Past

GRAHAM SUTHERLAND. Kriegszeichnungen & Porträts
curated by Barbara Cortina & Lorenzo Fiorucci

28 February > 13 April 2018

Exhibition extended to 31 July 2018

Km0 is pleased to present a selection of war drawings and portraits by renowned British artist Graham Sutherland. Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), the leading painter of the English neo-Romantic movement, became known for his imaginative images based on landscape and natural forms and for his portraits. He combined surrealistic elements with the romantic landscape tradition of English painting. In 1940, he was appointed as full time war artist by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. He spent his time recording the destruction of London, Cardiff and Swansea during World War II; and then followed Cornwall, with the recording of strategic production sites such as factories, limestone quarries and tin mines.

Art historian Douglas Cooper wrote in his most comprehensive monograph on the artist in 1961: “For the first time, Sutherland has broadened the spectrum of his art and changed his style. He has thus made it clear in his war drawings that the aesthetic and formalistic questions were not of primary interest to him, and that he felt close to all human experiences. The themes and objects coming from outside were no obstacle to his painterly inventive power. On the contrary: they have strengthened it”.

Graham Sutherland was born in London in 1903. He studied from 1921-26 at the Goldsmiths’ School of Art, where he specialized in etchings under Stanley Anderson and Malcolm Osborne. He turned mainly to painting in 1935 and was represented in 1936 in the International Surrealists Exhibition in London. From 1940 to 1945 he was an official war artist, and his works from that period provide a matter-of-fact and evocative record of devastation. Sutherland was also known for his expressionist, haunting portraits; His painting of the writer Somerset Maugham (1949) was the first in an impressive series. Sutherland also designed a giant tapestry (1962) for the new Coventry Cathedral. In 1960 he was elected to the Order of Merit and in 1972 he was appointed a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died on 17 February 1980 in London. His works are today worldwide renowned and included in the most important Museum’s collections such as The Tate Gallery, London, British Museum, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Albertina, Vienna, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and private collections.

CARLO DELL’AMICO. Eine Weltanschaaung
curated by Lorenzo Fiorucci

11st November 2017 > 15th January 2018

The personal exhibition of the artist Carlo Dell’Amico curated by Lorenzo Fiorucci, opens on Friday, November 10th, at 7 pm at Km0, Innsbruck.

The exhibition is articulated through a selection of 10 works, focusing on those that range from the mid 80’s to the 90’s – these models will remain during the artist’s career suspended in potential, but cyclically present in research and in recent installations.

The geometry that defines bodies in the SURFACES and the TENSION predisposed to an achievement are, for the artist, combinatorial acts in which the moment of knowledge must become a “threshold”, the place of an imaginary experience between sleep and wakefulness. These surfaces unfold an alphabet that recaptures the icons of a new spiritual sentiment, overlapping optical perception and metaphysical vision by capturing anticlassic ideas linked to Center-Italian anthropology. Among the most important themes of Carlo Dell’Amico are anonymous and silent architectures or structures evoked through composite elements of shaped canvases painted with oxides and clay. The enigma of their becoming and the geometry that define them, support the vision of “rooms” derived from observation in particular of the perspectives of Etruscan hypogea, that can be seen as ancient space generator modules. To highlight the symbol is a recurrent outline of a crushed pyramid, overlapped by  ceiling’s trusses – repeated one behind the other as the energy of a wave solidified in matter. With these works, the artist gives us the ancient space of the myth, in which the concept of threshold is constantly mined and the questioning of reality rests on the fragmentary plurality of the world.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog in Italian and English with critical texts, an illustrated chronology and a rich iconography.

Carlo Dell’Amico was born in Perugia in 1954 and has always developed a complex universe of codes and symbols, in which the recurrent presence of fragments and signs contribute to the research of a vital sense in our origin; Since the beginning of his work, for the artist the arcane looks to be unreachable just with the help of a rational side. Among the numerous and most recent personal exhibitions can be included: L’Anima che perse la memoria – Museo La Castellina, Norcia 2016; Liberata dal caos – Museo Archeologico, Terni 2012; L’Universo dell’opera – Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara 2009.

