GAM Turin, new layout of contemporary collection featuring major artists of the international scene

From November 3, GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino will be renewed with a new display of its permanent contemporary art collections, presenting thirty-three major artists from the international art scene. A Borderless Collection, this is the title of the new installation curated by Riccardo Passoni, stems from the desire to give visibility to an important selection of works belonging to the museum’s contemporary collections: fifty-six works, many of which have never been exhibited to the public in recent years or for short periods.

Over the past two decades, the museum has been enriched by new acquisitions, through choices made at Artissima or as part of the annual acquisitions, both made possible thanks to the contribution of the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, or as a result of exhibition series, such as the cycle of exhibitions entitled Sightings held in the early 2000s. From the Fondazione Arte CRT, as many as twenty-two works from its historic collection are on display in the new exhibition. Thanks to the curatorial project developed by the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Torino, visitors will have the opportunity to admire works by, among others, Marina Abramović, Anselm Kiefer, William Kentridge, and Hermann Nitsch.

The exhibition also provides an opportunity to demonstrate how the museum has pursued a path of internationalization over the years. The focus and interest in foreign art began in 1948 with the acquisition of Marc Chagall ’s Dans mon pays at the Venice Biennale, and continued in the following decades, as already demonstrated with the exhibition Strangers. Between Informal and Pop from the GAM Collections, held in 2012.

Ten years after that first testimony, GAM presents A Borderless Collection with a completely different perspective: in the global dimension, it has become difficult to establish the boundaries within which to operate on the international growth of the collection. If until a few decades ago it was normal to be open in particular to Parisian and then American art, over the past 25-30 years works by European artists have entered the GAM collection, but also works from different cultures and expressive languages: from China, Cuba, Africa for example. The artists selected for this new display belong to different generations: from artists born in the 1930s (Georg Baselitz, Christian Boltanski) to the generation born in the 1970s (Kcho, Hannah Starkey, Laurent Grasso).

“We can verify that in the ’anthology’ that we have proposed in this exhibition,” says the director and curator of A Borderless Collection Riccardo Passoni, “there are many stimuli that we can recognize as carrying a certain research, without corresponding to it a specific geography or a reference style. There are representations that evoke a narrative, concluded or in suspension (Marina Abramović, Hannah Starkey); tradition and care (Chen Zhen); outcrops of the repressed (William Kentridge, Tracey Moffatt); the drama of history and its scars, in an ideological dimension (Alfredo Jaar). And again: the focus of a fable or legendary dimension (Mark Dion, Matt Collishaw) emerges, contrasting with the gaze on the inadmissible, the harsh necessity of remembrance (Christian Boltanski); or the recovery of certain mental spaces, of alienation (Ilya and Emlia Kabakov) or forays into the paranormal (Marcos Lutyens, Laurent Grasso).”

In addition to presenting some of the most significant international works that have come to the museum, the display cannot fail to leave a question mark on the future of the GAM’s heritage growth, especially in relation to the now becoming cramped spaces with which the museum is grappling.

The following are the artists exhibited in the new layout: Marina Abramović (Belgrade, Serbia, 1946); Georg Baselitz (Kamenz, Germany, 1938); Chen Zhen (Shanghai, China, 1955-Paris, France, 2000); Christian Boltanski (Paris, France, 1944-2021); Cecily Brown (London, UK, 1969); Pedro Cabrita Reis (Lisbon, Portugal, 1956); Matt Collishaw (Nottingham, UK, 1966); Tony Cragg (Liverpool, UK, 1949); Mark Dion (New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA, 1961); Liam Gillick (Aylesbury, UK, 1964); Antony Gormley (London, UK, 1950); Laurent Grasso (Mulhouse, France, 1972); Carsten Höller (Brussels, Belgium, 1961); Alfredo Jaar (Santiago, Chile, Chile, 1956); Ilya and Emlia Kabakov (Dnepropetrovsk, USSR, now Ukraine, 1933 and 1945); Kcho (Nueva Gerona, Cuba, 1970); William Kentridge (Johannesburg, South Africa,1955); Terence Koh (Beijing, China, 1967); Anselm Kiefer (Donaueschingen, Germany, 1945); Jim Lambie (Glasgow, Scotland, 1964); Marcos Lutyens (London, UK, 1964); Mona Marzouk (Alexandria, Egypt, 1968); Aleksandra Mir (Lubin, Poland, 1967); Tracey Moffatt (Brisbane, Australia, 1960); Hermann Nitsch (Vienna, Austria, 1938); Albert Oehlen (Krefeld, Germany, 1954); Cornelia Parker (Cheshire, UK, 1956); Tobias Rehberger (Esslingen, Germany, 1960); Julião Sarmento (Lisbon, Portugal, 1948-2021); Sean Scully (Dublin, Ireland, 1945); Kiki Smith (Nuremberg, Germany, 1954); Hannah Starkey (London, UK, 1971); Jessica Stockholder (Seattle, Washington, USA, 1959).

For info: www.gamtorino.it

Pictured is the new installation A Boundless Collection. Ph.Credit Studio Gonella

GAM Turin, new layout of contemporary collection featuring major artists of the international scene

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