At MAC in Lissone, Simone Bergantini's solo exhibition aims to be a cultural workout for the public

From February 23 to April 21, 2019, the MAC - Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone (Monza-Brianza) hosts the solo exhibition The Golden Path by Simone Bergantini (Velletri, 1977), curated by Alberto Zanchetta. The exhibition aims to represent, in opposition to the prevailing hedonism of our society, which celebrates the cult of beauty and inexorably condemns us to mental atrophy, an ideal fitness path scattered with sculptures that subject the viewer to an effort of attention and concentration. Initially developed in the form of an instruction manual, with technical drawings illustrating the assembly steps of joints and modular elements, The Golden Path can be conceived as an open source project.

However, it is not our bodies that will benefit from these exercises, but rather our cerebral faculties; in fact, the gymnastic structures conceived by Bergantini in collaboration with the Kurmak architecture studio are too slender and precious to satisfy practical use, a discrepancy that is also found in the environments reserved for them, namely the museum rooms, which are detached from the performance of any physical activity.

The gleam of 24k gold, which imperils the metal structures, is contrasted instead by the grisaille of the photographic sequence that immortalizes a series of trophies, deconstructed and reassembled by the artist in total freedom, indulging a minimalist aesthetic that winks at both eros and thanatos. Reduced to two-dimensionality, the awards appear insubstantial and emptied of their prestige: they have been converted from symbols into stereotypes, intentionally deployed on a single horizon line that highlights their aseptic and anonymous form. Playing on the dichotomy between real and virtual space, Bergantini makes the audience a participant in a cultural workout (which is also a “reverse simulacrum” of the collectivity that surrounds us) to rediscover the virtues of the mind, and no longer only those of the body.

Simone Bergantini was born in 1977 in Velletri, in the province of Rome. He works and lives between Turin and Milan, where he has been teaching Photography at the Brera Academy since 2013. Graduated in Art History at the Sapienza University of Rome, in 2004 he moved to Milan where he began his artistic career. For several years he worked as an assistant in the world of fashion and advertising photography, where he learned the tools of the language that still remains his main means of expression and privileged field of investigation. In addition to exhibiting in Italian and foreign galleries, in recent years Simone Bergantini has won some of the most prestigious international and national awards for photography such as the FOAM Talent Call and the Terna Prize 02. His work has been published in major international photography magazines such as Der Greif, Blow, Vice, Foam, and exhibited at public and private institutions in Europe, the United States and Asia.

For all info you can visit the MAC website or the website of Pack Gallery, the artist’s gallery of choice.

Image: Simone Bergantini, The Golden Path,detail (2018; brass and 24K gold). Courtesy the artist and PACK Gallery.

At MAC in Lissone, Simone Bergantini's solo exhibition aims to be a cultural workout for the public

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