Illustrazioni per libri inesistenti. Artisti con Manganelli. Curated by Andrea Cortellessa.  Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome. 21.09.2023 – 07.01.2024

The exhibition Illustrazioni per libri inesistenti. Artisti con Manganelli intends to celebrate the centenary of the birth of the great Italian intellectual, writer and essayist Giorgio Manganelli (15 November 1922 – 28 May 1990). The exhibition, curated by Andrea Cortellessa, features works by artists about whom he wrote or who in various ways were linked by friendship or a genuine collaborative relationship with the writer.

In Rome, Giorgio Manganelli entertained important relations with the art world between the 1960s and 1970s, weaving friendships as intense, if not more so, than those he had with literati of the same generation. During the 1980s, also due to his acquaintance with Lea Vergine, a second moment of Manganelli’s artistic passion developed mainly in Milan. The Italian artists participating in the exhibition include Gianfranco Baruchello, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Carol Rama, Toti Scialoja, Gastone Novelli, Achille Perilli, Franco Nonnis, Giovanna Sandri, Giosetta Fioroni and Luigi Serafini.

The friendship between Gianfranco Baruchello and Giorgio Manganelli lasted throughout the 1960s. Manganelli used to visit Baruchello in his Roman studio and attend the exhibitions that the artist inaugurated in Rome and Milan, such as the solo exhibition Uso e Manutenzione in 1965 at the Galleria Schwarz in Milan, for which he also wrote a text for the catalogue.

At the exhibition Illustrazioni per libri inesistenti. Artisti con Manganelli Baruchello exhibited two works from that period, a canvas entitled Tramonto morale (1964) shown at his solo exhibition in Milan and an openable object, exemplifying the artist’s experimentation at the time, entitled Pourquoi un chien ne peut il simuler la douleur? (1965).

Gianfranco Baruchello. Retour à Paris. Massimo De Carlo gallery, Paris. 18.09.2023 – 24.09.2023

The exhibition Gianfranco Baruchello. Retour à Paris, set up in the parisian space Pièce Unique of the Massimo De Carlo gallery, includes three works from 1963 by the author.

On this occasion, the large canvas Il Tecnolatra and the two smaller ones Attenzione! Dio ti vede and An old shelter are exhibited. In these works Baruchello uses different layers of white made with different techniques: industrial enamels, casein whites, wax crayons. In this way, the surfaces become a space on which the gaze can dwell in depth. In addition, the canvases are populated with figures painted in bright, energetic colours.

These works represent a phase in Baruchello’s artistic research that focuses on experimenting with the reinterpretation of painting through the use of moving objects and images. They raise crucial questions that will remain central to Baruchello’s artistic investigation. At the end of 1963, the creative explosion to which these works refer led to a fragmentation that gave rise to a profusion of small images in pictorial space, in combination with the use of Plexiglas and objects as well. These elements create linguistic and mental micro-systems, distributed within a space of multiple relationships, without any hierarchy.

Fuori tutto. Curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi. Architecture section curated by Pippo Ciorra, Laura Felci, Elena Tinacci. Photography section curated by Simona Antonacci. MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome. 28.06.2023 – 25.02.2024

The exhibition Fuori tutto, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, is conceived as an “open repository,” where works from the Maxxi’s permanent collection kept in storage are exhibited. The new layout thus showcases the Museum’s most recent acquisitions, artists from the historical generations to the younger ones, narrating the national and international art scene through works of painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, video, installation, performance, and sound experimentation.

Among the invited artists, Gianfranco Baruchello is present with the works Piccolo Sistema (2012-13), donated to the Maxxi in 2017, and the two works Quaderno 73 (2016).

Piccolo Sistema was created by Baruchello for the Italian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition (2013). Conceived as a large-scale object, Piccolo Sistema is a work-space, environmental and performative, conceived as a laboratory for imagining, where all the elements present are ready to be activated by the viewer’s imagination.

The two Quaderno 73, placed in relation to Piccolo Sistema, are two works (ink on aluminum) conceived as an archive of images from the 1970s where “small systems” of forms, figures, and signs converse with each other.

