Through a rich selection of images, this artist’s book, published in two editions—gold and silver—explores the birth, life and death of Francesco Gennari’s work Vorrei perdermi e non trovarmi più, 2022, exhibited for the first time at the Ciaccia Levi Gallery in Paris.
This richly illustrated publication combines artwork, archival and process imagery, and includes an extended interview with the artist, as well as new essays by key thinkers in the fields of anthropology, philosophy, political economy and art history.
In the first monograph on the feminist conceptual artist collective Claire Fontaine, political theorist and somatic practitioner Anita Chari explores the artist’s theoretical and political innovations to illuminate a more haptic, embodied approach to the practice of critical theory.
Shahryar Nashat inserts his art in the pages of this new artist’s book, which takes the form of a catalogue-turned-manual: but instead of explaining its meaning, he strips it of its aura, flaunts its nature as an object and describes step-by-step how to create it.
Martin Heidegger, Glenn Gould, Jacques-Louis David, Cy Twombly, Paul Engelmann and Ludwig Wittgenstein: characters that Francesco Arena has chosen or rediscovered in multiple contexts over the time recur in this book. Ranging from philosophy, to music, to visual arts, they embrace the whole world of knowledge.
This first institutional monograph on the multimedia practice of artist and director Ali Cherri aims to highlight the themes and formal concerns running through his most recent, highly significant projects at GAMeC, Bergamo; Frac Bretagne, Rennes; Swiss Institute, New York; Biennale Arte 2022, Venice; and the National Gallery, London.
Edited by Lorenzo Giusti and Valentina Gervasoni
Texts by Pietro Roberto Goisis, Antonio Moroni, and Rachel Whiteread
Designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio
2024, English / Italian, softcover, 11 x 17.7 cm, 96 pages
ISBN 979-12-80579-38-6
The Mark of Trauma is the first book in a series of short essay collections inspired by the site-specific art projects specially conceived for GAMeC at Palazzo della Ragione, a symbolic, time-honored location within the city of Bergamo that embodies the values of community life and participation. Rachel Whiteread was asked to name an author who interests her—be it a researcher, a philosopher or a scholar—and whose thinking could be said to underpin the project, with a view to finding a path through the complexities of the present day, starting from the work produced but without necessarily lingering on it. Through the words of psychoanalysts Angelo Antonio Moroni and Pietro Roberto Goisis, the book highlights the main characteristics of the collective trauma that gave rise to Rachel Whiteread’s project …And the Animals Were Sold.
For the artist, the exhibition afforded the first opportunity to express herself artistically on the dramatic and alienating experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. Whiteread was so struck by her first visit to Bergamo—one of the first cities to experience a return to pre-pandemic life—that she began thinking about her work as being bound up with the tragic, uncontrolled spread of the pandemic there. As such, the artist wanted to create a close relationship with the Bergamo area and its history, as well as with the architecture of the exhibition venue. Similarly, by adopting the perspective of the city that was the first in the West to experience the sense of vulnerability and collective loss associated with the pandemic, Goisis and Moroni alternate between personal recollection and analytical reflection, building up a composite picture, awash with explorations and memories, which unveils the psyche of an entire geographical region, the substance of this place, of the society here and of its influences.