EDGARDO MANNUCCI. ORIZZONTI COSMICI
curated by Lorenzo Fiorucci

11st November 2017 > 15th January 2018

Km0 > booth A_01 at Ourselves Art Fair with works by:

Gian Luca Bianco ≥ Romana Fiechtner ≥ Heidi Holleis ≥ Gianni Moretti ≥ Andrea Mori ≥ Alice Pedroletti ≥ Fumitaka Kudo ≥ Maria Walcher ≥ Jago

11st November 2017 > 15th January 2018

MARCO WILLIAMS FAGIOLI. ABSTRACT
curated by Lorenzo Fiorucci

11st November 2017 > 15th January 2018

GIACINTO CERONE • UNA NOTA CHE NON C’E’
GIAN LUCA BIANCO and GIAN DOMENICO TROIANO • IMBILICO
MARIA WALCHER • IM NEBENZIMMER

7 June > 28 July 2017

Giacinto Cerone
Una  nota che non c’è
curated by Marco Tonelli

Km0 is pleased to introduce Giacinto Cerone. Una nota che non c’è (opening Tuesday 6 June 2017) by Marco Tonelli, essay by Marco Tonelli, interviews by Adelaide Santambrogio and Ilaria Despina Bozzi.
A selection of ceramic sculptures realized by Giacinto Cerone (Melfi 1957 – Rome 2004) from late Nineties to his premature death year are exhibited. The expositive path unwinds through approximately twenty pieces, among others the series dedicated to Vietnam rivers. Works of Giacinto Cerone (Melfi 1957 – Rome 2004) show signs of a deep restlessness. Cerone assails the substance, with swift and accurate gestures. Cuts, torsions, slashes become formal synthesis of the sculptor unbridled plastic composition. Although Cerone has deeply and passionately employed various substances (wood, metal, plaster, plexiglas, fiberglass, moplen, ceramic, marble, stone), ceramic and plaster perhaps disclose us his physicality and gestuality print. Empty geometric unfired earth blocks, prepared for him since 1993 up to his death by Davide Servadei at the Bottega Gatti of Faenza (in 1991 Cerone had already realized several ceramics in Albisola at the Ceramiche San Giorgio with Salino and Poggi and few others in 1987), submitting them to torsions, fractures, slashes, and beat them with a tube if his body wasn’t able to let them explode his rage and despair, rapture and life. His way of manipulate clay happened through removals and returns, burials and surfacing where today’s events awake and give worth to yesterday facts. In his case we can talk non so much about the autobiographic way of sculpting like a trauma, wound, laceration, but of sculpture trauma, projecting and transforming in the barren processes of making (in his characteristic way) any original dispute with substance or whatsoever existential activity. A bilingual catalog (Italian • English), published by Silvana editoriale together with the Archivio Giacinto Cerone (Rome) and Montrasio Arte, is accompanying the exhibit. A wide photographic and documentary apparatus integrates the edition.

Giacinto Cerone was born in Melfi in 1957 and prematurely died in Rome in 2004. His works are shown in numerous public collections: Galleria d’Arte Moderna Aroldo Bonzagni, Cento; Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Rome; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin; Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche of Faenza; Inpdap office in Bruxelles; Unicredit, Turin; MUSMA, Matera; MACRO, Rome.