Terra Animata. Visioni tra arte e natura in Italia (1964-2023). Curated by Paola Bonani and Francesca Rachele Oppedisano. Mattatoio – Padiglione 9A, Rome. 29.03 – 27.08.2023

The exhibition Terra Animata. Visioni tra arte e natura in Italia (1964-2023), curated by Paola Bonani and Francesca Rachele Oppedisano, brings together some examples of contemporary artists who have worked on the relationship between art, creativity, aesthetics, nature and man.

The exhibition covers a period from the 1960s through to the present day. During the 1960s, artists made a radical breakthrough in the traditional boundaries of the works of art, including materials taken directly from the real world and in some cases focusing all their research on our relationship with nature and its processes of transformation. During the 1970s, agriculture and landscape became the subject of specific artistic practices, with the intention of investigating more human dimensions of production and spaces of harmony with the environment.

At the exhibition, which includes the participation of Bruna Esposito, Giosetta Fioroni, Pino Pascali, and Giuseppe Penone, among others, Baruchello was invited with Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. 1973-’81, a continuous experiment that constitutes one of the fields in which the artist has worked most: his relationship with nature, the environment, vegetables and animals.

The space dedicated to Baruchello includes: three showcases/archive Agricola Cornelia (1-2-3) with different materials, documents, organic and inorganic objects, organized according to three themes (food, politics, and animal and vegetable), the work Agricola Cornelia. Quaestio de aqua et terra (enamels on aluminum in two elements), the series Progetto Kanak (enamels on cardboard in two elements, Magie Idrauliche, Magie Politico – Sindacali), and the work Il referente (enamels on cardboard).

An example of the artist’s filmic production during the years of Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. is the film Il grano (1975), which documents with a fixed shot every day for one minute a day the different stages of wheat ripening in varying weather conditions on the field located in Via di Santa Cornelia (Rome).

8^th Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art, Central Exhibition “Being as Communion”. Curated by Maria-Thalia Carras. Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki. 04.03 – 21.05.2023

The central exhibition Being as Communion of the 8^th Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art aims to critically reflect on being as community, on the concept of coexistence, and on collaborative practices that imagine ways of working with the earth, creating radical pedagogical tools, pioneering ecological activism, and expanding the horizon of how we can live together. The works of contemporary artists herald multiple forms of communion and collaboration, namely with our host city’s past, with forests and woodlands, with the land, with animals, and among humans. They focus on inclusive practices that explore different forms of care, love, and mutuality, and investigate the human impact on our shared ecosystems by suggesting more equitable forms of existence for human survival, and testing the extent to which we can learn new ways of being with the world around us, rather than dominating it.

In this spirit, Baruchello participates in the central exhibition of the Thessaloniki Biennial by presenting a living archive of Agricola Cornelia S.p.A., with notes, drawings, photographs, artworks, diaries, and books that testify to the action Baruchello conducted from 1973 to 1981 in the Santa Cornelia countryside on the outskirts of Rome, through which he set out to work on the relationship between art, agriculture, animal husbandry, aesthetics, and the systems that regulate economic and cultural values. Representing the artist’s filmic production is the work Il grano (1975), which documents the different stages of wheat ripening in varying weather conditions in the field with a fixed shot every day, for one minute a day. Agricola Cornelia S.p.A.‘s living archive also includes the installation Nascita e morte del pane (1981-2014), a project created during the years of Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. as a reflection on bread, an object imagined by Baruchello as a body during the various stages of life (chained bread, sliced bread), starting from birth (bread in swaddling clothes), until its end (buried bread), after which it itself becomes the posthumous narrative of its life (written bread).

DuchampRama. Curated by Galerie Duchamp in collaboration with Centre Pompidou and with the expertise of Jonathan Pouthier.

Centre d’art contemporain d’intérêt national – Galerie Duchamp, Yvetot, Normandy. 11.2022 – 05.2023

DuchampRama, curated by Galerie Duchamp in collaboration with Centre Pompidou and Jonathan Pouthier, head of the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, is a new project of Galerie Duchamp dedicated to video and moving images.

For an entire year from November 2022, the gallery will dedicate a space to the presentation of films by artists from the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou.

The first session where the collections will be explored (November 2022-May 2023) interrogates the Duchampian gesture and its legacy through the history of artists’ films.

