NEWS


News november 2023

Exhibition

PRINT READY DRAWINGS

Schindler House, Los Angeles, Nov.11/2023 – Feb. 4/2024

Guest curator: Sarah Hearne

 

 

The exhibition features prints as well as reproductions, esploring a history of architecture authorship not via singular authors but through an examination and display of the materials, supplies and techniques of drawing production.  A digital  version of Gianni Pettena’s film Intens. Architectural Project  will be playing in loop on a monitor placed in a central position.

News february 2023

‘salle principale’ Gallery, Paris

11/02 – 25/03

 

Group show (after Koyaanisqatsi)

a cura di/curator Emile Ourounov

 

Patrick Bouchain / Dominique Mathieu / Gianni Pettena 

Matthieu Saladin/ les gens d’Uterpan / Lois Weiberger/ Zapatists

 

  

The title of the exhibition refers  to the eponymous  experimental movie from the early  1980s, considered as an example of ‘eco-cinema’ because it only shows images of different environments, both natural and urban, for more than an hour, only accompanied by Philip Glass music. The relationship with the environment is in fact a subject present in the works of all the artists on show. though  tackled  in different ways  For Gianni Pettena, among the many possible examples , the curator selected works such as ‘Thames tide’ and ‘Clay house’ where the subject is  presented as a projectual strategy.

 

News November 2022

from 21 / 10 / 2022  to  29 / 01 / 2023

 

At the Jeu de Paume in Paris is now on the exhibition

 

RENVERSER SES JEUX

Autour de l’arte povera 1960-1975:

photographie, film, video

 

On show are works of the most important ‘arte povera’ artists , such as Boetti and De Dominicis,  Kounellis and Merz , Mattiacci and Pistoletto, in dialogue with other avant-garde artists of those years in Italy using photography, film or videos, media not often used in the arte povera movement.

 

 Gianni Pettena, in such confrontation, exhibits CARABINIERI (1968), LAUNDRY (1968)

11/ 12 NOVEMBRE 2022

CASA CRESPI, MILANO

NOVEMBER 11/ 12 2022

CASA CRESPI, MILAN

 

TEN WORKS BY THE MOST CELEBRATED ITALIAN DESIGNERS

 

 At Casa Crespi, historical prestigious 17th century residence,

fully restored in the 1920s by architect Piero Portaluppi, are on

exhibit 10 works by some of the most  celebrated Italian

designers such as Ettore Sottsass, Gio Ponti, Nanda Vigo,

Melchiorre Bega, Gianni Pettena, Gae Aulenti, Ugo La Pietra,

Luciano Bertoncini.

 

Gianni Pettena’s “Rumble Sofa” (1967) is on exhibit.

 

 

 


News January 2021

Solo Exhibition

GIANNI PETTENA

“Forgiven by Nature”

Fondation Hermès

La Verrière/ISELP, Bruxelles

January 15 – March 13, 2021

Gianni Pettena, invited within the cycle “Matters of Concern/Matières à penser”, for his first exhibition in Belgium, proposes a project in two parts. 

At La Verrière a selection of objects, models, photos, drawings. documents, videos, installations shows in all evidence the generous and hybrid activity of the artist and this allows to understand his far-reaching attitude, at the same time idealistic and playful, open also to humour and subversion, as well as to a rigorous analytical thinking..

Just a few meters from La Verrière a big installation is built in the space of the ISELP (Institut Supérieur pour l'Étude du Langage Plastique).  

This work, Paper/Midwestern Ocean, fills the exhibition space with white paper stripes which must be cut with scissors to create paths and find one’s space.  

First conceived in 1971 as a collective experiment for a lecture at an American university, this ‘penetrable’ installation proposes an overturning of the architectural experience because it makes invisible the inside of the building before getting it back by means of an anonimous use, independent from the ideas of others.

(Guillame Désanges)

Group Exhibition

“L’usage des richesses”

 

 Galerie ‘salle principale’, Paris

January 24  – March 20, 2021

The title of the exhibition "L’usage des richesses" (The Use of Wealth), comes from Georges Bataille, whose ideas on this topic are illustrated by Dominique Mathieu in the essay presenting the exhibition.  So, if it cannot be denied “the fact that the commercial value of the artwork remains, from a capitalistic point of view, higher than its value in use”,  Bataille says that “the sun gives without ever receiving” and that art is “The Gift”. Then, once that the basic needs of survival and production have been met, this allows us to assume and spend surplus energy "for nothing".  All  the works on show prove that “tribute must be paid to the unproductive expenditure of art and the “loss-making pleasure” that accompanies it.  Therefore, for art, it can be said that it’s “the crazy energy that sometimes leads us to experience things that are “pointless”, that it can be “an endeavour to pay tribute to the omnipotence of Nature, which our civilisation has the almost structural desire to constantly oppose”, that ” It is a key that opens the doors of excessiveness, ushering in new perspectives that have no productive goals but are open to every possible outcome.”

 

ArtistsBéatrice Balcou, Patrick Bouchain, Ícaro Lira, Dominique Mathieu, Marianne Mispelaëre, Gianni Pettena, The Play, Matthieu Saladin, Endre Tót, les gens d’Uterpan, Lois Weinberger, Zapatistes.


New monograph,  September 2020.

Pubblicato da Gianni Pettena su Lunedì 21 settembre 2020

Nuova monografia uscita nel settembre 2020.

Pubblicato da Gianni Pettena su Lunedì 21 settembre 2020

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Parades for FIAC

Parades for FIAC

Gianni Pettena | Wearable Chairs, 1971

performance | Thursday 17 & Saturday 19 October | 1 - 3 p.m.

 

departure 1 p.m. from galerie Salle Principale towards Avenue Winston Churchill at 2:15 p.m.

 

https://www.fiac.com/en/fiac-programmes/performances/gianni-pettena1/


Gianni Pettena is a major figure of radical Italian architecture of the 1960s and 70s. An artist, architect, designer, professor, critic and historian of architecture, he defines himself first and foremost as an “an-architect”. He has contributed to redefining the discipline of architecture, characterising his approach through his use of artistic processes such as performance and installation. The performance Wearable Chairs consists in an urban procession of a group of young people, each wearing a folding chair strapped to their backs. Walking in single file through the city, the group stops periodically to discuss their future as a group. This performance was first activated in Minneapolis in 1971 by the students of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. The version presented during FIAC is performed by the students of the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture de Versailles.   

 

salle principale | la galerie

28, rue de Thionville

75019 Paris


Gianni Pettena - Maison de l’Architecture, Ile-de France, Paris

Gianni Pettena, "Contribution", Rennes, 2008
Gianni Pettena, "Contribution", Rennes, 2008

PARIS

October 15, 2019

Maison de l’Architecture,Ile-deFrance,

7pm to 9pm

 

GIANNI PETTENA

TEXT ART ARCHITECTURE

Inaugural session of the monthly seminar

Through the lines: variations on the textual space

OCTOBER 2019 – JUNE 2020

 

The seminar proposes to reflect on the relationships between literature and architecture. The book as an inhabited space, as well as the architecture  to be discovered by words, involve overlapping theoretical, poetic and technical thoughts: both disciplines  share the notion of space. This  cycle of nine debates aims  to develop a transversal thinking, by involving several fields: architecture, philosophy, literature, visual and graphic arts.


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DESIGN FROM THE ALPS 100 ANNI DI DESIGN dal CUORE DELLE ALPI

Meran, building Cassa di Risparmio, Portici 163

11 October 2019 - 12 January 2020

A production by Kunst Meran/Merano Arte with NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, and Free University of Bolzano.

Curators: Claudio Larcher, Massimo Martignoni, Ursula Schnitzer

 

Design from the Alps is the first comprehensive exploration of the production and development of modern design in this dynamic transnational Alpine region. An astonishing openness towards the most progressive trends of modernity, an unexpected laboratory for technical-formal explorations was created. The amply illustrated book traces the many protagonist on this highly productive scene and into the multifaceted world of design of this region in the heart of Europe. 

