Seven new contemporary works for Castello di Rivoli and GAM in Turin, Italy

Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT has acquired seven new works created by six artists to be given on free loan to two museums in Turin: the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemp oranea and the GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino. Specifically, a work by Anne Imhof and a work by Agnieszka Kurant will be exhibited in the former, while five works by Diego Perrone, Luca Bertolo, Riccardo Baruzzi and Flavio Favelli will be earmarked for the curatorial projects of GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna di Torino.

“The ordinary acquisition of new works represents one of the most significant areas of intervention for Fondazione Arte CRT and is a fundamental activity to support the contemporary art system in Turin and Piedmont,” said Anna Ferrino, president of Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT. “Thanks to the selection made by the directors of GAM and Castello di Rivoli, then approved by the Foundation’s International Scientific Committee, seven new works of contemporary art will add to the historic collection. They will be loaned to the two main city museums, custodians of the collection, in order to make them available to the general public through new curatorial projects.”

The acquisitions were made possible thanks to the approval of Fondazione Arte CRT’s International Scientific Committee, composed of Rudi Fuchs, chairman and former director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; Francesco Manacorda, Artistic Director V-A-C Foundation (Moscow-Venice); Sir Nicholas Serota, President Arts Council England; Manolo Borja-Villel, Director of the Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid); Beatrix Ruf, Director Hartwig Art Foundation (Amsterdam); Consulting Dir. Garage Museum (Moscow), Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Director of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, and Riccardo Passoni, Director of GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino.

The works acquired for the benefit of GAM are Untitled (2016) by Diego Perrone, Veronica 17#05 (2017) by Luca Bertolo, Arlecchino pescatore (After Renato Birolli) (2018) and Via Saragozza 93 (2021) by Riccardo Baruzzi, Military Decò (A ) (2019) by Flavio Favelli. The five acquired works were made by mid-career Italian artists and exhibited in the exhibition Sul principio di contraddizione, which ran from May 5 to October 3, 2021. According to the exhibition concept, “it is not a theme, nor a language that unites the five artists featured in this exhibition. Rather, it is the presence of a space of possibility within their works, composed, almost always, of at least two elements, two or more natures, two or more images that are not fully reconcilable with each other and linked by a bond of ambiguity that sometimes becomes a clear relationship of contradiction. Despite the differences in their methods, the emotional force of their work, even in the great diversity of their proceeding, seems to arise from the vibration of that space generated between elements that cannot fully overlap, nor coincide in an unambiguous statement, that keep slipping over each other and claiming attention one in spite of the other, in so doing, creating a dimension of indecision where they find a restless balance.”

The works acquired for the benefit of Castello di Rivoli are Untitled (SEX) (2020) by Anne Imhof and Adjacent Possible (2021) by Agnieszka Kurant. The works were both presented as part of the exhibition cycle Expressions, on the occasion of the exhibitions Anne Imhof. SEX, from November 5, 2020 to November 7, 2021, and Agnieszka Kurant. Crowd Crystal, from November 4, 2021 to September 25, 2022.
Untitled (SEX) is one of the key works included in Imhof’s exhibition: the installation includes a scratched painting on the wall, in which the silhouette of a faceless head emerges. On the floor, the installation includes four Marshalls amplifiers stacked in two columns, a mattress and a guitar. The ensemble is intended to propose a space evocative of the human body and music played in presence.
Adjacent Possible, on the other hand, is a series of new works on Luserna stone that investigate alternative directions in which human culture might have evolved or is currently evolving. The artist collaborated with computational social scientists LeRon Shults and Justin Lane to apply an algorithm to an archive of thousands of photographs reproducing various iterations of 32 graphic signs, dated from 40,000 B.C. to 14,000 B.C., documented in Paleolithic caves in Europe and Asia by paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger. These signs were the earliest human attempts to transmit information to larger groups of people and preserve it, predating the earliest forms of writing by tens of thousands of years. Using Artificial Intelligence algorithms, the project brings to life other potential signs and forms of expression as products of collective subjectivity. The signs were executed on fragments of a potential cave wall. The project aims to reflect on the direction in which we would have evolved as a species if we had created and used different signs and the relationships between the evolution of society and its forms of symbolic communication. Over the centuries, some cave paintings have been colonized by bacteria and fungi, replacing the original pigments. Through collaboration with synthetic biologists, the artist also creates new paintings using pigments produced by genetically modified bacteria, in whose DNA the genes of corals and jellyfish, which are responsible for the production of natural pigments, have been inserted; other fungal elements are added in addition to ochre pigments such as those used in the Paleolithic period.

Image: Agnieszka Kurant, Adjacent Possible © Agnieszka Kurant and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles - Courtesy Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin - Property of Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT

Seven new contemporary works for Castello di Rivoli and GAM in Turin, Italy

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