Gianfranco Baruchello participates in this session with the projection of the film Verifica incerta (Disperse Exclamatory Phase), in conjunction with a film by Marcel Duchamp, the Rotoreliefs of the Anémic Cinéma, shot in 1926 with the help of Man Ray.

In Verifica incerta, made in collaboration with Alberto Grifi, which is the first Italian experiment of found footage, Marcel Duchamp appears, among the various film clips, filmed by Baruchello as he smokes a cigar and looks directly into the camera.

Gribouillage/Scarabocchio. Da Leonardo da Vinci a Cy Twombly. Curated by Francesca Alberti and Diane Bodart with associate curator Philippe-Alain Michaud. Villa Médicis – Académie de France à Rome, Rome. 03.03.2022 – 22.05.2022. Beaux Arts, Paris. 08.01.2023 – 30.05.2023

The exhibition Gribouillage/Scarabocchio. From Leonardo da Vinci to Cy Twombly, curated by Francesca Alberti and Diane Bodart with the collaboration of Philippe-Alain Michaud as associate curator, explores the many facets of scribbling in the artistic field—from the sketches drawn on the back of paintings to the scribbles that become real works, highlighting one of the most unknown and least controlled aspects of the practice of drawing.

The exhibition presents around 300 original works ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary times and shows how these experimental, transgressive, regressive, and liberating graphic practices, which seem to obey no rules, have always marked the history of artistic creation.

Baruchello is present with a work from 1962, consisting of collages on a wooden board.

The work titled Abstract – Expressionism – Zoologique, through an assemblage peculiar to the artist, juxtaposes clippings taken from the French edition of a 1962 book by Desmond Morris, La biologie de l’art — dedicated to experiments carried out in a Rotterdam Zoo in the late 1950s that investigated chimpanzee drawings—and clippings from a 1961 Cy Twombly exhibition catalogue . The juxtaposition of images and captions is achieved, however, by losing the original connections and going so far as to describe a fragment of a Twombly drawing as if it had been made by a gorilla, present in other images of the work.

Baruchello does not mention the source texts in his work and leaves the ironic association he has made “secret”.

The exhibition is produced by Accademia di Francia in Rome – Villa Medici and the Beaux-Arts in Paris, with the support of Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Rome. The exhibition is developed in two successive presentations, one at the Villa Medici, Rome (2022), and the other at the Beaux-Arts, Paris (2023).

Vita Nuova. New challenges for art in Italy. 1960-1975. Curated by Valerie da Costa. Ville de Nice – Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMAC), Nice. 05.14.2022 – 10.2.2022

The exhibition Vita Nuova. New Challenges for Art in Italy (1960-1975), curated by Valérie Da Costa, explores some of the fundamental passages of the Italian art scene between 1960 and 1975.

The title Vita Nuova evokes the richness and vitality of those fifteen years of creation, which corresponds to the first exhibitions of a new generation of artists born between 1920 and 1940, active in Genoa, Florence, Milan, Rome and Turin from 1960 to 1975, a period marked by the tragic death of the writer, poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). The exhibition celebrates the centenary of his birth, which falls in 2022.

Against the backdrop of an Italy transformed by industrialisation, the economic boom, consumer society, and mass media, this generation of artists proposes new ways of understanding and making art that illustrates a form of “Vita Nuova”, a title borrowed from Dante’s book of the same name, which in addition to being an ode to love, affirms a new way of writing.

The exhibition develops thematically and is organised around three main ideas: a society of the image, reconstruction of nature, and memory of the body.

With Nello spazio della violenza, Baruchello opens the section ‘Une Italie Politique’. Nello spazio della violenza is a political work which tackles the theme of antifascism, which, for Baruchello, was a fundamental component of his approach to art and writing following World War II. This history is made explicit in the work, among many others, of a ‘hung’ Mussolini, reduced to the unrecognizable figure of a silhouetted, emptied, and deformed body. Words, quotations, and minute figures tell the story of those years in Baruchello’s work, and constructs his peculiar, fragmented, and multiple space.

Baruchello is also present in the exhibition with the film Verifica incerta (Disperse Exclamatory Phase), realized in collaboration with Alberto Grifi, which is the first Italian experiment of found footage, being derived from mostly American commercial films from the 1950s and 1960s which werepurchased by the artist for a few thousand Italian lire as they were destined for the pulping mill. Verifica incerta (Disperse Exclamatory Phase) juxtaposes different clips by creating a montage of similar or recurring events that are glued together from different pieces of footage.