 

On Exhibition:

Carlo Abarth, Reinhold Adolf, Giulio Apollonio, Arge 2, Monica Armani, Luciano Baldessari, Baldessari e Baldessari, Christian Bartenbach, Othmar Barth, Franz Baumann, Ernst Beranek, Sergio Berizzi, Walter Bosse, Cesare Butté, Achille Castiglione, Daniel De Biasi, Roman Delugan (Delugan Meissl Architects), Marco Dessì, Fortunato Depero, Dante Donegani, William D’Alessandro, Ellinor Hirschfeld Mack Delugan, Werner Hölbl, Ulrich Dumpf, Jan Ebenspacher, Emo Henrich, Robert Fliri, Hans Fritz, Martino Gamper, Michelangelo Perghem Gelmi, Sergio Giovanazzi, Konstantin Grcic, Matthias Gruber, Anton Hofer, Clemens Holzmeister, Peter Huta, Oliver Irschitz, Marcello Jori, Georg Juen, Steffen Kaz, Moritz Kessler, Giovanni Lauda, Giovanni Lorenzi, Lupo Burtscher, Nina Mair, Sebastian Mariner, Miki Martinek, Maurizio Martinelli, Giancarlo Maroni, Luca Martorano, Miyuca Studio, Siegfried Mazagg, Angelo Mazzoni, Dario Montagni, MM Design, Oswald Oberhuber, Helmuth Ohnmacht, Gianni Pettena, Arrigo Perini, Giuseppe Perini, Walter Pichler, Giorgio Piccolzuaz, Reinhard Plank, Ezra Pound, Gino Pollini, Giò Ponti, Nikolaus Prachensky, Kuno Prey, Ernesto Prinoth, Rolf Eugen Rehfeld, Armando Ronca, Riccardo Schweizer, Guido Segalla, Benno Simma, Ettore Sottsass junior, Ettore Sottsass senior, Harry Thaler, Afra & Tobia Scarpa, Arno Schneider, Julius Schneider, Wilhelm Stigler, Rudolf Stieg, Erwin Stricker, Danilo Sylvestrin, Sebastiano Tonelli, Matteo Thun, Lois Welzenbacher, Giorgio Wenter Marini, Hans Peter Zangerl, Christian Zanzotti, Marco Zanini, Zilla, Josef Zotti u.a. 

 

www.kunstmeranoarte.org

Gianni Pettena, "Lamps" (1966) e "Rumble Sofa" (1967)
Gianni Pettena, "Lamps" (1966) e "Rumble Sofa" (1967)
Gianni Pettena, movie "The Pig "Carosello Italiano", 1967-68
Gianni Pettena, movie "The Pig "Carosello Italiano", 1967-68

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COLIN / Costellazioni Familiari Dialoghi sulla Libertà

 

EXHIBITION curated by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle

 

PARMA

Palazzo del Governatore 

Piazza Garibaldi 19

 

September 27-December 1 2019

OPENING

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

at 6.30 p.m.



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Campo Umano

Gianni Pettena, "Campo Urbano", Como 1969.
Gianni Pettena, "Campo Urbano", Como 1969.

Campo Umano - Public Art 50 years after

Curated by Luca Cerizza and Zasha Colah

Conference:

21 - 22 September 2019

Villa Olmo (via Simone Cantoni 1, Como)

Exhibition

Opening: 21 September 2019, 7pm

21 September - 26 October 2019

borgovico33 (via Borgo Vico 33, Como)

 

http://www.fondazioneratti.org/news/322/campo_umano_-_arte_pubblica_50_anni_dopo

 

From its title, the project addresses Campo Urbano, the art-event curated by Luciano Caramel that occupied the public spaces of the Italian town of Como for one day on 21 September 1969 with a number of artistic ephemeral interventions; often disorienting for Como’s residents and local press. 

Conceived as a two-day conference and an exhibition, Campo Umano - Public Art 50 years after, celebrates the 50th anniversary of that exhibition-event, reconsidering its merits and failures in its wider historical and artistic context.
The presentations on Saturday are devoted to public art events that took place between the late 60s and early 70s (Alessandra Acocella, Luca Cerizza, Alessandra Pioselli, Francesco Tedeschi, and Tommaso Trini), and an in-depth focus on Campo Urbano through the testimony of many of its protagonists (Giuliano Collina, Mario Di Salvo, Ugo La Pietra, Gianni Pettena, Franca Sacchi, and Grazia Varisco). 


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La morale dei singoli

curated by Andrea Viliani

setting Mario Cucinella Architects

Parco Archeologico di Pompei, Palestra Grande

June 15th 2019 – December 2019

Opening, June 14th 2019, 6 pm

Gianni Pettena, Human Wall (2012/2017/2019)
Gianni Pettena, Human Wall (2012/2017/2019)

As the title itself suggests, the exhibition deals with the subject of  the ethics of each person when related to other individuals and, as a consequence, the responsibility of each one towards society for what concerns the making of a common sensibility.  In the show the subject is interpreted by 31 well-known national and international artists whose works are on exhibit in a location such as Pompei which suggests ideas of ceaseless transformation and discovery of objects, in this case contemporary, thus telling the history of a community.

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Occupations

salle principale Gallery

la galerie 28, rue de Thionville, Paris

Occupations  

February 15 - April 27, 2019

Opening February 14, 6 pm

Gianni Pettena, Espace vide reservé à Gianni Pettena. 1973/2018.
Gianni Pettena, Espace vide reservé à Gianni Pettena. 1973/2018.

 

Claude  Closky, Dominique Mathieu, Marianne Mispelaëre, Hans-Walter Müller, Gianni Pettena, Matthieu Saladin, les gens d'Uterpan, Lois Weinberger  

 

 

Each with its own approach and subject, the works of the eight artists on exhibit at the Salle Principale gallery share a common field of investigation, that of the political challenge coming from space constraints. Each in its own way, they give out, negotiate with, penetrate, occupy, free or comment on a space, be it urban, architectonic, memorial, advertising, technological or scientific, in its different aspects, either public or private.

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SCHENGEN BAROQUE PASOLINI

curated by

Pierre-Alexander Mateus, Charles Teyssou

 

Chiesa di San Paolo Converso, Piazza S.Eufemia, Milan

January 10 - February 16, 2019

Opening, January 10, 6 pm

 

Armature Globale/Michel Auder/James  Bridle/Lili Reynaud Dewar/Paul-Alexandre Islas/Ken Lum/Gianni Pettena

Gianni Pettena, Uno Spazio per Pierre (2011-2019)
Gianni Pettena, Uno Spazio per Pierre (2011-2019)

 

The exhibition takes its lead from the baroque space of the church of San Paolo Converso.  It speaks therefore of Baroque and its evolution as well as of a new contemporary idea of Baroque and a concept of modern conversion/transformation as imagined by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his never realized movie on the conversion of Saint Paul.

Conversion as change in forms, ideologies and behaviors of society and the body.

Gianni Pettena’s reaction to the baroque environment are the proportions of ‘sezione aurea’.

