At the Trento Civic Gallery, Fogarolli's solo exhibition investigates the boundary between normality and deviance

The Trento Civic Gallery continues its investigation of the contemporary by welcoming until June 4, 2023 Christian Fogarolli’s solo exhibition entitled Christian Fogarolli. Decade. Based on an idea by Vittorio Sgarbi and curated by Gabriele Lorenzoni, the exhibition presents works created over ten years, with a clear prevalence of unpublished and site-specific works created for the occasion, investigating the border between normality and deviance.

The artist’s research starts from historical-archival investigations and is nourished by direct collaborations with scientific research centers. Fogarolli’s approach thus involves without hierarchical barriers multiple disciplines, such as psychiatry, anthropology, natural sciences, psychology and medical sciences.

With scrupulous respect, Fogarolli focuses his investigation on what is dissimilar, exceeding the social norm. What do normality and abnormality mean? How in the last century has society chosen to treat difference? Who defines deviance, both medically and legally, and how do these concepts influence common thought?

The Civic Gallery’s spaces therefore display three key works in the artist’s production. The first is Pneuma, a site-specific installation composed of a video, in the collection at MAMbo, a group of blown glass and some digital prints, made as of 2019 as part of the Italian Council Prize (Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali).

Krajany brings the artist from Trentino to Prague, to give a name again to the 48 inmates of the Pergine Valsugana asylum who were relocated in 1916, during World War I, only to be sadly forgotten. Thanks to a collaboration with the Trento Monumental Cemetery, two tombstones were produced as a restitution of their personal identity.

Finally in Correction the artist places a glass sculpture with arboreal features and shows the attempt to straighten its spontaneous but deformed growth: a wrong and overbearing concept of care directed toward an ideal of utility and productivity.

Supported by an unusual educational background for a visual artist, punctuated by degrees in archaeology and art history followed by a master’s degree in diagnostics and restoration, Fogarolli devotes himself to the creative exercise while maintaining an approach more as an intellectual than as an artist in the common understanding of the term. The resulting works question the relationship between body and mind, senses and intellect, normality and deviance, and are intended to stimulate reflection on the concept of illness.

Fogarolli’s work is intended to be a delicate and respectful reflection on illness andmarginalization in an exclusionary society.

For info: https://www.mart.tn.it/

Image: Christian Fogarolli, Pneuma (2020; site-specific installation, 4K video, single channel, sound, color, 13’03’’; Bologna, MAMbo)

At the Trento Civic Gallery, Fogarolli's solo exhibition investigates the boundary between normality and deviance

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.