Fino al 19 febbraio 2017 è allestita presso il Salone Banca di Bologna di Palazzo De’ Toschi (Piazza Minghetti 4/D, Bologna) la mostra di Peter Buggenhout The Blind Leading The Blind, curata da Simone Menegoi. L'esposizione di Buggenhout è promossa da Banca di Bologna e si potrà visitare nei seguenti orari di apertura: da martedì a venerdì, 13.30-18.30; sabato, 11.30-18.30; domenica, 13.30-18.30. Chiuso il lunedì. Ingresso libero.
Banca
di Bologna is pleased to present The
Blind Leading The Blind,
the first solo show in Italy by Belgian artist Peter
Buggenhout
(b. 1963, based in Gent), one of the foremost European sculptors of
his generation.
The
exhibition, which will be on view in the Banca
di Bologna Hall
of Palazzo
De’
Toschi
(Piazza Minghetti 4/D, Bologna) from January
28 to
February
19, 2017,
is curated by Simone Menegoi, and will open to the public on January
27 at
6
PM.
It is scheduled in conjunction with the 5th ART
CITY Bologna, an
initiative sponsored by the City
of Bologna
and by BolognaFiere
and aimed at creating a program of high-profile cultural events in
exhibition spaces around the city during the weekend of Arte
Fiera.
The event will also renew the partnership between Banca di Bologna
and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna which began in January
2016 with the group show LA
CAMERA: Sulla materialità
della
fotografia.
For the entire length of the exhibition, students from the art
academy will greet visitors and be on hand to provide information
about the works by Peter Buggenhout.
The
exhibition is made up of two pieces, both from the series The
Blind Leading The Blind.
The first (The
Blind Leading The Blind #65,
2014) is a spectacularly striking assemblage—some
10 meters long and 6 meters high—incorporating
materials such as iron pipes, plywood panels, carpeting, industrial
scraps, and bits of mortar: a piece of architecture ambiguously
suspended between construction and destruction, growth and collapse.
The second (The
Blind Leading The Blind #25,
2008) is an enigmatic object with a craggy, irregular shape,
presented in a showcase as if it were an archeological find. Both
works are being shown for the first time in Italy.
For
twenty years now, Peter Buggenhout has been presenting viewers with a
challenging paradox: his pieces are elaborate artistic creations
which at first glance seem like the product of chance and time. The
sculptures from his series The
Blind Leading The Blind
look like wreckage, ruins, rubble: works springing from a rational
design, but shattered and mutilated by some unknown event. In other
cases, we feel like we are looking at organisms whose haphazard
proliferation has been suddenly cut short. All the works in the
series are partially or wholly covered in a layer of dust, as if they
were happened upon after decades of abandonment: critics have called
them “archeological
finds of the future.”
This
use of dust as a sculptural material is one of the most fascinating
aspects of Buggenhout’s
oeuvre. Associated with the passage of time, with decay and
dissolution, it suggests that the Belgian artist’s
works could be seen as melancholy vanitas,
still lifes meant to remind the viewer that everything is transient.
The sculptor warns us, however, against interpreting his work in a
purely negative sense, as a sort of monument to entropy: “The
opposite may be true. I let the viewer to decide. Destruction leads
ultimately to reconstruction, in the same way that dead leaves
nurture trees. We are confronted with a constant back and forth. The
situation is in flux,”
he
says.
Buggenhout
belongs to a long line of artists—not
only in the visual realm; for instance, the sculptor lists the work
of author Georges Perec among his influences—who
have tried to depict the world in all its inexhaustible, chaotic
complexity, putting aside the hierarchies of value and yardsticks of
meaning that guide us in everyday life. Completely “abstract,”
(in
the artist’s
description), his sculptures nevertheless stand as an analogy of
reality itself, both in their form, which combines planning and
chaos, growth and decay, and in their range of materials, which
includes almost everything imaginable. (For the sculptures in his
Gorgo
series, Buggenhout even uses animal entrails, hair, and blood.)
The
aesthetic and intellectual principle underlying the Belgian artist’s
work is that any attempt to impose a rational order on reality will
always be partial, limited, and doomed in the long run to failure. It
is no coincidence that Buggenhout has titled his main series of works
The
Blind Leading The Blind.