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Gian Luca Bianco e Gian Domenico Troiano
Imbilico: Perpetua Motus Terra
curated by Adelaide Santambrogio and Ilaria Despina Bozzi 

Km0 is pleased to present Imbilico, an art project, photo and installation of Gian Luca Bianco and Gian Domenico Troiano, music by Max Bernacchia. Imbilico is a sound, is a focus on central Italy, is an inner precarious state of transition. Four times in Umbria, Gian Luca Bianco and Gian Domenico Troiano from August 2016 to January 2017 have come into close contact with the earthquake, with the natural essence of the planet: a living creature that breathes and moves. From 28 December 2016 to 4 January 2017 they embarked on a journey in the areas affected by the earthquake to make a report with the objective of maintaining high attention to a tragedy in the heart of Italy, the Center of the World. The issue of insecurity is observed from the geographical point of view, physical, emotional and intellectual, in a time extremely unstable and treacherous in many ways. An earthquake becomes the disaster capable of destroying forever a putting an area in front of itself and human responsibility, but at the same time becomes an opportunity for a new development from economic, cultural and tourism sight. Imbilico stems from deep to tell the tragedy, a consciousness, a hope. Visiting, shooting, traveling between the villages affected by the earthquake, Gian Luca Bianco and Gian Domenico Troiano had the feeling of devastation out of the ordinary, as if those areas were built for decades without considering that Italy is the most seismic country of Europe. The exhibition thus aims through images taken and processed images to inform, excite and create greater awareness about the conviction that the reconstruction can not be a reaction to the destruction but it must be a reflection of broader, through which to understand that our life is marked by the perennial coexistence with major natural disasters, such as earthquakes, and it is therefore necessary to rethink deeply the roots our life.

Gian Luca Bianco (Milan, 1977) is a director and photographer. He loves to tell stories and communicate them through images, music, words, sound and silence. He produced and directed films, documentaries, videoclips. Has organized events designed publishing platforms, created connections, took photographs, wrote subjects and formats of science and art, he is valued consultant of companies. He starred in the theater and film. He has also published a book entitled “Freeze 108”. He lived in different places of the planet, yet every day wakes up with the desire to learn and to seek beauty as if nothing had happened before.

Gian Domenico Troiano (Perugia 1989) is a photojournalist and videomaker. His training goes through a strong discipline taught by the best chefs in Europe, he has been working for years as a match head in different kitchens of the best restaurants in Europe. It develops an interest in travel and different cultures to mature the desire to leave the kitchen and devote himself to tell through the camera. Undertook long journeys in Brazil, Canary Islands, South East Asia. He has participated in several photographic festivals, he received in 2015 a Master in shooting and video editing collaborating in various short films, documentaries and videoclips.

Under the Patronage of:
Consolato Onorario d’Italia in Innsbruck
Società Dante Alighieri Innsbruck

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Maria Walcher
Im Nebenzimmer
curated by Barbara Cortina

The gallery Km0 is proud to introduce Im Nebenzimmer (opening Tuesday June 6), the first solo exhibit of the artist Maria Walcher for the Innsbruck location, curated by Barbara Cortina. Interpreted through an ironic, interdisciplinary and experimental approach, the artistic practice of Maria Walcher (Brixen, 1984) wonders tautologically on art function as communication tool, raising questions on the social, political and cultural sphere. Three particularly meaningful pieces are shown, as evinced in the chosen title for the exhibit (“in the next room”), are located in the interstitial and connecting spaces to the underground basement of Km0, playing thus not only a important complementary function, but also conceptually set at the border between theory and praxis totally respecting the artist modus operandi. The solo exhibit opens with the piece 7×4: out of order (2014). Reassuring and stimulating at the same time, the carpet is a fundamental element to transmit and preserve the cultural identity. In Im Nebenzimmer Maria Walcher shows us a carpet set on wooden blocks and re-assembled in a series of 15 tiles to build a puzzle. Far from being a simple decorative and receptive piece, 7×4: out of order turns into a sculpture that can be dismantled according to the visitors’ taste, an invitation to comparison and interaction, to exit the daily texture trying to embrace and arrange new perspective. Next comes Knoten (2015) that introduces a number of aspects interesting for the artist – oblivion, memory and relationship between past and present – plays with the knot symbol, to which the western culture has ever since attributed numerous meanings. In such case one starts from the typical popular proverb (tie a knot in the handkerchief to remember something) to delicately place emphasis on the paradox viewing, in the period of social media and obsessive pictures and witness, our historical, social and cultural memory getting increasingly ephemeral and transient. Last, the installation Agatha (shown for the first time in 2016 like public art intervention for the homonym district of Lana, a town in South Tyrol), is purposefully reconsidered for the exhibit place, almost entirely filling up the setting. Composed of three camping tents neatly arranged in rows, Agatha is a reflection on the settlement theme, on the fragile border separating the sedentary way of life from the one nomadic and precarious, public from private sphere. A sonic installation fulfils the piece and simultaneously creates a thread connecting the three pieces, evoking human presence and the space consciously lived.

