From expressionism to Olafur Eliasson's exhibition. Here's 2022 at the Castello di Rivoli

The Rivoli Castle has announced its exhibition schedule for 2022. On the menu will be a group exhibition on the history of expressionism, Expressions, with works starting with Romanticism and William Turner and reaching up to the present day. Then there will be a retrospective on Paolo Pellion of Persano, on the occasion of the acquisition of his archive. Then it will be the turn of Olafur Eliassion ’s solo exhibition in the fall.

“In the 21st century, the Museum of Contemporary Art is re-imagining itself,” says director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, “no longer just a container for large temporary exhibitions but a place rooted in its local community and a generator of art in the territory to which it belongs; the museum must also simultaneously be capable of projecting itself internationally into the world. The Slow museum is a place that belongs to the public and the artists, of artistic production and research; it is characterized by a multitude of different events, each dedicated to a micro community of interest. The challenge is to make these micro communities interact for the purpose of collective growth instead of reinforcing the existence of separate bubbles of interest. The contemporary museum is also an archive and collection, that is, the construction of a past for our posterity capable of recounting our age in the future, and finally it is a gymnasium for the senses and for the exercise of our physicality, the source of all true knowledge and even more important in the 21st century characterized in daily life by digitization and the loss of bodily experiences.”

See below the program.

1. Expressions. The epilogue

On April 12, 2022, the group exhibition Expressions. The Epilogue (April 13-July 17, 2022) curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Beccaria, Marianna Vecellio, Andrea Viliani, and Fabio Cafagna with curatorial assistance from Anna Musini. Expressions. Epilogue follows and concludes the program of exhibitions inaugurated in 2020. The new exhibition, which will run in the spaces of the Castello, the Manica Lunga and the Casa del Conte Verde in Rivoli, will feature masterpieces by William Turner (London, 1775 - Chelsea, 1851), Gustav Klimt (Baumgarten, 1862 - Vienna, 1918), Francisco Goya (Fuendetodos, Spain, 1746 - Bordeaux, 1828), James Ensor (Ostend, 1860-1949) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (New York, 1960-1988), it will include numerous new artistic productions, performances and ’focus’ projects by Marianna Simnett (Kingstone-upon-Thames, UK, 1986), Silvia Calderoni (Lugo, 1981), Grada Kilomba (Lisbon, 1968), Uýra Sodoma (Emerson Pontes da Silva, Santarém, Pará, 1991), Irene Dionisio (Turin, 1986), Lina Lapelyte (Kaunas, Lithuania, 1984), Richard Bell (Charleville, Australia, 1953), Adrián Villar Rojas (Rosario, Argentina, 1980), Tabita Rezaire (Paris, 1989), Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual, 1984 and Alon Schwabe, 1984), Precious Okoyomon (London, 1993), Bracha L. Ettinger (Tel Aviv, 1948) and Agnieszka Kurant (Lódz, 1978).

The exhibition Expressions investigates the history of expressionism in its various forms as a consequence of technological and scientific revolutions throughout human history, up to the exaggerated singularity and mass vanity of our time. Alongside a selection of works from the Collections of Castello di Rivoli and the Francesco Federico Cerruti Collection for Art, it will include national and international loans from such prestigious institutions as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Intesa Sanpaolo Collections; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; Fondation Carmignac, Paris/Île de Porquerolles; Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice; Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz; Maria Lassnig Foundation, Vienna; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo di Capodimonte, Naples; Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan; Musée d’Art de Nantes, Nantes; Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Palazzo Coronini Cronberg, Gorizia; Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde, Seebüll; Tate, London; as well as from several private lenders.

Espressioni’s “focus” presences include, for example, the new work by Richard Bell (Charleville, Australia, 1953) specially conceived for the Museum, which will be installed in the Project Room and the garden facing the Manica Lunga. The Australian Aboriginal artist and political activist’s practice revolves around the production of video, installation, painting and text. For Bell, ’Aboriginal art’ is an invention of the Australian tourism system aimed at promoting ’authentic’ Australian art at the expense of contemporary Aboriginality in need of emancipation and reassignment of meaning in the debate of general ideas.