 

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TUTTO Perspectives on Italian Art

Museion, Bozen,  October  13th  2018 –March  24th  2019 

Sammlung Goetz, München,  June 2019 – November 2019

 

Curated by:  Ingvild Goetz, Leo Lencsés, Karsten Löckermann, Letizia Ragaglia, Elena Re

 

ArtistsCarla Accardi / Alighiero Boetti / Agostino Bonalumi / Enrico Castellani / Dadamaino / Lucio Fontana / Piero Manzoni / Fabio Mauri / Michelangelo Pistoletto / Salvatore Scarpitta / Paolo Scheggi / Mario Schifano / Vincenzo Agnetti / Giovanni Anselmo / Giorgio Ciam / Giuseppe Desiato / Luciano Fabro / Luigi Ghirri / Marcello Jori / Ketty La Rocca / Elio Mariani / Plinio Martelli / Ugo Nespolo / Germano Olivotto / Giulio Paolini / Giuseppe Penone / Gianni Pettena / Michele Zaza / Nanni Balestrini / Gianfranco Baruchello / Emilio Isgrò / Arrigo Lora-Totino / Maurizio Nannucci / Claudio Parmiggiani / Franco Vaccari / Emilio Villa / Giuseppe Chiari / Luciano Caruso / Stelio Maria Martini  

 

The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Munchen Sammlung Goetz and Bozen Museion collections  and features a wide selection of Italian artworks after 1950. The dialogue between the two collections clearly outlines, by means of outstanding painting and photo works, the fundamental trends of Italian art generated from the artistic re-birth which started after the Second World War.


Gianni Pettena, Io sono la Spia, Milan 1973.
Gianni Pettena, Io sono la Spia, Milan 1973.

Copertina di 'Casabella', n. 377, Maggio 1977.
Cover of 'Casabella', n. 377, May 1977.

Gianni Pettena, L'Anarchitetto, Guaraldi, Firenze 1973.
Gianni Pettena, L'Anarchitetto, Guaraldi, Florence 1973.






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Art&TheCity / Chi Utopia mangia le mele

conceived by Adriana Polveroni

curated by Adriana Polveroni and Gabriele Tosi  

 

Corte Dogana 2, Verona

October 12th-December 2nd 2018

opening October 12th, 7.30 pm

 

The artists: Nanni Balestrini, Maurizio Cattelan, Cristian Chironi, Danilo Correale, Vittorio Corsini, Cuoghi Corsello, Gino De Dominicis, Ceal Floyer, Claire Fontaine, Cyprien Gaillard, Andrea Galvani, Carlos Garaicoa, Christian Jankowski, Thomas Kuijpers, Ugo La Pietra, Maria Lai, Lisa Dalfino e Sacha Kanah, Robin Hewlett e Ben Kinsley, Glenn Ligon, Davide Mancini Zanchi, Masbedo, Elena Mazzi, Adrián Melis Sosa, Luciano Ori, Adrian Paci, Gina Pane, Pino Pascali, Beatrice Pediconi, Diego Perrone, Gianni Pettena, Paola Pivi, Andrea Santarlasci, Tomás Saraceno, Marinella Senatore, Stefano Serretta, Caterina Erica Shanta, Mauro Staccioli, Kyle Thompson, Piotr Uklansky, Ben Vautier, Vedovamazzei.

 

Being Utopia the subject of the 2018 edition of ArtVerona, the exhibition Chi utopia mangia le mele (Those who utopia eat apples) takes its start from this, a topic which belongs to the structure itself of the artworld and affects all its disciplines.  Historical artists are exhibited together with young ones in a selection of works from the Sixties till today which includes photography, installation, painting, sound and sculpture.  New productions are presented as well as re-makings of ‘historical’ works such as Una domenica a Rivara (1992), the large bedsheet, early work of a young Maurizio Cattelan, and Tumbleweeds Catcher by Gianni Pettena , one of his best known and most symbolic works, built for the first time in Salt Lake City in 1972.  This imposing, 8-meters-high installation, never seen before in Europe, is built here in a quite different environment thus assuming other, new meanings.


Gianni Pettena, Tumbleweeds Catcher, Salt Lake City 1972.
Gianni Pettena, Tumbleweeds Catcher, Salt Lake City 1972.
Gianni Pettena, Verona 2018.
Gianni Pettena, Verona 2018.


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Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966-1976

Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966–1976. Installation view, 2018  Credit(s) © CCA
Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966–1976. Installation view, 2018 Credit(s) © CCA

Exhibition Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966-1976  at CCA, Montreal
(Canadian Centre for Architecture - Montreal) till October, 7 2018. 

Curated by Pino Brugellis, Gianni Pettena and Alberto Salvadori.

 

Press release - Installations views - Audio introduction - Opening Conversations:

CCA WEB SITE


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The Biennale Gherdëina VI


Gianni Pettena, Rebreathing architecture
Gianni Pettena, Rebreathing architecture
Gianni Pettena, Poiesis
Gianni Pettena, Poiesis

curated by Adam Budak    

 

Artists: Mariana Castillo Deball, Claudia Comte, Alessandro De Francesco, Alicja Kwade, Sissa Micheli, Štefan Papčo, Giuseppe Penone, Simon Perathoner, Gianni Pettena, Agnieszka Polska, Jiří Příhoda, Gregor Prugger, Mathilde Rosier, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Fabien Vallos, Nico Vascellari, Franz West.   

Press conference: 21.06.2018 at 11, Hotel Adler, Ortisei, Italy

Vernissage: 23.06.2018 at 17.30 Col de Flam, Ortisei, Italy

Performances by: Alessandro De Francesco, Sissa Micheli, Gianni Pettena, Mathilde Rosier, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Nico Vascellari.

 

Agenda:

· Saturday, 23rd June 2018 at 17.30 opening party with performances and cocktail, Col de Flam and pedestrian precinct, Ortisei.

· Sunday, 24th June at 16.00 at Antonius square with a lecture by Gianni Pettena and Ulrike Kindl, and a panel discussion with the artists.

 

For more information info@biennalegherdeina.it +39 366 1500 243

 

"WRITING THE MOUNTAINSis a poetic proposition; here, in what may be considered an act of learning from the mountains, (the language of) poetry is a score for a collection of artistic utterances that celebrate the site and its sublime intensity. Poetic narrative Überwasserby Alessandro De Francesco, commissioned for the Biennale is a manifesto of an “intimate immensity” of the Dolomites: a series of sensual tableaux that along with a lexicon of the nature’s elemental language provide a prototype for WRITING THE MOUNTAINS multiple scenarios. 

The exhibition considers the biotope of the mountains as a ritual in flux, archetypal and ever changing, redrafted and transcribed, over and over anew, both mystical and real, simultaneously sublime and mundane, an articulation of a desire, woven of legends, myths and everyday dreams."

Adam Budak

 


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Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge

The Second Yinchuan Biennale

Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge

June 9–September 19, 2018

Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan

Yinchuan, China

www.moca-yinchuan.com

 

The MOCA Yinchuan is the first contemporary art museum in North-Western China. The city of Yinchuan (Ningxia region) lies below the Gobi Desert and above the Yellow River. The routes leading to the city were once those of the Silk Road. Yinchuan was the last station on the silk road. Here, where the desert ends amidst the countryside, diverse eco-systems encountered one another and stratified, serving as guarantors of biodiversity. It is a place of encounter of the nomadic and the stationary, shepherds and farmers, minorities of various origins, smooth spaces and striated fields, immaterial and material cultures. 

The Second Yinchuan Biennale, under the artistic directorship of Marco Scotini, will be staged not only along the 15,000 square meters of the contemporary art museum, but will also exploit the Hui Nongqu Eco-Park and the International Artists Village. Much space will be given over to the issue of ecology and agriculture, another to that of alternative education and the book as paradigm; and yet another still to the coexistence of minorities.

Among the many international artists involved, Gianni Pettena will exhibit images of the series “About non conscious architecture” (1972-73), a research theme of his work that most clearly fits within the range of subjects explored by the exhibition.    

Le permis de penser (Licence to think)

Io sono la spia (I am the spy) - Milan 1973. Members of Global Tools brought together by "Casabella" magazine.
Io sono la spia (I am the spy) - Milan 1973. Members of Global Tools brought together by "Casabella" magazine.