Maria Walcher, born in 1984 in Brixen (Italy), has studied Public Art and New Artistic Strategies (MFA) at the Bauhaus-Universität of Weimar from 2012 to 2014 and Artistic Science and Art Education at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst of Vienna from 2004 to 2010. Her artistic practice is focused on the sociopolitical and site-specific aspect, investigated through international and trans-disciplinary collaborations, as well as public places interventions. Her work has been shown as solo and collective exhibits, workshops and artist residences at, among others, the Char-lama Depot, Sarajevo (2011), Die Färberei, Munich (2011), Kunstfest Weimar (2014), Quartair Contemporary Art Initiatives, De Haag (2014) and the Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin (2015). She currently lives and works in Innsbruck (Austria).

Martina Della Valle, Romana Fiechtner, Ines Lechleitner, Mara Novak, Bernd Oppl, Jakob Zacharias Steiner, Stefania Strouza, Nicolo’ Degiorgis • Im Dammerschlaf

curated by Michele Fucich
4.11.2016 > 8.1.2017
The collective Im Dammerschlaf, curated by Michele Fucich, is a complex and articulate meditation on the consciousness and unconscious dimensions, through works by eight young international artists. They are invited to answer with their own inner sensibility to the suggestion of the term Im Dammerschlaf. From the romanticism “Austrizitat”, this word is arrived nowadays in dentist and wikipedia web sites without losing its restless power.

Photo credits Alexandra Kaufmann

LUCIO FONTANA – EINE WELTANSCHAUUNG

The aim of the exhibition is to investigate the implicit aesthetic value to the plastic activity conducted by Lucio Fontana in the context of ceramics, considering two different historical moments. During the first phase between 1935 and ’39 in Sèvres and Albissola Marina he was inspired by still life and the animal world, combining the representation of the figural world with the strength of the magmatic material. In the second phase, which began in the postwar period, the manipulation of the ceramic maintains its organic vitality indicated by his spatialism poetics. Two different seasons, divided by the long stay in Argentina, but united by the need to keep alive the comparison with a material on which leave the sign of his own imprint, direct contact of the hand. Reflecting the poetic underlying the “spatial concepts”, many ceramics and drawings will be shown during the exhibition.

SALVATORE SCARPITTA • JOSEPH BEUYS  – ICON FOR A TRANSIT

As for Joseph Beuys (Krefeld, 1921 – Düsseldorf, 1986) so for Salvatore Scarpitta (New York, 1919-2007) their own biography has been very important in their artistic research, especially because of the experience of the Second World War that dramatically affected them, even if on opposing sides. Both artists, so energetic and multidisciplinary, mixed art with life in an attempt to change society, trying to go through the artistic inspiration beyond the material, into a world of high spiritual values. They also have in common the love of nature, the use of organic materials in their work (grease, wood, earth, pieces of felt, cotton bands), but above all the creative energy and the certainty that artistic experiences can improve human life. Beuys and Scarpitta with teaching, performances, installations and commitment to the defense of the environment and nature, designed a strongly connection between art and life, creating an anthropological and social art. The two free-spirited and unconventional artists brought art out of the galleries and museums, to place it in the middle of the nature, in a distant island, in a city park in a garage workshop, on a racetrack where people could interact and be involved with the new energy they created.

