An exhibition at MAMbo on exhibitions never held in Bologna from 1975 to the present day

Opening on October 7, 2021 in the Project Room of MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, the new exhibition project Hidden Displays 1975-2020. Unrealized Projects in Bologna, conceived by MoRE. a Museum of Refused and Unrealised Art Projects and curated by Elisabetta Modena and Valentina Rossi, realized with the support of Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna and Fondazione de Mitri of Modena, and open until January 9, 2022.

The research, the exhibition and the volume published by Edizioni MAMbo, which will be published to coincide with the opening of the exhibition, are the result of a comparison between MAMbo and MoRE, a museum and digital archive that has been collecting, preserving and virtually exhibiting the unrealized projects of 20th- and 21st-century artists since 2012. Through the moremuseum.org website, it is possible to discover artistic projects that were not realized for technical, logistical, ideological, economic, moral or ethical reasons, or because they were utopian or impossible to realize. The purpose of the museum is to enhance these projects by archiving, systematizing, and enhancing the documents, images, and texts donated by the artists, as well as organizing exhibitions, both online and offline, conferences, and seminars.

Hidden Displays 1975-2020 thus stems from research developed in the area with the aim of tracing and studying the exhibitions and artworks imagined or planned but not realized in the Bologna area from 1975, the year of the birth of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, to the present.
Through the long research work in the archives and direct contact with the protagonists, memories, experiences, testimonies and documents of numerous occasions that remained unrealized have emerged. About fifty traces of a still unknown narrative are visible in the exhibition: the archival documents and artistic projects are deliberately presented in a non-linear and non-chronological manner. The research revealed numerous exhibition opportunities tracked down thanks to work carried out mainly in the MAMbo archives and in private archives in the city. The artists’ archives have returned a numerous series of projects that are illustrated in the exhibition: some have chosen to exhibit the materials originally developed for the design of the work that was later unrealized (digital documents or analog materials); others have interpreted the work in a different way, transforming the design documentation into an evocative and useful trace to restore its original idea and meaning.

The unrealized exhibition projects from 1975 to the present that have emerged from the research are proposed, conceived or developed by curators, artists, critics and art historians: Lorenzo Balbi, Renato Barilli, Alberto Boatto, Palma Bucarelli, Maurizio Calvesi, Germano Celant, Giorgio Celli, Roberto Daolio, Mario De Micheli, Tano Festa, Guido Le Noci, Marinella Paderni, Concetto Pozzati, Maura Pozzati with Michele Corleone and Pierfrancesco Pacoda and Lea Vergine.

Unrealized works, on the other hand, were conceived and proposed by artists linked to the area for various reasons: Alessandra Andrini, Sergia Avveduti, Riccardo Baruzzi, Riccardo Benassi, Francesco Benozzo, Davide Bertocchi, Christoph Büchel, William Burroughs, Calori & Maillard, David Casini, Cristian Chironi, Luca Coclite, Cuoghi Corsello, Ericailcane, Emilio Fantin, Flavio Favelli, Irene Fenara, Simone Forti, Francesca Grilli, Daniel Gonzàlez, Jannis Kounellis, Claudia Losi, Eva Marisaldi, Fabio Mauri, Paul McCarthy, Matteo Meschiari, Giancarlo Norese, Francesca Pasquali, Stefano W. Pasquini, Chiara Pergola, PetriPaselli, Cesare Pietroiusti, Andrea Renzini, Davide Rivalta, Mili Romano, Andrea Salvatori, Marco Samorè, Enrico Serotti, Ivana Spinelli, Sissi, Luca Trevisani, Eldi Vejzai, Luca Vitone and ZimmerFrei.

On the occasion of Hidden Displays 1975-2020. Unrealized Projects in Bologna a volume of the same name will be published, edited by Elisabetta Modena and Valentina Rossi, published by Edizioni MAMbo and realized on a graphic design by Sartoria Comunicazione.
During the opening period of the exhibition, the realization of projects that emerged in the research and are exhibited in the Project Room is planned. It will begin on Saturday, December 11, 2021 with an unrealized project by Emilio Fantin. In the curators’ intentions, this will be a post-enactment of works, that is, a curatorial practice of staging, setting up or realizing a work that was originally created in a specific context, not realized, and then produced in another situation.

“In our intentions, this volume and exhibition are not meant to be a parade of failures,” said Elisabetta Modena and Valentina Rossi. “On the contrary, the projects recounted here in fact open a reflection on the labile border between what can be defined as accomplished and what cannot be, because the projects presented here have been thought out, studied and proposed: their material and real dimensions will be evident in the museum’s Project Room, in which texts, sketches, maquettes, maps, drawings, floor plans, renderings, videos, photographs, notes, but also ideas, visions, and hopes will crowd together.”
Image: Ericailcane, Untitled (2014; maquette) Courtesy of the artist

An exhibition at MAMbo on exhibitions never held in Bologna from 1975 to the present day

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.