The solo rooms Bracha L. Ettinger. Bracha’s Notebooks present a series of 5 paintings and about 50 notebooks used by the artist to jot down her reflections, associations and working notes, combining word and drawing together. The notebooks, written in three languages (French, English and Hebrew), testify to the dual activities of Bracha L. Ettinger whose artistic practice is intertwined with her work and research as a philosopher and psychoanalyst. In addition, Agnieszka Kurant’s room Crowd Crystal reflects on the potential inherent in each of us capable of influencing social change within a community, particularly within the digitized world. Kurant’s Crowd Crystal investigates the impact of collective intelligence phenomena in nature, culture and non-human intelligences - from bacteria and other single-celled organisms to artificial intelligence. From the perspective of the expression of collective subjectivity, one room of the exhibition Expressions. Epilogue will be dedicated to the history of street art curated by Gianluca Marziani. The exhibition Espressioni is realized thanks to the extraordinary contribution of the CRT Foundation.

2. Paolo Pellion of Persano

As part of the donation of the archive of Paolo Pellion di Persano (Castagneto Po, 1947-2017) to the Museum, an important nucleus of his photographic works was acquired. Starting from this donation and acquisition, in spring 2022 Castello di Rivoli will present an exhibition curated by Andrea Viliani and organized by CRRI, dedicated to the figure of one of the most important contemporary Italian photographers who worked in close collaboration with Arte Povera artists. The exhibition will provide an opportunity to look back over the exhibition activities of Castello di Rivoli from the inaugural Ouverture (1984) through 2012, which Pellion documented throughout his career. The photographic works donated to the museum will be the subject of the digitization and archiving program of the artist’s documentary materials held at CRRI. The CRRI’s activities are supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation.

3. Olafur Eliasson

From Sept. 21, 2022 to Jan. 29, 2023, the third floor of the Manica Lunga will present an exhibition curated by Marcella Beccaria dedicated to Olafur Eliasson (Copenhagen, 1967), a contemporary artist interested in climate change and perception, who places viewers at the center of his artistic investigation in complex light installations. The exhibition will consist of a large, never-before-seen installation specially created for the Manica Lunga that changes the entire space into a giant optical machine. The artist will transform the Manica Lunga, which measures 147 meters in length and 6 meters in width, built as the picture gallery of the House of Savoy in about 1630, into a place that promises an intense perceptual and sensory experience, a place that will recall past research on optics while at the same time extolling the importance of corporeality and physical presence in the digital age. Eliasson’s practice combines the memory of the encounter with nature with the broad ramifications of scientific research and ecological thinking to imagine a happy future for the planet and society. In 1999 Eliasson presented Your Circumspection Disclosed (Your Circumspection Unveiled, 1999), his first installation in an Italian museum, at Castello di Rivoli. Born out of an encounter with the architecture of the Castello, the work is, in the artist’s words, “an extension of the eye, or rather a machine for seeing.” In 2008, the artist made The sun has no money (“Il sole ha no money,” 2008), presented on the occasion of the group show 50 moons of Saturn (2008), which became part of the Museum’s collections thanks to the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT. The theme introduced by the title The sun has no money can be traced back to a series of research conducted by the artist during that period, marked by a severe economic crisis on a global scale. The exhibition will also include the setting up of a reading room open to the public, where the nearly one hundred catalogs that to date cover the artist’s production, starting from the very first solo exhibitions from the 1990s to the present. It will be inaugurated in conjunction with the exhibition that Palazzo Strozzi in Florence will simultaneously dedicate to the artist. The Olafur Eliasson exhibition is also made possible by an additional contribution from Fondazione CRT.

