on different facets of the local community.
In her work Non troverai mai i confini dell’anima (you will never find the boundaries of the soul), Guendalina Salini creates a large mandala of coloured rods, a structure similar to a sort of impermanent and playful city plan, reminiscent of oriental figurines made of coloured sand, creating a circular diagram of symbolic value. Marinella Senatore instead creates a "theatre of memory" entitled Electric Theatre, in which she performs stories, anecdotes and memories of events and happenings of the past.
SHE DEVIL
V-tunnel, foyer.
For the video screenings in the V-tunnel, MACRO presents She Devil: the latest all-female exhibition of video art that Studio Stefania Miscetti has been successfully producing for years. As in previous editions, the review includes numerous international curators and artists, the aim being to set up an open platform for new and different experiences. She Devil, the name of a Marvel comic hero and title of a famous 1989 film by Susan Seidelman, alludes playfully to the diabolical and bizarre spirit with which artistic experience explores and interacts with everyday life. The videos focus on a female-oriented research and compare different research paths. The initiative aims to arouse, sometimes with humour and at times with realism, the collective consciousness on issues such as female identity, the body as a place of representation and meaning, and personal experience, which has a universal dimension even when it is the intimacy of artists that is brought to the foreground.
New works are continuously presented in MACRO. Because of the close working relationships that MACRO has established with major partners such as UniCredit, institutions, foundations, archives, private collectors and the MACROAmici Association, the museum has a dynamic and constantly growing collection. On display in the new wing are works by Paolo Grassino, Giorgio Griffa, Alfredo Jaar, Arcangelo Sassolino, Tracey Moffatt, Tano Festa, Urs Lüthi, and Fabio Mauri, new photographs from the project “Così come sono / The Way They Are”, developed with the support of UniCredit, and finally the works of the winners of the MACROAmici prize 2011: Claire Fontaine and Seb Patane. On the third floor of MACRO’s historic wing is an exhibition of works by great masters such as Nicola de Maria, Giulio Turcato, Leoncillo, Bice Lazzari, Gianfranco Baruchello, Mimmo Rotella and Pietro Consagra.
Sala Bianca and other areas.
Tomas Saraceno: Cloudy Dunes. When Friedman meets Bucky on Air-Port-City
Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero. Sala Enel.
MACRO presents "Cloudy Dunes. When Friedman Meets Bucky on an Air-Port-City", a special project by Argentinean artist Tomas Saraceno for the spacious Enel Gallery, following in the tradition of Yona Friedman and the theories of Richard Buckminster Fuller. In this work, the artist completely re-designs the room, turning it into an "air-port city", a "cloudy dune" that fertilizes the environment, social life and people’s minds. By interspersing this installation - more than 500 dodecahedra made up of 18 km of electric cable pipes – with video images of the unique natural environment of Lencois Maranhenses Park in northern Brazil, Saraceno transforms the 1200 square metre exhibition hall into an extraordinary floating and suspended universe, in which the visitor can experience new shapes and images and discover new ways of living, travelling and communicating.
Vittorio Corsini: Xenia
Curated by Adriana Polveroni. Terrace.
The installation devised by Vittorio Corsini for the MACRO terrace involves the public emotionally in an unusual story of the city of Rome. The artist organizes space within the social fabric in a way that makes the public the real protagonist of his work. It is a reflection on living space, which is analysed, emphasising the most intimate and poetic conceptual features, by means of a comfortable outdoor sofa. Like a surreal American garden, enclosed by a white fence, visitors can sit on a couch and listen to stories and poems about the city of Rome, written and narrated by Melanie G. Mazzucco and Valerio Magrelli.
Unicità d'Italia. Made in Italy and National Identity. 1961/2011, fifty years of Italian know how shown through the ADI Compasso d'Oro Award
The exhibition is staged from an unusual and original perspective, identifying Made in Italy as one of the most dominant and significant factors that has, since 1961, helped to build the national identity. The route through this display of items from the Compasso d'Oro historical collection and the products selected for the XXII award is complemented by video clips and other items that provide historical context for key moments, allowing the exhibition to tell the story of Italian know how over the last half century.
MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma – and DEPART Foundation present “Lay Me Down” American artist Sarah Braman’s first solo show in Italy. Four sculptures, one of which was specially created for MACRO during her stay in Rome, use light, colour, and matter to investigate and reveal the hidden and surprising desires of our world. “Lay Me down” is made possibile thanks to a joint venture between MACRO and the Fondazione DEPART.
MACRO–Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma – is showing the works of two young Italian artists, Beatrice Pediconi and Roberto De Paolis, who use photography to investigate the fragile, precarious nature of the figures and subjects they capture in their shots. These are presences that acquire a position in space only to the extent that they lose their forms in space itself.
MACRO–Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma presents “New York Shots”, a new project by American photographer Howard Schatz devoted to boxing icons. From March 25, the Museum Hall will become a unique, stunning artistic ring, and an arena for ten large photographs in which Schatz investigates the theme of the body and its role in Italo-American culture.
MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma – unveils a new design for the ENEL Gallery with works by (international artists) Arcangelo Sassolino, Ernesto Neto, and Dan Perjovschi.
An ideal showcase for different art forms, with these three artists MACRO is offering multisensorial experience, inspiring a greater awareness of our own position in space and allowing us to take full possession of the works.
MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma – unveils a new design for the ENEL Gallery with works by (international artists) Arcangelo Sassolino, Ernesto Neto, and Dan Perjovschi.
An ideal showcase for different art forms, with these three artists MACRO is offering multisensorial experience, inspiring a greater awareness of our own position in space and allowing us to take full possession of the works.
MACRO presents “Canone Aureo” (“The Golden Ratio”), an exhibition of new works by Giorgio Griffa, one of the greatest names in contemporary Italian painting. Specially created by the artist for the Museum, four large canvases interpret its architecture and create an immediate dialogue with its surfaces.
MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma – is presenting the outstanding, sophisticated ceramic works of Pablo Echaurren on the walls of the central Hall. Six works create a most unsuspected interaction between Baroque and rock music, in an intermingling of genres and worlds that disorients both eye and mind.
From 12 February, two new works that have recently entered the collection will go on display, interacting with the architecture of the Museum and revealing unexpected vistas through their use of different media. Giuseppe Pietroniro’s photograph Interno MACRO Roma (2010) will be shown thanks to collaboration with the Associazione Giubilarte Eventi of Valentina Ciarallo. An important partnership is continuing with UniCredit, whose support allows MACRO to present the Untitled installation (2010) by the ZimmerFrei collective. The Museum collection is thus continuing to expand, with loans and donations giving it greater wealth and complexity.
MACRO presents in the Enel Gallery the latest work by the Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi: an ironic, caustic, contemporary fresco that reflects on the infinite contradictions of the modern world through the freedom of sign and word.
Perjovschi will be the first artist to work directly on the skin of the new MACRO, and visitors will be able to watch him as he creates his work. In a performance lasting a number of days, and entirely visible to the public, Perjovschi will realize a large satirical work brought to life by paradoxical drawings and epigrams.