OCTOBER 3rd 2015 OPENING

During the Long Night of the Museums in Innsbruck, Km0 will remain open until 24.00.
The new exhibiton appointment of Km0 will open with four different shows, starting with an exhibition that highlights the early works and installationsby Dennis Oppenheim, followed by the tactile canvases of the italian artist FrancoBemporad, then plunging into Japanese modernism with a sitespecific installation of the young architect Hiroyuki Shinozaki, in coperation with the artists and Fumitaka Ayumi Kudo. Finally ending with the exhibition of precious art books by Ed Ruscha. In the course of this special event, Km0 will have the pleasure of welcoming you, to join us with a cooking show completely dedicated to the best Italian food and wine. The curators of the exhibition will be present and will have the pleasure to guide you to through the exhibitions.

DENNIS OPPENHEIM – Early works and installations

Dennis Oppenheim, one of the leading exponents of contemporary art. Oppenheim is the protagonist for the solo show in the main exhibition room. On display will be presented 15 works, created between 1968 and 1998,creating a focus on the period between the Sixties and Seventies. These are the artist works that the American artist focused on land art and body art, the movements of which Oppenheim is considered pioneer. The exhibiton shows two important key works of this creative phase, Ground System 1967 and Branded Mountain 1969, art works in which the synthesis of the research is shown at its hight. Also displayed aresome of his most recent projects, including Digestion 1989 and Wall Piece 1990. Dennis Oppenheim (Electric City, 1938 – New York 2011) with Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Vito Acconci, Robert Morris and Gunther Uecker, are all part of the generation of artists, that contributed significantly to renew the idea and language ​​of contemporary art.

THANKS TO LUIGI GHIRRI & ITALIAN EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHY

Thanks to Luigi Ghirri, exhibiting Atlas (1973 • 1974)  a pivotal moment in Luigi Ghirri work and another series of images strongly representative of his approach to both the world and photography, puts forward a presentation of his work. The project in exhibition goes even further proposing an overview of the inheritance left to a new generation closer to his sensibilities and working on a new definition of photography. The photographers gathered here, regardless of their different experiences all have in common a vision that recalls the teachings of Ghirri, such as freedom of intent and of expressive means, ‘magnetic’ attention to apparently banal things. Inanimate places and objects become the focus of attention, praising the ordinary which transform the city into a theatrical stage. Ottavia Castellina reinvents past places borrowed from the memories of a stranger; Margherita Cesaretti creates a herbarium resulting of an hybridization technique; the backyards of Alessandro Imbriaco become archetypes of hypothetical domestic dramas; the enchanted mountains of Claudia Pozzoli, solitary and impressive, stand as metaphors; through a strong poetic Susanna Pozzoli suspends the images above the reality between fiction and memory.

FRANCO BEMPORAD – Dot.Dot

DOT.DOT is the perfect example of visual research done by Franco Bemporad (1926 – 1989), which developed from the organization of color in endless sequences of points. In the late fifties, when the Florentine artist abandoned his studies of medicine and psychology to apply first to the cinema and then later changing his focus to painting, he introduces in his works an alphabet of signs, composed of a sequence of brush strokes, that follow each other rhythmically, in superimposed rows. The visual stories, such as the ones created by pictorial writing, where a “tone on tone” and contrasting colors are continuously alternating. Colors were also applied directly from the tube, taking advantage of the circular shape in order to obtain that repetative point of texture, in relief and perfectly aligned. This repetitive method Bemporad uses, abolishes all personal and emotional components that can be formed from his work. The elementary signs, strokes or points, structure the surface, creating subtle vibrations of light. As stated by the artist in 1971, he was aiming at creating a methodological structure of impersonal signs and to transmit visual and tactile sensations as well, in which the materia of the painting vibrates and gets into colors. In 1957 the artist joined to the “Movimento Nucleare” by signing the manifesto “Contro lo Stile.” Later, from 1961 onward, Bemporad joined the group ‘Continuità‘, with Lucio Fontana, Piero Dorazio, Gastone Novelli, Achille Perilli, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Giulio Turcato.