4. Plants and Minerals. Composting actions and ecological coexistence.

From November 3, 2022 to the end of February 2023, the third floor of the Castle will present the cycle of works and actions Vegetables and Minerals. Actions of Composting and Ecological Coexistence, curated by Andrea Viliani and Marianna Vecellio. The exhibition, organized by the curatorial department with CRRI, is developed through performances, actions and re-enactments that place emphasis on the themes of soil, waste, co-evolution, cooperation and ecological coexistence in close relation to the artists’ works. The exhibition space of the show will become a place of mixing and the continuous transformation of states of matter, of transformative alliances of the living through actions that bring documents and memories back to the center of imagination. Also known as compost or compost, “composting” is the result of a biological process resulting from the oxidation of a mixture of organic matter and waste, such as nitrates and carbonates, which when exposed to the presence of oxygen decompose and recompose into fertilizing soil. It is because of this internally transformative capacity that the concept of compost, hybridized to the word ’host’ for guest, becomes the ideal environment to prefigure the infinite potential of a perpetual and circular transformation of identities and spaces. The image of organically transforming compost permeates the exhibition environment in which the imaginative anticipations envisioned by philosopher Donna Haraway about the coexistence of different forms of life are manifested by engaging the work of Joseph Beuys (Krefeld, 1921 - Düsseldorf, 1986) and Michael Rakowitz (New York, 1973), among others.

5. The Cerruti Collection.

Guided tours of Villa Cerruti by the Artenaute of Rivoli Castle will continue in 2022. In order to expand the educational offer, alongside the general visits that trace the history of the collection, dwelling on the taste and biography of Francesco Federico Cerruti (Genoa, 1922 - Turin, 2015), new thematic visits will be promoted with the intention of deepening the knowledge of peculiar nuclei of works. The visits will consider the following topics: Painting and Sculpture from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century; Portraits in the Collection; Giorgio de Chirico, Metaphysics and Surrealism; Furniture, Carpets and Decorative Arts; Manuscripts, Old Decorated Books and Fine Bindings. The Cerruti Collection’s cultural program will be curated by Laura Cantone and Fabio Cafagna. The Cerruti Collection activities are made possible thanks to the contribution of the Cerruti Foundation.

6. DIGITAL COSMO.

All exhibitions presented at the Rivoli Castle will be accompanied by digital programs. For each collateral event there will also be live streaming from the Rivoli Castle and the publication of 1-minute excerpts on social channels. All digital content will be available within the COSMO DIGITAL, the virtual home of the Museum curated by Giulia Colletti, which from January 2022 will be enriched with new content and unreleased events on a weekly basis. From 2022, COSMO DIGITAL will also host a new series of podcasts commissioned from sound artists, poets and writers entitled Marginalia, as well as the research of the philosopher-in-residence for the year 2022, Federico Campagna. COSMO DIGITAL activities are part of a technology upgrade program made possible by the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation.

The off-site exhibition program

In collaboration with the OGR-Turin, from April 28 to September 25, 2022, Castello di Rivoli is organizing an exhibition at the OGR in Turin that will focus on the history of Arte Povera and the emergence of ecological themes in art from the 1960s to the present. The exhibition, titled Art and Ecology from Arte Povera to Today, will be co-curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Beccaria and Samuele Piazza and will feature a selection of important works that are part of the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT Collection on loan to Castello di Rivoli.

Again, in collaboration with the Istanbul Biennial, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea is producing Renato Leotta’s unpublished project, Posidonia - Concertino per il mare (Little Concert for the Sea, 2022), which is rooted in the observation of the ecosystem of the Mediterranean seabed. Proposing a possible form of interspecies communication, it consists of an attempt to translate the internal structure of Posidonia oceanica leaves into a musical score to be performed as a concert audible to the human ear. By bringing to attention the vital importance of an endangered ecosystem, Concertino for the Sea serves as an invitation to listen to the stories of Posidonia’s migration, adaptation, encounters and struggles for survival through time, from the distant past to an uncertain future. The Posidonia - Concertino per il mare project is a winner of the Italian Council Edition 10, an international call promoted by the Ministry of Culture’s Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity to support Italian contemporary creativity.

Finally, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Fondazione CRC, public art works by leading Italian and international contemporary artists produced by Fondazione CRC and curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev for Castello di Rivoli will be presented between spring and fall 2022. The works will be placed in Alba, Mondovì, Cuneo and Bra.

Image: the Rivoli Castle. Photo by Andrea Guermani

From expressionism to Olafur Eliasson's exhibition. Here's 2022 at the Castello di Rivoli

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