Rethinking Nature. Curated by  Kathryn Weir with the associate curator Ilaria Conti. Madre – Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee, museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples. 12.17.2021 – 05.02.2022

The exhibition Rethinking Nature, curated by the Museum’s Artistic Director Kathryn Weir, together with Associate Curator Ilaria Conti, addresses the theme of political ecology understood as the need to build new relationships between human beings and the ecosystem of which they are a part of.

In this exhibition, which included 40 artists and artistic collectives, Gianfranco Baruchello was invited to exhibit Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. (1973-1981), the long-term work which constitutes one of the fields in which he has worked most: the relationship with nature, the environment, plants, and animals.

The room dedicated to Baruchello included three showcases/archives Agricola Cornelia (1-2-3), with materials, documents, organic and inorganic objects, organised according to three themes: food, politics, and animal & vegetable. Questio de aqua et terra (industrial enamels on aluminum in four elements), the series Progetto Kanak (Magie agricole, Magie idrauliche, Magie alimentari, Magie politico-sindacali) inspired by the holistic vision of the Kanak culture of New Caledonia, Agricola Cornelia IV. Vue à vol d’oiseau de l’ensemble (industrial enamels on cardboard) in which Baruchello notes the agricultural use of the land dedicated to his long project, four pieces from the series Costruire una torre al mattino con materiali trovati, and sculptures created through a daily exercise of collecting discarded materials, in which Baruchello combines individual sensitivity and radical imagination to construct new forms of living, all formed part of this exhibition.

Marcel Duchamp. Curated by Susanne Pfeffer. MMK – Museum for Modern Kunst, Francoforte. 04.02.2022 – 10.03.2022

The exhibition Marcel Duchamp, curated by Susanne Pfeffer, presents works covering all phases of the artist’s production from 1902 to 1968.

The exhibition explores Duchamp’s activity by dividing his work into sections: Readymade, Early Works, Caricatures, Cubism, Rotoreliefs, Chess, Rrose Selavy, and the Large Glass.

The exhibition is also enriched by a selection of photographs and documents relating to Marcel Duchamp’s holidays in Italy in the 1960s.

Gianfranco Baruchello is present at the exhibition with a series of his own photographs, documenting the years-long friendship (1962-1968) between the Italian artist and Duchamp, and chronicling the pair’s travels to Bomarzo, Naples and Cadaques between 1963 and 1964. Among the documents in the exhibition, all now belonging to the Marcel Duchamp Fund kept at Fondazione Baruchello (correspondence, photographs, invitations, books, etc.), the selection includes an extract from the film Verifica incerta (Disperse Exclamatory Phase) (Baruchello, Grifi, 1964) “dedicated to Marcel Duchamp”, alongside a postcard sent by Alexina “Teeny” Duchamp, and the telegram announcing the artist’s death on 2 October 1968

Gianfranco Baruchello Psicoenciclopedia possibile. Presentation conference at CIMA – Center for Italian Modern Art, New York. 09.12.2021

One Day Conference
Thursday 9th december 2021 from 2pm to 6pm (EST time)
CIMA Center for Italian Modern Art
421 Broome St 4th floor, New York City

Chairs: Massimiliano Gioni and Nicola Lucchi.
With: Maria Alicata, Franco Baldasso, Raffaele Bedarida, Lara Demori, Bracha L. Ettinger, Sarah Hamill, Sharon Hecker, Teresa Kittler and Carla Subrizi.

Streaming from 8pm to 12pm (Italian time):
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/3204792630

The Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) and the Fondazione Baruchello are pleased to present Gianfranco Baruchello’s Psicoenciclopedia possibile (Possible Psychoencyclopedia) for the first time in the United States.
After two presentations and exhibitions—one in Geneva at the Centre d’Art Contemporain (September 14^th—October17^th 2021), and one in Paris at the Kandinsky Library at the Centre Georges Pompidou (September 25^th — October 24^th 2021) —the work will be presented at the Center for Italian Modern Art through a rich and varied One Day Conference  on December 9^th at the Centre for Italian Modern Art in New York.  Maria Alicata, Franco Baldasso, Raffaele Bedarida, Lara Demori, Bracha L. Ettinger, Sarah Hamill, Sharon Hecker, Teresa Kittler and Carla Subrizi, the President of Fondazione Baruchello, have all been invited to speak for this occasion.