ED RUSCHA – Artist books

In 1963, Ed Ruscha published his first art book Twentysix Gasoline Stations. Inspired by the bookstallshe saw during his trip trough Europe, the volume proposes twenty-six photographs of gas stations on the famous Route 66. Ed Ruscha photographed each gas station while traveling the route from west to east, starting from Los Angeles, the city where the artist moved, to Oklahoma City, the city where he grew up. Only in the sixties, and later again during the eighties, the book captures the deserved recognition as the first modern artist’s book. Subsequently, Ruscha published Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), Nine Swimming Pools, Broken Glass (1968), and Real Estate Opportunities (1970). Born in Nebraska in 1937, Edward Ruscha begain showing an interest in art as a young man. After graduation, he started to work as a pager for an adversiting agency in Los Angeles. In the early 1960s he was already known for his paintings, collages and photographs. From 1965 to 1969, Ruscha worked as a pager for the magazine “Artforum” under the pseudonym “Eddie Russia”. In 1973 he opened is first solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York.

HIROYUKI SHINOZAKI featuring AYUMI AND FUMITAKA KUDO – Home in House

For the first time in Austria, the studio Hiroyuki Shinozaki Architects presents Home in House, where the fields of design, architecture and contemporary art are placed in dialogue with each other through artistic productions related to the Japanese culture. The Japanese architect Shinozaki exposes an installation created with about 3,000 tablets of white ash, with a thickness of 12mm. The work was created by the overlapping of building models previously designed by the studio Shinozaki, and presented in scale of 1/1 to 1/20. The installation, which takes up the entire project room of the gallery, continues with the research of the architect on the housing units – overcoming the individuality of housing structured in their unique environments – offering visitors a total experience of the architectural process and composition. The installation of Shinozaki is flanked by art works, and sculptures, by Fumitaka and Ayumi Kudo focused on japanese culture.

FEBRUARY 14TH 2015 OPENING

Km0 proposes a new series of exhibitions dedicated to Albers, Ballocco and Bill; Gillo Dorfles; Anselmo Francesconi; Ruggero Asnago and Tonylight. Gianni Moretti´s exhibition Notturlabio has been extended.
Gillo Dorfles, important personality of the contemporary artistic research, art critic and philosopher who strongly influenced the Italian art of the 20th Century, is presented through his works from MAC up to the present day. The exhibition, dedicated to Albers, Ballocco and Bill, shows their researches on colour and perception, while Anselmo Francesconi is hosted with his sculptures. The works of the artist and illustrator Ruggero Asnago are displayed in the project room together with the light installation of Tonylight. The curators will be present and glad to guide you personally through the different exhibitions to discover the artists and their works. The opening of Ruggero Asnago,Tonylight – Materiale infiammabile will be accompanied by Tonylight´s music performance 8 bit.

JOSEF ALBERS • MARIO BALLOCCO • MAX BILL. Malerei als Wissenschaft

Painters of precision, the German Josef Albers (1888-1976), the Swiss Max Bill (1908-1994) and the Italian Mario Ballocco (1913-2008) are related by strong affinities, which reveal the particular not extrinsic nature of this selection. Albers taught at the Bauhaus and focused on the perception of colours and forms, certainly inspiring Max Bill, one of the main protagonists of the international abstract art, who started already from the thirties and quoted the famous “homage to the square” of the German artist in a late series of works. Both anticipate the Op Art and become point of references for Ballocco, who in turn has to be numbered among the precursors of this movement (and, not by chance, he prefers the squared size, as “it allows avoiding visual aggregations and repetitions”). For them, like in Leonardo´s case, painting is “science”, that is to say knowledge and research on reality, namely on perception. Extending the artist´s role asan operator of expression and visual communication, with significant influences on society, in terms of attention to practical functionality and use, to educational attitude without looking for a spectacular result in itself but rather pursuing a strict precision… yes, Albers, Bill, Ballocco (Italian but somehow an atypical one) are a perfect trio, which is ideally brought back together with this exhibition.

