OGR, a gold floor and a carpet of shells for Maria Hassabi and Nina Canell's solo exhibitions

Turin’s OGR announces their planned exhibition program from February to June 2022: it will explore the most innovative and experimental languages of contemporary art. The season kicks off with major solo shows by Maria Hassabi and Nina Canell, both of which will be on view from February 25 to March 27, 2022.In the Binarios of the former Officine Grandi Riparazioni, visitors will be able to immerse themselves in environmental installations to imagine new relationships with time and redefine the influence of their presence on their surroundings.

A sculptural environment will mutate the spaces of Binario 1 creating the landscape for Here, a live-installation by Maria Hassabi curated by Samuele Piazza with Nicola Ricciardi, commissioned by Secession and Wiener Festwochen - Vienna, produced by OGR Torino in collaboration with Onassis Foundation - Athens with support from Milvus Artistic Research Center (MARC) - Knislinge, and Onassis Stegi - Athens. The bodies of the artist and five dancers inhabit the sculpture and invite visitors to join them in a sharing of time and presence. The micro-movements that characterize the choreography are an invitation to anchor one’s awareness to the present, to being here, in time and space. Since the early 2000s, at the center of his choreographies, immobility and deceleration are used both as techniques and as subjects of performance, as bodies oscillate between dance and sculpture, living body and fixed image.

Binario 2, on the other hand, will host Hardscapes, the solo show of Nina Canell, curated by Samuele Piazza with Lorenzo Giusti, produced in collaboration with GAMeC Bergamo. The exhibition stands in an ideal dialogue with that of the artist, commissioned and produced as part of the Meru Art*Science Research Program at the Bergamo museum. A large ledwall houses Energy Budget (2017-18), a video work created with Robin Watkins that explores the different ways in which energy manifests itself, sometimes invisibly, in unprecedented symbioses between nature and the man-made environment. Alongside the video-sculpture, for OGR the artist has also devised a new version of his work Muscle Memory, originally commissioned by GAMeC: simultaneously constructed and destroyed by the movement and density of bodies, this sculpture literally crumbles under visitors’ feet. The shells that compose it are actually the raw material for most of our built world, being the basis for the constitution of concrete.

A redefinition of the relationship with the world around us and its evolution, from conflicts to the environmental transformation of the Anthropocene, will characterize the exhibitions opening to the public in April: Alluvium, the site-responsive project by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian that marks the return of OGR Torino to the lagoon on the occasion of the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (April 20 to November 27, 2022), and the new exhibition project together with Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea entitled Naturecultures. Art and Nature from Arte Povera to Today. From the Collections of the CRT Foundation for Art at Rivoli Castle, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Beccaria and Samuele Piazza (April 28 to September 22, 2022).

“The 2022 exhibition program strongly reflects OGR’s mission and Fondazione CRT’s broader commitment to investing in new projects,” said Massimo Lapucci, CEO of OGR Torino and Secretary General of Fondazione CRT. “Starting with the focus on climate change and sustainable development, artistic research contributes to the creation of social value. Projects in tune with the points of Agenda 2030 and the rich palimpsest of ’for all’ activities dedicated to the exhibitions give a concrete and profound sense to the goal of including and bringing an ever wider audience closer to the multifaceted world of art and the pivotal themes of contemporaneity.”

“After the last exhibition dedicated to work in the post-industrial and digital context, in which we explored the new delicate balance between work and leisure, we want to contribute to the reflection on a new paradigm,” added Fulvio Gianaria, president of OGR Torino. “Slowing down to observe, reflect and regain our own rhythm, rebalancing the relationship between man and nature. Starting with the work of the two artists, Hassabi and Canell, who although with extremely different practices find points of encounter in exploring the relationship of the body with the built environment, with art OGR is once again an amplifier of the delicate game of reflection on personal and social change.”

For info: www.ogrtorino.it

Image: Binario 1 at the OGR in Turin. Photo by Michele D’Ottavio.

OGR, a gold floor and a carpet of shells for Maria Hassabi and Nina Canell's solo exhibitions

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