GIANNI PETTENA

Le permis de penser  (Licence to think)

Gallery Salle Principale, Paris

March 3 – May 12 2018

Opening March 2,  5 to 9 pm

 

"Io sona la spia": the man holding the sign bearing these words is a free man. Being free, from Pettena’s standpoint, means ignoring the zeitgeist, soaring above burdensome conformism, and emancipating oneself from the group and its convergent views. This is a surprise event, free from all restricted thoughts, be they conventional or radical. With this unexpected gesture, Pettena puts us in mind of Marcel Duchamp’s refusal "to be an artist in today’s sense of the word", nor yet an "anti-artist", preferring instead the term "anartist". This stance allowed Duchamp to push to the limits all kinds of references which lead to associations that art (or anti-art) institutions would be all too able to pick up on. The same is true of Pettena, whose position is neither one of acceptance, nor one of flat-out refusal, but instead takes him into a place very few people venture into for fear that they may be unable to get out again. This is how Pettena, who stands at the junction between different worlds, opens our eyes to a kind of architecture that we cannot see. He is, and will always be, an “anarchitect”.

The exhibition at Salle Principale looks back over 50 years of anarchitectural activity, which began in 1967 in Florence.

 

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MURALNOMAD

MURALNOMAD

Le Quadrilatère, Beauvais

February 23 – August 19  2018

Opening, February 23 2018, 6 pm

 

Dominique Mathieu, curator of this exhibition on the art of contemporary tapestry, was inspired, as the title shows, by Le Corbusier’s idea of “muralnomad” according to which for the architect “ a carpet or any tapestry should never be tought as necessarily related to a piece of furniture, neither for dimensions nor for location”.  Through more than 40 works of artists and weaving craftsmen, including le Corbusier himself, the exhibition offers a careful analysis of tapestry artistic production in accordance with the evolution of all other contemporary artistic disciplines.  On exhibit, as well as on the poster introducing it, “Sprofondo” (1989),  tapestry by Gianni Pettena.

 

Link to Quadrilatère, Beauvais

ENERGY FREE TREE

ENERGY FREE TREE

GIANNI PETTENA for MUSEION

Bolzano/Bozen, from  November 23rd 2017, 7.30 pm

 

Even using something that seems by now to be completely useless, imitating nature but not damaging it, one can create a symbol for days traditionally considered of re-birth and peace.

 

www.museion.it

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Exhibition SUPERDESIGN

Gianni Pettena, "Wearable Chairs", 1971
Gianni Pettena, "Wearable Chairs", 1971

SUPERDESIGN

 

R & Company, New York

November 7, 2017 – January 4, 2018

  

R & Company presents SuperDesign, a survey of Italian Radical Design from 1965-1975, curated by Maria Cristina Didero. The exhibition has been over a decade in the making and has come together through extensive research, passionate collecting and frequent trips to Italy to interview protagonists of the movement.  Designers on exhibit are Piero Gilardi, Archizoom Associati, Studio 65, Gianni Ruffi, Kazuhide Takahama, Lapo Binazzi, Luigi Bandini Buti, Ugo La Pietra, . Studio A.R.D.I.T.I., Gino Marotta,  Gianni Pettena, Superstudio, Marion Baruch, Ettore Sottsass, Guido Drocco , Franco Mello and Gianfranco Frattini.

 The comprehensive survey highlights these leading figures and showcases a capsule collection of visionary works, alongside a selection of rare archival drawings and photography. as well as a feature length (62 minute) documentary directed by Francesca Molteni which presents interviews with pioneering designers and rare never- before-seen archival footage. 

The exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive book published by The Monacelli Press, written by Didero, with an introduction by R & Company principal Evan Snyderman and contributions from Deyan Sudjic and Catharine Rossi.

Gianni Pettena, "Grass Architecture", 1971
Gianni Pettena, "Grass Architecture", 1971

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MUSÉE EN ŒUVRE(S) | CENTRE POMPIDOU, Parigi

Gianni Pettena, "Wearable Chairs" 1971
Gianni Pettena, "Wearable Chairs" 1971

NOUVEAU PARCOURS AU MUSÉE ET NOUVELLE PRÉSENTATION DES COLLECTIONS CONTEMPORAINES 

 

CENTRE POMPIDOU, Paris

Opening, Thursday October 19th 2017, 6pm

 

Starting from this date, the Museum of Modern Art of the Pompidou Center presents a new arrangement of the 4th and 5th floors, where contemporary art since the end of the ‘60s will be on exhibit according to a temporal and thematic development.

Room 12 on the 4th floor,  Design and Poor Techniques/Global Tools, hosts works of the permanent collection of designers, architects and artists who agreed with the basic principles of that counter-school (Global Tools), i.e. the improvement and spreading of collective creativity and the social and political role of architecture. Gianni Pettena has on exhibit the original Wearable Chairs, created for the 1971 performance in Minneapolis, as well as the whole installation presented on  that same year at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

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RADICAL UTOPIAS Beyond architecture: Florence 1966-1976

Curated by Pino Brugellis, Gianni Pettena, Alberto Salvadori

October 20  2017 –January 21 2018

La Strozzina Gallery, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

Opening  October 19 2017, 7pm

 

The exhibition presents a wide selection of the work – design objects, videos, performances, installations -  of the so-called radical architects who developed  their research in Florence about a half century ago, beginning in 1966, by using innovative languages and forms that, although different the one from the other, had as a common aim a radical revision of the traditional instruments of architecture, in the same way as this had been done in the UK and Austria just a few years earlier.  Very detailed panels give precise information about  the origin, inspiration and motivation of each of the architects presented, whether single person or groups, while also explaining the reason why what can by now be defined as a movement  was originated in Florence in years characterized by social and political  turmoil as well as by a general climate of renewal in the arts.  Moreover, also supported by a fully documented catalogue, the exhibit shows and testifies of the path of continuity that started with the visions of the critical utopias begun in Florence and, in the following generations, turned out  to be  a new, internationally spread approach in research for architectcs, designers, historians and critics.


REBEL ART 1968-1978 Artists and Groups from ‘68

October 12 – December 9, 2017

Opening, October 11 6.30 pm

 

Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese

Corso Magenta 59 – Milano

 

A project conceived by Marco Meneguzzo and curated by Cristina Quadrio Curzio and Leo Guerra, art directors of the Credito Valtellinese Galleries, the exhibition is meant as a survey of all artistic expressions that were inspired in Italy by a political protest which started in ’65 and, initially triggered by a refusal of the Vietnam war, went on until at least the mid-seventies.

 

On show is a not large group of artists who mostly worked in Milan and Rome - among which Vincenzo Agnetti, Franco Angeli, Nanni Balestrini, Gianfranco Baruchello, Fabio Mauri, Mario Ceroli, Emilio Isgrò, Mario Schifano, Ugo La Pietra, Franco Vaccari, Gianni Pettena -  together with the many others who in those years, even anonymously, were active in the fields of illustration, murales and other forms of visual communication.  Therefore, the result is a confrontation between so-called “high” (painting, conceptual and behavioural art) and “low” (illustration in magazines and fanzines) languages, that together, in those years, tried to build up new ways of expression which could at the same time be innovative and also accepted by the great masses.

Gianni Pettena, "Grazia e Giustizia", 1968
Gianni Pettena, "Grazia e Giustizia", 1968

L’AIR VIBRE DU BOURDONNEMENT DES INSECTS

(THE AIR VIBRATES WITH THE BUZZ OF INSECTS)

 

October 7th – December 17th 2017

Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA)

Rochechouart

 

The exhibition, curated by Sebastien Faucon, borrows its title from a 1970 work by Pier Paolo Calzolari (L’aria vibra del ronzio degli insetti) and provides a chance to see a broad sample of works from the 60s to the present day that reflect on the true nature of things around us whilst also tracing the stirrings of ecological sensibilities.

It is a deliberately non-chronological mixing of pieces from the museum permanent collection of Arte Povera (Anselmo, Boetti, Calzolari, Penone) and Land Art, juxtaposed with recent acquisitions (Michael J. Smith, Gianni Pettena, Julien Discrit) plus pieces by invited artists. Without being a full-blown study of the legacy left by Arte Povera, the exhibition examines a continuum of artists who have embraced poetic visions of the banal to which is added a vein of political activism.