GILLO DORFLES. Immagini di un mondo parallelo

The exhibition curated by Luigi Sansone presents Gillo Dorfles’ paintings from MAC up to the present day. His cross disciplinary research will be presented through fifty works and art books. Gillo Dorfles, born in 1910 in Trieste, is one of the most versatile artists in the contemporary art and culture scene. After graduating in medicine and specializing in psychiatry, he becomes a painter, founds with Bruno Munari, Atanasio Soldati and Gianni Monnet the MAC (Movement for Concrete Art) taking the role of critic and theorist of the group. The MAC is for a “concrete” and geometric abstract art. Between the end of the Forties and the Fifties, he participates in several exhibitions in Italy and abroad. In 1949 he holds an exhibition at the Bookstore Salto in Milan. Since 1950 he has taken part to various group exhibitions, among which the one in 1951 at the Gallery Bompiani in Milan, the traveling exhibition in 1952 in Chile and Argentina and the big exhibition Esperimenti di sintesi delle arti held in 1955 at the Gallery del Fiore in Milan. His relentless artistic and painting research is accompanied by a challenging activity of art critic; he studies and teaches aesthetics at the universities in Trieste, Milan and Cagliari. Among his books: Il divenire delle arti (1959), Nuovi riti nuovi miti (1965), Le oscillazioni del gusto (1970), Il Kitsch. Antologia del cattivo gusto (1972), L’intervallo perduto (2006), Horror Pleni, La (in)civiltà del rumore (2008), Conformisti (2009) e Fatti e Fattoidi (2009). Two of his books are devoted to architecture: Barocco nell’architettura moderna (1951) and L’architettura moderna (1956); he published also monographs about some artists like Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer and Antonio Scialoja. In 1963 he wrote the essay Il disegno industriale e la sua estetica. He received several awards like the Compasso d’Oro (Golden Compass) hosted by the dall’Associazione per il Design Industriale (ADI), the Gold Medal of the Triennale, the International Critic Award of Girona, the Franklin J. Matchette Prize for Aesthetics. He is Honorary Academic Member of Brera, member of the Academy of Design in Mexico City, Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, Doctor Honoris Causa at the Polytechnic University of Milan and at the Autonomous University of Mexico City. He was awarded with the Ambrogino d’Oro by the city of Milan, with the Grifo d’Oro by the city of Genoa and by the San Giusto d´Oro by the city of Trieste. In April 2007 ha was awarded with the Honorary Degree in Architecture by the University of Palermo. A monographic catalogue will be presented during his exhibition.

ANSELMO FRANCESCONI. Opere 1955 – 1965

The exhibition focuses on the sculptures showing works, which represent well the research carried by Francesconi during his artistic career. Born in 1921 in Lugo di Ravenna, Anselmo Francesconi studied painting at the Academy of Bologna and after the Second World War at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan where he graduated in painting with Aldo Carpi and in sculpture with Marino Marini in 1950. After a journey in Spain where he studied the Iberian sculpture, he moved to Paris where he devoted himself exclusively to sculpture. The themes of mother and maternity, eternal symbol of ever changing life, dominate the first period of his production (bronzes 1948 – 1955). Since 1955 he lived between Paris and the island of Panarea. The discovery of this wonderful pristine landscape and its local volcanic stone are a turning point for Anselmo´s creative research. This stone contains a primordial energy that the artist releases by revealing its own form. This experience changes his approach to creation. When he goes back to clay, the form is more free and the difference between figurative and abstract vanishes. Releasing the form, Anselmo starts to explore the limits of the volume, reducing it to the two-dimensional (1959-61) but he regains soon the full volume (1961-68). Between 1959 and 1962 he worked on a wide production of drawings and sketches which will be turned into sculpture during the Eighties. Between 1954 and 1964 he held important exhibitions in New York, Paris and Geneva achieving both public and critical acclaim. In 1965 he participated in an international painting exhibition in Teheran that commemorated the Armenian genocide. Afterwards Anselmo worked on a painting series, exhibited in Switzerland, at the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne. Once again in Switzerland he realizes the glass windows of the church in Grangette and later the wall paintings of the church of Chapelle Sur Oron. Until the mid-80´s, he continued with his exhibitions, showing mostly his paintings. In 1988 he held an extensive solo exhibition in Ravenna and at the Museum Bulle in Switzerland with an anthological catalogue curated by Giorgio Seveso. From 1996 to 2004, year of his death, Anselmo Francesconi lived and worked in Milan.