The One Day Conference is organized into two panels, one moderated by Nicola Lucchi, the other by Massimiliano Gioni. This presentation will offer an opportunity to study the process of creating an encyclopedia in the twenty-first century, while also examining the founding themes of Baruchello’s practice. In order to inspect this “little” system—as Baruchello habitually described the development of his own style—the archive, compositions and paintings will be explored as a way to scrutinize the key aspects that affect the creation of an encyclopedia in this century. During the One Day Conference, a series of drawings selected for the occasion will allow the public to delve into Baruchello’s complex system of thought, who, through the transversal nature of languages, has experimented with images, objects, installations, cinema, and writing. The public will also be able to view a copy of Baruchello’s encyclopedia.

In this monumental and complex project that has taken three years to complete, Baruchello has created a new system in which 816 pages of unexpected juxtapositions connect 1,200 entries in the first part of the volume, and 200 tables of images in the second part. Baruchello uses a variety of languages and techniques including paintings, objects, installations, and writing in this project for the public to explore. The written entries are derived from published and unpublished writings, notes, and transcriptions of dreams, while the images are the outcome of a long process of selection and assembly utilizing various pre-existent and current sources.

Could it really be possible to extend knowledge to the point that there is nothing else to know? What logic influences the classification found within encyclopedia’s? What criteria  determines the associations between linguistic definitions and illustrated plates? In Psicoenciclopedia possible , Baruchello looks at these questions and examines the validity of traditional forms of knowledge to create hitherto unseen links between written and visual language. As an artist, he suggests the exploration of unusual identities, creating new meaning and value for the historical model of the encyclopedia. Baruchello’s practice is characterized by the deconstruction of every form of consequential thought and the disconnection from traditional systems of cause and effect. In this work, it is the alphabet that becomes the  tool for reshuffling the most consolidated connections: narrative, visual, and semantic. Baruchello explains that “The Psicoenciclopedia possibile is constructed as if it were a volume in the Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, but it isn’t.”

The One Day Conference about Psicoenciclopedia possible is promoted by Fondazione Baruchello and produced through support from the Italian Council (VII edition, 2019), a programme by the General Directorate of Contemporary Creativity at the Ministry of Culture for the international promotion of Italian art. 1,000 copies of a pocket edition of the volume are currently being printed. The volume will be on display at CIMA and during the One Day Conference.

Useful information
Fondazione Baruchello
Via di Santa Cornelia 695, 00188, Rome
+39 06 3346000 | e. info@fondazionebaruchello.com

Press office
PCM Studio di Paola C. Manfredi
Via Farini, 70, 20159 Milan
press@paolamanfredi.com
Francesca Ceriani
francesca@paolamanfredi.com
T. +39 340 9182004

Gianfranco Baruchello Psicoenciclopedia possibile. Exercises for making it. Curated by Carla Subrizi and Maria Alicata. 25.09 – 24.10.2021

Fondazione Baruchello, with the support of the Italian Council (7^th edition, 2019)—a program for the international promotion of Italian art of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture—presents the cycle of exhibitions and presentations: Psicoenciclopedia possible. Exercises for making it.

Opening: September 25, 2021
Exhibition Action: September 25 – October 24, 2021
Panel Discussion: Sept. 25 5p.m. with Philippe-Alain Michaud, Valérie da Costa, Catherine de Smet, Ernst Van Alphen, Judit Revel and Carla Subrizi. Moderator: Enrico Camporesi

Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Centre Pompidou
Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris

From September 25^th to October 24^th 2021, the Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the Centre Pompidou in Paris presents the exhibition/action Psicoenciclopedia possiblie. Exercises for making it by Gianfranco Baruchello. The project is promoted by the Fondazione Baruchello and realized thanks to the support of the Italian Council (7th edition, 2019),. On September 25^th at 5p.m., in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition/action, the Bibliothèque Kandinsky will host a panel discussion moderated by Enrico Camporesi with participants Philippe-Alain Michaud, Valérie da Costa, Catherine de Smet, Ernst Van Alphen, Judit Revel and Carla Subrizi.