 

Gianni Pettena: Red line, 1972
Gianni Pettena: Red line, 1972

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GIANNI PETTENA-Sculptors in Brufa- 08.25/09.03.17

 GIANNI PETTENA 

Architetcture forgiven by nature

Sculptors in Brufa. The street of Wine and Art. 31st Edition.

Brufa, 08.25 – 09.03.2017

Opening: Friday, August 25, 06.00 pm

Curated by: Bruno Corà


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GIANNI PETTENA Natural Architectures | Merano Arte/Kunst Meran 7.22. – 9.24.2017

GIANNI PETTENA "Human Wall"
GIANNI PETTENA "Human Wall"

GIANNI PETTENA 

Natural Architectures

Merano Arte/Kunst Meran 07.22 – 09.24.2017

Opening: Friday, July 21 2017, 8.00 pm

Curator: Christiane Rekade

 

The exhibition takes place at the same time than the one (“Walking, weaving”) by the American Helen Mirra, whose artistic language shows aspects of similarity with Gianni Pettena’s work for what concerns a continuous confrontation with the environment, the relationship with Nature and the connection between the Alto Adige landscapes and those of the United States, which both greatly influenced the work of the two artists.

 

Indeed, the local environment has for Gianni Pettena a fundamental  role in the development of both his  works and ideas in architecture –so much so that about this he himself speaks of “my school of architecture”.  The exhibit at Merano Arte deals with this relationship and with the continuous confrontation, typical of the link of the artist with the landscapes of his homeland, that can be perceived throughout all his activity.

 

http://www.kunstmeranoarte.org


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From Duchamp to Cattelan. Contemporary art at Palatino

ARCHIPENSIERO by Gianni Pettena at the exhibition From Duchamp toCattelan. Contemporary Art at Palatino | Opening  June 27, 6.30 pm


ALT AT PALATINO - FROM DUCHAMP TO CATTELAN

100 works from the collection Tullio Leggeri

Curated by Tullio Leggeri and Alberto Fiz

 

Foro Palatino - Via di San Gregorio n. 30 - Rome

June 28 - October 29, 2017

In the exhibition, curated by Alberto Fiz, contemporary art and archeology face each other by means of 100 works coming from the ALT museum, a museum created by architect Tullio Leggeri, one of the most important Italian art collectors who, since the ‘60s, always had a very special relationship with artists in developing projects with them through both technical and creative suggestions.

In this very special context Archipensiero by Gianni Pettena was re-built on a very large scale, a work that was initially conceived and built on a smaller scale in 2001.

A contribution by Gianni Pettena can also be found in the Electa catalogue, curated by Alberto Fiz as well.

 

http://www.altartecontemporanea.it/en/news

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Gianni Pettena - "Montagne naturali" & "Levitazione"

APRIL 17th 2017 | Presentation of two works by  Gianni Pettena: "MONTAGNE NATURALI" e "LEVITAZIONE" 

FATTORIA MONTELLORI,  Fucecchio (Florence)

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Televisionario. Prada Foundation, Milan May 8th- September 24th 2017

The exhibition is a project conceived by the artist Francesco Vezzoli and developed in collaboration with RAI, the National Italian Broadcasting Corporation.  Divided into three parts, Art and Television, Politics and Television, Entertainment and Television, it is meant as a journey throughout the Seventies’ imagery and production in Italian television: a dialogue between Tv programs and artworks - chosen as an ideal counterpoint to the real television programs, as true documents of the time against the immateriality of the flow of images – in a continuous play of visual and semantic confrontations and shortcircuits.

Gianni Pettena takes part in the exhibition with his work “Applausi” (1968), which is ironically placed at the end of the exhibition path.


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Spazio vuoto riservato a Gianni Pettena | Mega, Milan | Mar 29 - Apr 2  2017

Gianni Pettena

Spazio Vuoto Riservato a Gianni Pettena

 

Mar 29 - Apr 2  2017

Opening Wednesday March 29, 6.30-10 pm

MEGA, Piazza Vetra 21, Milan

 http://www.megamegamega.it

 

Gianni Pettena places his artistic / intellectual practice between conceptual and land art, with a leitmotif in which his belief always correlates with a physicalization related to the body and context scale. Spazio Vuoto Dedicato a Gianni Pettena, a project never seen before in Italy, investigates the deepest aspects of the lived space, a voyage to the discovery of another approach to the architectural discipline. This work runs between rupture and memory for a new definition of space and through the dichotomous relationship between full and empty. Through the use of performance, the artist is creating a gap with the term and the meaning of vacuum, in order to attribute it a new and thunderous symbolic value, so that the audience is brought to reflect on spatial experience lived by each individual. It is the act of the performance to generate the artistic moment, but it will be the end of the act to crystallize and formalize what remains, thanks to the continuous relationship between the inside and the outside of the space of MEGA. 

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Lecture artiparlando: Gianni Pettena | March 16th 2017, 8 pm | Museion Bolzano

Lecture

artiparlando: Gianni Pettena

Thursday, March 16th, 2017, 8 pm | Museion Bolzano

The project as a language

 

Art raises questions, design solves them. Design looks for functions while art does not have a practical aim:

but is this still true? What is the relationship between functions and free creativity in two disciplines

similar, yet different, like design and art? How much can we understand about the language of design

objects?

See more at: http://www.museion.it/2017/03/artiparlando-2/

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Exhibition "ORIENTATION". Paris, 'salle principale' Gallery. February 17th-April 15th 2017

Red Line (Salt Lake City, 1972)
Red Line (Salt Lake City, 1972)

ORIENTATION

'salle principale' Gallery, Paris

February 17—April 15, 2017 (Opening February 16, 6 pm)

https://www.salleprincipale.com/galerie

 

The group exhibition of les gens d’Uterpan, Dominique Mathieu,  Gianni Pettena, Matthieu Saladin and Lois Weinberger,  is focused on the issue of travel both in the city and in the landscape. 

Gianni Pettena will have on exhibit a photo-composition of his performance Red Line (Salt Lake City, 1972). Red Line is the last of the three works realized during Gianni Pettena’s stay in Salt Lake City in 1972.   The performance, consisted in the “physical   visualization” of the municipal boundary, a red line stretching for about forty kilometers painted on the road and tracing the plan of the city and its administrative limits: an operation that was carried out by leaning out of a pickup truck loaded with some drums of red paint, a spray gun and a compressor to operate it.  Red Line concluded a trilogy of metaphorical interpretations of the contradictions of the contemporary city, its stupidities and its beauties, conducted through interventions that also had a strongly contextual value, as they tackled the theme of the relationship with the city in a place in which the presence of natural elements, in particular the Great Salt Lake and the Great Salt Desert, is particularly significant.


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Exhibition "About Non Conscious Architecture". Milan, Galleria Giovanni Bonelli

GIANNI PETTENA

 

About Non Conscious Architecture

curated by Marco Scotini

January12th – February 24th  2017

Opening Thursday January 12th, 7 pm

Giovanni Bonelli is glad to present for the first time in his gallery a large anthological exhibition of the works of Gianni Pettena focused on the artist’s activity between 1968 and the end of the ‘70s, a crucial decade for both society and the growth of art debate.

If already years ago Emilio Ambasz wrote that Gianni Pettena had never had enough recognition among the protagonists of the Radical Architecture movement, now he is being widely and internationally rediscovered and there is a totally new attention on his work as an artist, a condition that for years was subdued to that of the critic and interpreter of the Radical Architecture movement.

And it is precisely for this that Pettena’s figure and manifold activity seem today completely new and capable of gathering in itself such central issues for our time as the refusal of coded disciplines, the sabotage, the appropriation, the potential for action of the urban context and a new discovery of the physicality of places and of the natural environment.  Hence the title of the exhibition, which refers to a fundamental article by Pettena published on “Casabella”  in 1974 after his many trips in the south-west of the USA, from the Utah desert to the Monument Valley.

