Bologna, at MAMbo, Aldo Giannotti's Safe and Sound exhibition on the freedom-security relationship

From May 5 to September 5, 2021, the Sala delle Ciminiere of MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, welcomes Safe and Sound, a solo exhibition by Aldo Giannotti (Genoa, 1977), curated by Lorenzo Balbi, with curatorial assistance from Sabrina Samorì. The project, winner of the 8th edition of the Italian Council call, a competition conceived by the Contemporary Creativity Directorate of the Ministry of Culture to promote Italian contemporary art in the world, focuses on the principles of safety and protection, considered from different perspectives.

Ranging from the existential aspect of safety, to the norms that regulate the social sphere, to the impact that technology has in these fields, the exhibition aims to invite the public to reflect on the perception and position that each of us has with respect to these concepts. Regulations, laws and codes of behavior, applied in different social spheres, are the themes that Giannotti observes for a personal reflection on security. The visitor is welcomed into a space in which he or she is free to exercise potential behavioral alternatives: the invitation is to challenge and bend one’s own sense of rules and behavior to foster new decision-making processes within structures, such as a museum can be, in which the concepts of safety and security are deeply embedded. Security is often defined as “freedom from danger”: in this sense Giannotti, investigating the paradoxical nature of this negotiation between freedom and security, asks what freedoms we are willing to give up in order to feel protected and remain in a reassuring comfort-zone. Although drawing is at the center of Giannotti’s artistic practice, the activation or realization of the actions sketched out in the drawings often take other forms: installations, performances, video works or repurposing of spatial structures.

Safe and Sound is thus configured, in part, as an intervention on the architectural structure capable of rethinking the museum space and the way visitors interact with it. The paths created by Giannotti’s structural interventions within the museum take into account the specificity of the building while producing a completely personalized adaptation, which forced the institution itself to participate in the remodeling of norms, both conceptually and in practice. The exhibition is therefore intended to be not only an intervention on the spatial structure but also a way to explore the network of relationships that define a museum experience as such. Moreover, the project was imagined in 2019, when the Covid-19 threat was an unimaginable scenario for everyone. When restrictions related to controls, forced paths, interpersonal distancing, and protective devices were still reserved for specific and limited areas and no one could foresee its deflagration and consequent spread into every aspect, however mundane, of everyday life, Aldo Giannotti and the curators of the exhibition were thinking of a set-up that would provide “forced routes” by determining a precise order in a space normally experienced with minimal limitations, with the possibility of constructing a wholly personal experience among the (potentially) infinite ones available. To devise a guided route that, along with the works, provides supporting devices and rule sets is to make orientation and understanding of the place effective.

Consequently, the exhibition aims to let emerge a series of questions regarding how a museum can be experienced and what interactions develop within it, in an experience that is never “objectively determined,” but is experienced subjectively and influenced inevitably by the role played from time to time by individual actors: central in this sense for Aldo Giannotti are the wardens, embodiment of the concept of safety, protagonists of the most immediate relationship with the audience, spokespersons of the “can” and “cannot” do. Hall staff and a “manual” of instructions on how to relate to visitors designed by Aldo Giannotti are the constituent elements of The Museum Score, the performance-work awarded by Italian Council and destined for MACRO in Rome. The theme of such figures to whom is the protection of places and people returns in other works as well, such as Vis a Vis, which exchanges the placement of two different types of guards (Swiss Guards and Russian Soldiers) in front of their respective places of worship, or Security I, a large-scale photograph depicting the artist locked in an embrace witha security guard. Among the most impressive interventions is also the staircase around the second smokestack of the Ciminiere Hall. This new architectural element, practicable by visitors, invites visitors to cross a well-known boundary in museum spaces, that between temporary exhibitions and permanent collections, suddenly and disorientingly making it permeable.The staircase, though not in form, has a reference in the original redevelopment project of the Ex Forno del Pane conceived by Aldo Rossi, in which the ground floor communicated with the upper floor of the MAMbo through a staircase positioned in this very area: the idea was later overcome in favor of a separation between the two levels. In Giannotti’s case, the staircase will be demolished at the end of the exhibition but will leave a trace of itself, as the gap with the collection will not be walled up again but will remain transparent, thanks to a sheet of glass that will keep the two floors of the building in visual communication.

Lifting their gaze, the public will be able to observe a series of large site-specific drawings that the artist will create in the bays of the hall, while there are several video stations in the smaller areas of the exhibition space. Finally, the exhibition space does not lack a performance area that will host Satellite Events, a program curated by Giannotti himself, who has invited other artists to present their work in relation to the exhibition’s theme. Flyers will be available in the exhibition space announcing the dates of the initiatives, which will take place throughout the duration of the amostra, in compliance with anti Covid-19 regulations. It begins on Thursday, May 6 at 4 p.m. with Paolo Monti/The Star Pillow, while Le stanze sono libere(2011), the permanent intervention by Zimmerfrei under the MAMbo porticos, will always be on view. The calendar of subsequent events will be available at www.mambo-bologna.org.

The performance space will have an extension in Linz (Austria), where Aldo Giannotti will realize Performing the Museum thanks to a collaboration with OÖ Landes-Kultur GMBH. In conjunction with the exhibition, the book Welcome & Goodbye (304 pages, in English with Italian translation), a monograph on Aldo Giannotti, published by Mousse Publishing, is also being released. Alongside an annotated selection of major works, critical essays by Emanuele Guidi, Elsy Lahner and Giorgio P. delve into the artist’s poetics and journey, while Lorenzo Balbi’s interview concludes with a focus on the Bologna exhibition. The exhibition is part of the institutional calendar of ART CITY Bologna, a program of exhibitions and special initiatives promoted by the Municipality of Bologna that in 2021 takes place as part of Bologna Estate.

Aldo Giannotti (Genoa, 1977) is a visual artist who has lived and worked in Vienna since 2000. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Wimbledon University of Arts in London, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His works have been exhibited and made in collaboration with numerous institutions, including: Albertina Museum, Vienna; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; OK-Zentrum, Linz; Kunsthaus Graz; Kunstraum Niedero?sterreich, Vienna; ar/ge kunst, Bolzano; Ku?nstlerhaus Dortmund; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; Austrian Cultural Forum, London; Donaufestival, Krems; Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna. He is represented by Projektraum Viktor Bucher, Vienna. He has received prizes and grants, such as the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2020), the first prize of the Austrian Graphic Art Competition, Kunsthalle Innsbruck (2019), the Pomilio Blumm Prize, Milan (2015), and the STRABAG Kunstforum Recognition Award, Vienna (2016).

Bologna, at MAMbo, Aldo Giannotti's Safe and Sound exhibition on the freedom-security relationship

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