Heart of Darkness. Castello di Rivoli@OGR.1. Can Art Prevent Mistakes?

From 1 February to 19 May 2019, the OGR - Officine Grandi Riparazioni of Turin in collaboration with Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea will present Heart of Darkness. Can Art Prevent Mistakes? An exhibition at Binario 2 inside the OGR Torino, curated by Marcella Beccaria, Chief Curator and Curator of Collections, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, with the support of Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT.
 
Citing Joseph Conrad’s famous novel Heart of Darkness, 1899, this group exhibition investigates irrational aspects of the contemporary, where wars, imperialism, religious fanaticism, terrorism, racism, inequality, exploitation of natural resources, and some aspects of technology and Artificial Intelligence used irresponsibly seem to grow exponentially. Originally from Brazil, Cuba, Egypt, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and the United States, and active in many parts of the world, the artists selected offer multiple points of view on the complexity of the world in which we live, with works that question the dark sides of the present, analyzing them through past references or anticipating possible future scenarios. 
 
“With references ranging from the fall of the Assyrian Empire in the 7th century BC to the androids that may one day share the Earth with human beings, this exhibition investigates our contemporary world by exploring some of its dark and irrational aspects,” Marcella Beccaria says. “The selected works suggest different forms of critical awareness that do not overlook the ability to open spaces of poetic resistance, responding to the violence of the present with unstoppable creative force.”
 
Selected for OGR’s exhibition spaces, the artworks by Allora & Calzadilla, Maria Thereza Alves, Maurizio Cattelan, Roberto Cuoghi, Bracha L. Ettinger, Massimo Grimaldi, Mona Hatoum, Goshka Macuga, Teresa Margolles, Pedro Neves Marques and Wael Shawky express a vital creativity that embraces multiple languages and techniques, including performance, sculpture, photography, painting, film, multimedia and sound installations.
 
Heart of Darkness presents a selected nucleus of thirteen important artworks from the Collections of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, mostly chosen from those acquired by Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT for the Museum. In the context of a synergistic vision, since 2000, Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT has developed an acquisition project for Turin and Piedmont that integrates the permanent collections of the Castello di Rivoli and the GAM-Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea and that today counts more than 840 works by Italian and international artists hosted in the two institutions.
 
This exhibition represents a further chapter in the synergy between OGR Torino and Castello di Rivoli, which began on the occasion of the opening of the OGR Torino with the commissioning of the public and site-specific installation Procession of Reparationists, 2017, by William Kentridge, installed in the Corte Est Commissions and entirely supported by Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT.
 

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