One year before, in 1973, his book “L’anarchitetto”, by now a legend, was published.  In the book one can find many similarities with the art practice that, in a perfect sincronicity, Gordon Matta-Clark was developing, although many are also the differences between the two.  In both artists the idea of not building but acting on the already-built is central, so that the unconscious or inconscious space that is usually not considered can surface.  As well as the idea of architecture and space as an event, as a continuous performance, that can be found in the relationship between Matta-Clark and Trisha Brown and in the one between Pettena and Giuseppe Chiari.

Marco Scotini decided to present a large selection of Pettena’s works of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, not to belittle the great value of the artist’s later work, but because he believes that it is in this period of his activity that Pettena reached such a crucial point in art making that was yet to be discovered and practiced.  In the exhibit will be presented works both known and not known which Pettena realized with different media.  In the center of the gallery will be re-built for the occasion one of his huge cardboard words, Carabinieri, (built for the first time in 1968) which still represents one of the most important examples of a semiotic intervention on space at that time, where the language itself reveals the kind of context (whether of catch or check) and clearly shows Gianni Pettena’s  ethical and esthetic radical research.

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"Incontri Radicali". Rome, MAXXI. 12 and 26.11.2016

Gianni Pettena will take part in the second meeting of "Incontri Radicali" (26 november 2016, 11,30 am) at MAXXI in Rome.

www. fondazionemaxxi.it

 


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"Memories of Contemporary". Florence, Auditorium S.Apollonia. 22-23.11.2016

 

 

 

"Memories of Contemporary"

Florence, Auditorium di Sant'Apollonia

22-23 november 2016

 

curated by Alessandra Acocella and Caterina Toschi

 

Gianni Pettena will take part in "Racconti. Archivi e raccolte d'arte contemporanea a Firenze" (23 november, 12,30 am -13,30 pm).

 

For more informations download the PDF.

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Exhibition "The End of the World". Prato, Pecci Center. 16.10.2016-19.03.2017

THE END OF THE WORLD

Pecci Center for Contemporary Art, Prato

October 16, 2016—March 19, 2017

Curated by Fabio Cavallucci

 www.centropecci.it

 

The great exhibition organized by the Pecci Center on the occasion of its long awaited reopening after the completion of the new extension designed by Maurice Nio and the restoration of the original building by Italo Gamberini, according to the curator – Fabio Cavallucci, director of the Center, with the cooperation of several international advisors – “will be set up as a kind of exercise of distance which will incite usto take a look at our present from a great distance.” Going through the works of over 50 international artists, on an exhibition surface of over 3000 square meters, the audience “will experience the feeling of being projected thousands of light years away to view our current world as if it were a fossil […..], resulting in a feeling of being suspended in a limbo between a now distant past and a still distant future”.

 

In this limbo, throughout an exhibition path where all expressions and artistic languages (cinema, architecture, theatre, dance) will be interconnected, Gianni Pettena’s work “Complementi di storia dell’architettura” (Complements of history of architecture) is on exhibit, a work in which the look towards the ‘past’ has essentially to do with the date of its first edition (1978, Venice Biennale) while its meaning stays the same in the present and will not change in the future.  And this is because the story beginning with the piece of rock as it can be found in nature, that is then structured into a wall where the stone is gradually worked until it becomes a surface polished almost like a mirror, is indeed a symbolic history of architecture.


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Exhibition "Relevant Notes". New York, Cara Gallery. 23.6-30.7.2016

RELEVANT NOTES 

June 23 - July 30 2016

Cara GalleryNew York

http://caragallery-llc.com/index.php/exhibitions/

 

A collective exhibition that presents a dialogue between the work of 11 artists to explore the boundaries of disciplines among installation art, land art and architecture.  Exhibiting in a wide variety of medias including installation, drawing, photography, painting and sculpture – each created over the past five decades – act as relevant notes to the testimony of the artists’ interpretation of the concept of human intervention.

 

Relevant Notes, as an exhibition, comments on the temporary nature of spatial structures and the constant flux of our environment.  Physical and mental aspects of art making come through in order to express the importance of creating a history for a place and acknowledging the presence of the artist.

The 11 artists exhibited are Christo&Jeanne-Claude, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Matteo Berra, Igor Eskinja, Bruna Esposito, Franklin Evans, Diango Hernández, Andrés Jaques, Federico Luger, Jason Middlebrook,

Gianni Pettena.

Gianni Pettena will have on exhibit his big cardboard installation Grazia&Giustizia , which was built for the first time, and on the same day destroyed, in 1968.

 


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Exhibition "Un Art Pauvre". Pompidou Centre, Paris. June 8th-August 29th 2016

UN ART PAUVRE  

June 8th - August 29th 2016

Pomipidou CentreParis

https://www.centrepompidou.fr

 

With the exhibition Un art pauvre  the Pompidou Center proposes a multidisciplinary and never-conceived-before survey of the idea of “poor” in the arts realm starting from the ‘60s: in the plastic arts, with the main focus on the Arte Povera movement, but also in the field of architecture and design, as well as music, theatre and experimental cinema.  Therefore, the show presents artists and members of movements whose research has vindicated the right to make archaic gestures through the use of “poor” materials  which  acquired for them a strong symbolic power.  The Arte Povera movement is extensively presented in Gallery 4 where the influence of Fontana, Manzoni and Burri is explained and about forty works of the best known representatives of the movement are exhibited.

 

On the fifth floor of the Museum, in the exhibition “Architecture et Design.  Around Global Tools (1973-75)”,  the subject of “poor” is presented for what can also be detected in architecture and design in the same years, through drawings, models, photos, and objects mostly realized within Global Tools, a “counter-school” of design founded in 1973 by some members of the Architettura Radicale movement. The  school intended to teach and tried to practice a kind of alternative knowledge based on handicraft, poor materials and experimentation in the urban environment. The Radical Architecture movement (so called by Germano Celant) had in fact many and strong connections with Arte Povera because acting was considered by the “radicals” more important than planning and their architecture was deeply influenced by visual arts as both were looking for new ideas on the political and social environment.  All the works presented in the exhibition, by Andrea Branzi, Ettore Sottsass, Michele De Lucchi, Ugo La Pietra, Riccardo Dalisi, Franco Raggi  and Gianni Pettena clearly show their authors’ wish for a different use of the city, either by acting on a public space or through a criticism of the consumers’ society: and so, the objects which Riccardo Dalisi realized together with the children of a Naples neighbourhood, the “Vertical dwellings” by De Lucchi, the lamps by Raggi and Binazzi, the “Design metaphors” by Sottsass, and the big installation “Wearable chairs” by Gianni Pettena that, although made in the USA some years before (1971), is an example that seems particularly in tune with the general concept of the exhibition.  A rich documentation (posters, invitations, magazines, photographs, etc,), most of which never presented before, is also exhibited, both about Global Tools’ activity and some exhibitions where there was a direct contact between ‘arte povera’ artists and ‘radical’ architects.


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Exhibition "The Unarchivable". Milan, Frigoriferi Milanesi. 8.4-15.6.2016

The Unarchivable

April 8th – June 15th 2016

Frigoriferi Milanesi, via Piranesi 10 - Milan 

 http://www.frigoriferimilanesi.it/

 

The opening of the exhibition The Unarchivable, curated by Marco Scotini in collaboration with Lorenzo Paini, coincides with the 2016 edition of the modern and contemporary art fair Miart. The exhibition presents a survey on the Italian artistic scene in the 1970s. The “unarchivable” refers to the emergence of multiple social forces and multidisciplinary approach that characterized the 1970s in Italy.