This is a reference to one of the sculptor’s
favorite paintings, the homonymous work by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
at the Museo di Capodimonte, but also to the passage from the Gospel
of Matthew that this painting illustrates, a proverbial reference to
the fallacy of human knowledge: “They
be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both
shall fall into the ditch.”
The
exhibition will be documented in a forthcoming monograph on the most
recent exhibitions of Peter Buggenhout, soon to be published by Banca
di Bologna in collaboration with its institutional partners.
Peter
Buggenhout
was born in Dendermonde, Belgium in 1963. He lives and works in Gent.
Upcoming
and recent solo exhibitions include: Neues Museum, Nurnberg (2017);
The Box, Los Angeles (2017); Museum M, Leuven (2015); Centre
Internationale d’Art
et du Paysage de l’Île
de Vassivière
(2014); Caterpillar
Logic II,
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York (2014); The
Blind Leading The Blind,
Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); Ni
chair, ni poisson,
Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris (2013); De-Titled,
Galerie Konrad Fisher, Düsseldorf
(2012); Ludwig Forum, Aachen (2012); Contes
Invertébrés,
Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris (2011); Ongewerveld,
De Pont, Tilburg (2011); Caterpillar
Logic,
Kunstraum Dornbirn (2010); “It's
a strange, strange world, Sally”,
La Maison Rouge, Paris (2010); The
Broccoli Cycle 1,
Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin (2010); Galerie Konrad Fischer,
Düsseldorf
(2009); Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (2009); Herzliya Museum of
Contemporary Art, Jerusalem (2008); Gallery Maskara at Warehouse on
3rd Pasta, Mumbai (2008).
plastic,
polyurethane, polyester, aluminium, iron, wood, plexiglass, household
dust over a core of debris
110
(h) x 200 x 185 cm
Exhibition
partner
Banca di Bologna
is a bank with close local ties to both the city and the surrounding
area. Its many initiatives have included refurbishing Piazza Galvani,
restoring the Oratorio dei Fiorentini and Bologna’s
city gates, recovering and upgrading Piazza Minghetti, and renovating
Palazzo de’
Toschi.
It has also been involved in the restoration of the Basilica of San
Petronio and its Chapel of the Archangel Michael, with the famous
fresco by Calvaert.
Palazzo
De’ Toschi,
a historic building in the center of Bologna designed by Antonio
Sarti and built at the beginning of the twentieth century, was
originally Palazzo delle Poste, the main post office. Its
construction features, and especially its use of reinforced concrete,
drew the interest of Le Corbusier, who saw it during a trip to Italy
in 1907 and described it in his letters. The Palazzo was acquired by
Banca di Bologna in 2007 and reopened to the public in 2013. Over
these last few years, the building and its main hall have been used
to house important cultural and educational initiatives and
exhibitions. The conference hall, at the top of the grand staircase,
is a space measuring over 600 m²,
fully equipped with the latest technology. Its windows give onto a
250 m² terrace.
Overall, it is a prestigious, well-structured location for
conferences, shows, and other events. Notable examples include a
series of lectures by eminent critics and scholars on the theme of
art and food through the centuries, organized by Banca di Bologna for
Expo 2015. Banca di Bologna’s
cultural program for Palazzo De’
Toschi
continued with the photography show L’industria
bolognese, un DNA riconosciuto,
organized in collaboration with Collezioni Alinari and presenting
many pictures on view for the first time, and the exhibition LA
CAMERA: Sulla materialità
della
fotografia,
an exhibition exploring the relationship between photography and
sculpture, curated by Simone Menegoi in conjunction with Arte Fiera
2016.
Peter
Buggenhout
The
Blind Leading The Blind
Location
Banca
di Bologna Hall, Palazzo De’
Toschi
Piazza
Minghetti 4/D, Bologna
Opening
January
27, 6 PM
Press
preview
January
27, 12 noon
Dates
January
28 –
February
19, 2017
Opening
hours
During
the weekend of ART CITY Bologna:
January
27, 6 PM-10 PM; January 28, noon-midnight; January 29, noon-8 PM
From
January 31 to February 19, 2017:
Tuesday
to Friday, 1:30 PM-6:30 PM; Saturday, 11:30 AM-6:30 PM; Sunday, 1:30
PM-6:30 PM
Closed
Mondays
Free
admission
Exhibition
curated by
Simone
Menegoi
Assistant
Curator
Barbara
Meneghel