RUGGERO ASNAGO • TONYLIGHT – Materiale infiammabile

The exhibition Materiale infiammabile gathers drawings and sketches of the artist Ruggero Asnago, realized since 2011 between Milan, Berlin and Lisbon. Asnago´s works are characterized by the rigorous and lean monochrome of red-black-white and by the minimalism of their composition. Asnago uses recycled paper as a support, felt-tip pens as a mean of expression and the silk-screen printing as a medium. The exhibited works are divided in two series and five unreleased pieces. One Night Drawings consists of 26 small drawings by felt-tip pens, made overnight during an artistic happening in a mansard in Berlin. These drawings tell so many stories as the representations which are inspired by the context and by the imaginary world of the artist. Materiale infiammabile shows 9 old silk-screen frames covered at the back by parquet slats which contain inside some pages of this art book. The drawings nailed down on the board are the distinctive trait of the artist style. Through a hectic nomadism which tends to a continuous research, Asnago creates works of primitive and instinctive features. On this occasion, he presents five huge unreleased pieces. Ruggero Asnago´s works are accompanied by the installation With Piero Manzoni in Warsaw by Tonylight, made in 2014 and exhibited now at Km0. The sculpture – inspired by the opposition between Order and Chaos and the idea of freedom – is constituted by 392 rgb leds. The light sequence, generated by switching the work on, goes from an initial state of order to a progressive disorder due to the natural stream distribution insidethe installation until it regains its original homogeneity in small groups, like microorganisms, which interact with each other in a circuit that is not programmable but naturally induced by the artist during the creation. A performance of 8 bit experimental music, curated by Tonylight, will be presented at the opening through some self-made electronic instruments, game boy and pocket-sized tools according to a DIY – do it yourself – attitude that the two artists have in common. The exhibition is accompanied by the art book Materiale infiammabile created in collaboration with STRANEDIZIONI. Printed and bound entirely by hand, in silk-screen printing, this art book has been produced in 115 copies in three colours with critic comments.

GIANNI MORETTI. Notturlabio – extended

«Nocturnal (or nocturlabe) [from the Latin. nocturlabium, compound word of “nocturnus” and (astro)labium “astrolabe”]. Old astronomical and naval instrument, called also nocturlabe and nocturnal, used to measure the height of the Pole star to the horizon and then the latitude, which corresponds to this height; a particular model, called also  “horologium nocturnum” could measure time basing on the relative positions of some circumpolar stars (visible all night long) to the Pole star, as indicated on the picture, and it was still employed during the 18th century» (Dictionary of the Physical Sciences, 1996). Like the nocturnal, this ancient instrument which operates through measurement attempts in low visibility (at night), Gianni Moretti´s works, apply the same method, approaching something difficult to define and enlightening this accordingly. Moretti´s works, even when they are not the Esercizi, try to define, always through a wide margin of risk, not only the approach but also the reached form in itself. The exhibited works, one of the most significant selection from the last years, are perfectly located in the project room of the gallery with its black walls and black floor which ideally recall the night where they give to the visitors some necessary orientation hints and references.
Catalogue Umberto Allemandi &C. • Km0
Texts by Raffaele Bedarida, Mario Codognato, Adelaide Santambrogio