The exhibition includes 200 artworks by 60 artists - among which Vincenzo Agnetti, Carla Accardi, Alighiero Boetti, Gianfranco Baruchello , Gianni Colombo, Dadamaino, Piero Gilardi, Paolo Icaro, Jannis Kounellis, Ketty La Rocca, Fabio Mauri, Ugo Mulas, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Vettor Pisani, Franco Vaccari, Gilberto Zorio - coming from the most important Italian collections. The works will be divided in different sections.

Musical scores by Sylvano Bussotti, Giuseppe Chiari e Luigi Nono  will be on exhibit as well as Radical architecture here represented by  Ugo La Pietra, Gianni Pettena, Ettore Sottsass e Superstudio,  and other fields of art such as books, cinema and photography.

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Sentiment of Beauty. La bellezza messa in luce. Biblioteca Statale Lucca.1.4.16, h.16,30.

Sentiment of Beauty. La bellezza messa in luce. 
Biblioteca Statale Lucca. 1.4.2016, 4,30 pm.

On April 1 Gianni Pettena will take part, as one of the speakers, at the workshop "Sentiment of Beauty" (Beauty in the light) for his vision of "archictecture of light".

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SENTIMENT OF BEAUTY LUCCA 2016.pdf
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La Ville au Loin. Frac Centre-Val de Loire,Orléans. 1.4-18.9.16

LA VILLE AU LOIN

(The city by now faraway)

 

Frac Centre-Val de Loire, Orléans - 1.04.2016 / 18.09.2016

http://www.frac-centre.fr

 

As the traditional idea of city is changing and has by now moved away to a distance which tends to cover the whole territory, the exhibition proposes a plunge into the seething life of the city, trying to capture both the intimacy of a street corner and the vastness of cityscapes.

Now that the Earth has become a set of urban proximities, how are these local systems installed, and how do hopes (if any) about what is far away resist and persist? The path of this show is situated in the interstice between these two questions.

The principle behind the exhibition is based on selecting a work from each of the collections of the 22 other Fracs, in dialogue with the collection of the Frac Centre-Val de Loire and the works of African invited artists. In this way the Frac is carrying on its tradition of a place of disciplinary migrations for art and architecture.

The public is greeted by Franco Raggi’s Tenda Rossa., a work that like the collection as a whole, introduces the exhibition in the form of a creative wandering, overlapping as much with painting as with sculpture and architecture.

The visitor, as spectator and actor, walks through the exhibition the way he strolls in the city. The specific position of the individual is at the core of Gianni Pettena’s work Paper/Midwestern Ocean (the work is part of the 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine collection). The artist fills a room with stripes of paper which the public cuts in order to make room for itself. The spectator himself becomes therefore part of the work.

A little further on, Eko’Polis, an imaginary city devised by the Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh plunges the spectator into a captivating acoustic world.

“La ville au loin” ends with a fable, Medium total, by Günther Domenig and Eilfried Huth, a tale which imagines an architecture that has become a mutant biological organism.

In this way, through eighty works by artists and architects, the exhibition is a chance for an urban walk both near and far. We come upon a Tower of Babel, a telephone booth, and a skyline of towers.

For the whole period of the exhibition it will be possible to see a video-interview to Gianni Pettena by the new Director, Abdelkader Damani, on the Frac Centre-Val de Loire website.

 

In the occasion of the Month of Contemporary Architecture, “La ville au loin” is conceived like a narrative in four acts, besides Orléans, in Rouen, Montpellier and Marseille. At the Frac Languedoc-Roussillon, for example, a monographic show is presenting the work of Superstudio, one of the major groups in radical Italian architecture of the 1960s and 1970s. 

Paper/Midwestern Ocean by Gianni Pettena

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ALLURES. Frac Centre,Orléans, 9.10.15-21.02.16. The exhibition proposes to explore a selection of works from the Frac Centre- Val de Loire.

ALLURES, Frac Centre, Orléans, 9.10.2015-21.02.2016 

http://www.frac-centre.fr/

 

Allures (Aspects) proposes to explore a selection of works from the Frac Centre-Val de Loire Collection, among which some recent acquisitions (Passi, Superstudio, Cantafora), as well as works previously unseen or rarely shown at Turbulences (Niedermayr, Pettena, EZCT, Labdora, Andrault & Parat), the respective singularities of which help us perceive how they might express the notion of urban and architectural ‘presence’. 

Allures opens up to the field of visionary thought on unprecedented, significant, and liberated forms, through a selection of works that falls within the ‘implementation’ of striking figures of a promising discontinuity (Archizoom Associati, UFO, Superstudio). Allures also opens up to the perception of a state that is both rediscovered and renewed, infused with history and replayed memories (Libeskind), manipulated (Casebere, Pettena) or remotivated (Ian+) reality. 

Drafts, sketches, grids, histograms, typologies, plans, blueprints, templates, models, photographs or moving images… Whether they represent the reality of the hand’s gesture or the expression of a digital tool, the point is to envision these works in their seminal state of frailty which shapes its forces and densities. The presence of invited contemporary artists and architects (Farah Atassi, Eva Le Roi, Studio sNCDA, Office KGDVS, Vincent Lamouroux, Hayoun Kwon) blends in with exhibits from the Collection. Symmetries come into play, breaking through any containment attempts, questioning our methods of organising and defining knowledge, (re)cognition, and perception of what is tangible.

  

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ARCHIPENSIERI. Voices and Images of Architecture - October 8th - November 19th, 2015. GIANNI PETTENA will introduce four meetings at the Lissone MAC.

Museum of Contemporary Arts - Lissone - MB     

www.museolissone.it 

 

CALENDAR

Thursday October 8, 9 pm

Lapo BINAZZI

Ugo LA PIETRA

Adolfo NATALINI

Thursday October 15, 9 pm

Aldo CIBIC

Nanda VIGO

Thursday October 22, 9pm

Massimo IOSA GHINI

Franco RAGGI

Thursday, November 19, 9 pm

Franco PURINI

Vincenzo TRIONE

 “Il cinema degli architetti”

book  presentation

 

Gianni PETTENA will introduce all meetings.

 

Great names of architecture and design will be at the Lissone MAC for four meetings centered on the protagonists and main trends of the last forty years.

These appointments are meant by the museum as a way to look into the radical and postmodern architecture in such a way as to make the audience aware of the works and researches that had questioned the meaning and role of architecture in those years.

By listening to some of the main actors of the international scene, it will then be possible to rethink the aesthetics and traditional theories, based on utopia, irony, subversion, dissacration and eclecticism, that set on fire the last ‘third’ of the 20th century.

  

The City of Lissone, through the activity of its Museum of Contemporary Arts, though not meaning any comparison, also intends to give a renewed value to a tradition in the field of design and architecture that has characterized  Lissone since the 19th century, when the city became known for its furniture manufacturing.  Here, for example, in 1870 the Professional School of Design and Carving was founded, and in the following years furniture fairs and exhibitions, such as the prestigious  “Settimana del Mobile” that started in 1936, were constantly presented and increased.

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BEYOND ENVIRONMENT - September 26th - December 20th, 2015. GIANNI PETTENA, ALLAN KAPROW,  GORDON MATTA-CLARK, ROBERT SMITHSON,  UGO LA PIETRA, UFO, 9999. 

Museum of Contemporary Arts - Lissone - MB     

www.museolissone.it 

 

OPENING: SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26th, 2015, 6 PM

 

The research of Emanuele Piccardo and  Amit Wolf, supported by the Graham Foundation  Woodbury University, centered on the relationship between art and environment, art and architecture in Italy and the US  in the ‘60s and ‘70s is now opening  at the Lissone Museum of Contemporary Arts after its first edition  at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2014) and the following presentation in Italy  at Casa Masaccio Arte Contemporanea in San Giovanni Valdarno  (march-april 2015). Beyond Environment explores the interchange between architecture, conceptual art, land art, and performing  art that emerged through Italian architect Gianni Pettena’s collaboration with American artists Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson in the 1970s, looking into the different meaning of environment in Europe and the USA in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and comparing the Italian and American contexts and the different aspects of the ’radical’ research in Europe and  of the land art and happenings in the USA. The exhibition combines works by Pettena, Kaprow, Smithson, Matta-Clark, as well as, from Pettena’s Italian and Florentine milieu, those of Superarchitecture and the Italian “Radical” groups UFO, Superstudio, 9999, Ugo La Pietra and Pietro Derossi. 

