Alighiero Boetti, Shaman/Showman
dal 21/9/2005 al 15/10/2005
Segnalato da
21/9/2005
Alighiero Boetti, Shaman/Showman
Esso Gallery, New York
A show that originates as a book presentation. The publication in question was written in 2001 by Boetti's first wife Annemarie Sauzeau. The gallery decided to transform a literary event into a display of traces of this written life. A book turns into the catalogue for an exhibition of direct memory about a specific person and his time in art and life, an homage to a friend and an artist.
By Annemarie Sauzeau Boetti
Published by Walther König, Koln
Jennifer Bacon and Filippo Fossati are pleased to announce the opening of the 2005-2006 season at Esso gallery with a show that originates as a book presentation.
The publication in question is titled Alighiero e Boetti, Shaman/Showman written in 2001 by his first wife Annemarie Sauzeau and first published in Italian by Umberto Allemandi, Turin which has been recently translated and published in English by Walther König, Köln.
Together Alighiero and Annemarie spent more then twenty years of an intense and vital daily life - the first part, decisive for their passionate carriers - and even after their separation they kept sharing family duties and the common passion for art. The book is therefore an intimate and private view of Alighiero's life and work that contains the smell of a magic atmosphere lost in time and in space not distant from us. The Order and Disorder dear to Alighiero is perceivable between the pages in the rigorous precision of sequences, dates and places and at the same time in the confusion of different travels, countries, people, exhibitions, books, art, children, houses, walls and all matters of life.
We decided to transform a literary event into a gallery display of traces of this written life. A book turns into the catalogue for an exhibition of direct memory about a specific person and his time in art and life, an homage to a friend and an artist, to the great shaman/showman.
Along with the images from the book you will also find catalogues, photographs, very early works (1963-1965) to more recent ones, and two films; the first one, Niente da Vedere Niente da Nascondere (Nothing to See Nothing to Hide) 16 mm. color, duration 60' shot in 1978, by Italian movie director Emidio Greco and the second one is a rare document; a selection of moving images of Boetti founded and grouped together by Marco Giusti for the Italian Broadcasting Television RAI.
Together with a group of five young artists - Michele Chiossi, Kim Lieberman, Nicus Lucá, Andrea Marescalchi and Maurizio Vetrugno - each showing a work inspired by and dedicated to Boetti's.
Annemarie Sauzeau Boetti is an art critic, journalist and essayist. After thirty years spent in Italy, she now lives in France. She has been co-author with Alighiero Boetti of the cult book Classifying the Thousand Longest Rivers in the World, 1977.
As curator of many exhibitions dedicated to Alighiero Boetti among which the first retrospective promoted by the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna in Turin in 1995 - 1996 that traveled to many other museum in Europe. She is part of the founding group of the Alighiero Boetti Estate in Rome.
Alighiero Boetti was born in Turin in 1940 and died in Rome in 1994. Eclectic artist, he began his career with the group of Arte Povera artists while living in Torino. After his move to Rome and his first trips to Afghanistan his work changes radically as his visual interest moves toward a more colored and open-minded way of work. Interested in alchemy, foreign cultures, institutional systems, languages, literature, mathematics, sciences and art he traveled extensively and worked with different cultures and many different people. Today his work is present in numerous public and private collections worldwide.
ESSO Gallery
531 West 26th Street, 2nd floor New York NY 10001
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.