GAM PALERMO - June 27 -  September 7 2015. GIANNI PETTENA / MARC WILLIAM  ZANGHI. IMAGINARIES OF A STARE. A project conceived by Lorenzo Bruni.   

OPENING: FRIDAY  JUNE 26th 2015, 6.30 pm

 

From June 27th till September 7th 2015 the Palermo Gallery of Modern Art (GAM) will host a peculiar dialogue between paintings  by Marc William Zanghi, one of the  foremost  representatives of young Sicilian art proceeding on the path opened by the so-called “school of Palermo”, and some architectural statements made by Gianni Pettena, one of the protagonists of the architettura radicale movement that started in Florence in the late Sixties.

 

The project is part of a series of exhibitions by the GAM that are meant to underline the value of the contemporary artists who are now active in Sicily.  The peculiarity of this appointment is the stress put on the dialogue between the object viewed and the viewer, the contents and the container – something that Zanghi has always underlined -  thanks to the presence of the installations by Gianni Pettena who is here also showing works originally made in Palermo in 1968.

The exhibition, curated by Lorenzo Bruni will present 30 between paintings and sculptures by Marc William Zanghi within the spaces of the Palermo museum which were changed on purpose in their perception by means of three works by Gianni Pettena.

The pieces by Marc William Zanghi are exhibited starting with six new large paintings showing imaginary forests, between exotic and phantasy.  Then one finds four thin installation/sculptures, miniature heads recalling archeological finds, made in acrylic and polyurethane resin, and finally fifteen more canvases belonging to periods of previous production, assembled according to  new concepts on the ‘anti-hero’.  Besides all this, two works on paper never published before and two  glass containers with more sculptures/heads will be on show. 

The works by Gianni Pettena are three statements on space meant to “unhinge” the usual relationship between container and contents on which western architecture is based.  This is obvious for the “wearable chairs”  that were originally used for a performance/happening in the city center of Minneapolis in 1967 and that will be worn by some students on the day of the opening at the Gam in a “surreal” action.   Later on, the chairs will be exhibited hanging  in the middle of the room like an unusual  sculpture/installation. 

In the second room another piece by Pettena will be on show, APPLAUSI, a portable suitcase where the light on this word  goes on and off, a work that was originally created in 1968 for the 6th Avantgarde Music Festival at the Teatro Biondo in Palermo and that was later presented at the 6th Berlin Biennal in 2010.  This statement, originally meant as an ironical challenge with regard to the then beginning television audience, gets here a different, sour dimension, due to the absence of an audience in the digital global world, where everyone thinks of himself as an active protagonist.  The space of the third room will be organized in a unique way through the  installation “MILITE IGNOTO” (Unknown Soldier), with standing letters made in cardboard, each two meters high.  Connected with this, two other installations will be seen in the outside spaces of the Museum, with the words “CARABINIERI” and “GRAZIA&GIUSTIZIA”, of which the latter was built for the first time in Palermo in 1968 for a performance/procession in the streets of the city.

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Creativa produzione -  Tuscany and Italian Design 1950-1990

creativa produzione | La Toscana e il design italiano 1950-1990 | a cura di Gianni Pettena, Davide Turrini, Mauro Lovi

Curators Gianni Pettena, Davide Turrini, Mauro Lovi

June 13 th – November 1st 2015

Orario: 11-13, 16-20. Chiuso il lunedì.

 

Opening Friday June 12th 2015, 6 pm


The idea of dedicating an exhibition to Tuscan design, comes as part of the initiative Piccoli Grandi Musei 2015. Toscana ‘900. Musei e Percorsi d’arte, with the support of the Lucca Cassa di Risparmio Foundation.

Curated by Gianni Pettena, Davide Turrini and Mauro Lovi, the exhibition intends to present the production firms which in many areas have taken root in Tuscany and have contributed to the image of contemporary Italian design in the world.

Through the work of important Italian and international designers, the exhibition emphasizes the vital role of the productive realities of the region, pointing out their ability to select and attract talents, especially from the world of art and architecture, and define with them the design and construction of objects and everyday products. The exhibition features and is divided into various sectors of production: furniture, everyday objects in porcelain, ceramic, glass and crystal, marble design and graphics.


Exhibition location: Fondazione Centro Studi Ragghianti  

Complesso Monumentale di San Micheletto - Via San Micheletto  3, Lucca

www.fondazioneragghianti.it 

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Les Turbulences

FRAC CENTRE – ORLEANS

 

EXHIBITION  “Relief(s) – Designing the Horizon”   

April 10 – September 20, 2015

Opening April 9, 2015

 

The exhibition will address the thematic of the mountain as an alternative environment in terms of spatial experience and production.  Covering approximately 700 sqm, it will bring together sixty or so works by contemporary architects and artists, introducing a dialogue between the Frac Centre collection and original works.

 

Gianni Pettena’s project  About non conscious architecture  (1972-73) will be on exhibit.


As a sign and as a mythical object, the mountain is a geographical category of the common sense which summons up a collective and universal imagination. For architecture, this “ultimate form of relief” represents a pure otherness, a form of resistance that is in a state of tension with its original programme of analysis and organization of the world.

The exhibition and the programme connected with it will explore different presences of the relief in art in the past sixty years, flushing out the aesthetic and political meanings which they convey. The representation of “elementary” natural forms is thus involved for the radical architecture of the 1960s as the medium of a criticism of the models issuing from industrial society.

 

In its quest for the liberation of forms, the architecture-sculpture of the same period makes the relief the clue for an “augmented” experience of space: it delimits a new topographical horizon which digital tools nowadays make it possible to materialize, and it engages a state of heightened perception for the body.

 

www.frac-centre.fr



BEYOND ENVIRONMENT

 

CASA  MASACCIO  ARTE  CONTEMPORANEA

San Giovanni Valdarno, March 28  2015

5 pm

book launch edizione italiana

Palazzo d'Arnolfo_Museo delle Terre Nuove

‎panel:

Giovanni Bartolozzi,  Lapo Binazzi, Fausto Forte, Luca Galofaro, Gianni Pettena, Emanuele Piccardo, Amit Wolf.

7 pm

exhibition opening

 

 

Beyond Environment explores the interchange between architecture, land art, and performing  art that emerged through Italian architect Gianni Pettena’s collaboration with American artists Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson in the 1970s, looking into the different meaning of environment in Europe and the USA in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and comparing the Italian and American contexts and the different aspects of the ’radical’ research in Europe and  of the land art and happenings in the USA.

The project,curated by Emanuele Piccardo and  Amit Wolf in collaboration with the Graham Foundation, includes an exhibition, a book in English published by Actar and the Italian edition by plug_in publisher.

 

The exhibition ( March 28 - April 19), presented for the first time in Europe at Casa Masaccio Arte Contemporanea  after its first edition at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2014), combines works by Pettena, Kaprow, Smithson, Matta-Clark, as well as, from Pettena’s Italian and Florentine milieu, those of Superarchitecture and the Italian “Radical” groups UFO, Superstudio, 9999, Ugo La Pietra e Pietro Derossi, underlining  Pettena’s and UFO’s  relationship with San Giovanni Valdarno that dates back to the 1968 Masaccio Prize.  The project is further enrichened by new materials added to the book in Italian, such as the photographs of  Record, Fluids and the score of the 18  happenings in six part by Kaprow, together with the series of images of the Spiral Jetty by Smithson.

 

www.beyond-environment.com

http://www.casamasaccio.it/