The exhibition/action Psicoenciclopedia possibile. Exercises for making it, curated by Carla Subrizi and Maria Alicata, was devised with the intention of offering a spatio-temporal restitution, in the form of an exhibition and a round table discussion, of the publishing work of the same name which Gianfranco Baruchello worked on between 2017 and 2020, commissioned and published by the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana Fondata da Giovanni Treccani. Baruchello, in his description of the exhibition, eludes any definition of his own work and challenges the identity of the very system of organizing knowledge: “The Psicoenciclopedia possibile is constructed as if it were a volume of the Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, but it is not”,. The volume, comprising 816 pages that narrate and illustrate 1,200 entries in the first part and 200 plates of images in the second part, is an ambitious and unprecedented project of reinterpreting the concept-instrument of encyclopedia, a possible atlas of relations to be built with the “pleasure of thinking,” through a non-exclusionary ars combinatoria. Psicoenciclopedia possiblie. Exercises for making it is presented in the rooms of the Bibliothèque Kandinsky in an installation created for the occasion by Baruchello. The construction of any linguistic vocabulary is an exercise in collective fact, which takes place in the shared exchange of information and mutual participation; similarly, the presentation conceived for the Parisian institution actively involves the public, who are invited to consult and take with them some pages of the book, made available along with “instructions for imagining” their own possible encyclopedia.

The modus operandi underlying the operation of deconstructing and constructing the knowledge of Psicoenciclopedia possibile is the result of continuous research and collection of sources in order to delineate a constellation of relationships between entries–taken from published and unpublished writings, notes, and transcriptions of Baruchello’s dreams–and plates (found images) derived from pre-existing materials. As in all of Baruchello’s paintings, sculptures, or installations, the encyclopedic project, which uses the alphabet as a device for revising knowledge, also acts positively in showcasing unexpected diversities, discontinuities, and connections (narrative, visual, semantic) side by side. This practice of assembling words, images or objects has characterized the work of the painter, writer, and filmmaker since the late 1950s and early 1960s, the possible literally being his field of investigation: the blank; the boxes/showcases; the works on plexiglass; the assembling of different, partly found materials; the writing as research; and above all, the reduction in the painting  of images, words and cutouts, to the point of almost illegibility, are only some aspects of Baruchello’s research that has made him one of the most daring and provocative experimenters of the 20th century.

The panel discussion on September 25^th (5p.m., Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Paris), curated by Carla Subrizi, is conceived as a way of expanding the experience of Psicoenciclopedia possibile, and as an opportunity to explore some of the pivotal aspects that affect both the project of an encyclopedia in the 21st century, and the founding themes of Baruchello’s practice, such as the archive, montage, and painting as–as Baruchello himself describes the search for his own language–a “small system” Moderated by Enrico Camporesi, head of research and documentation at the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, center of experimental cinema, the participants invited to discuss these issues are art historians Philippe-Alain Michaud, Valérie da Costa and Catherine de Smet, artist Ernst van Alphen, philosopher Judit Revel, and President of the Fondazione Baruchello as well as art historian, Carla Subrizi.

The Parisian presentation of Psicoenciclopedia possibile, promoted by Fondazione Baruchello and realized thanks to the support of the Italian Council (7^th edition, 2019), is part of a cycle of exhibitions and presentations that also involves the Center d’Art Contemporain Genève (from 14^th September to 17^th October 2021) and Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) in New York (from 6^th to 12^th December 2021). On the occasion of the openings in Geneva, Paris, and New York, 1,000 copies of a “pocket” edition of the volume are being printed.

Gianfranco Baruchello, Psicoenciclopedia possibile Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Project space. 14.09 – 17.10.2021

Fondazione Baruchello, con il sostegno dell’Italian Council (VII edizione, 2019), programma di promozione internazionale dell’arte italiana della Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura, presenta il ciclo di mostre e presentazioni:

Gianfranco Baruchello
Psicoenciclopedia possibile

GINEVRA, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève:
15 settembre – 17 ottobre 2021

PARIGI, Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Centre Georges Pompidou:
25 settembre – 24 ottobre 2021

NEW YORK, CIMA – Center for Italian Modern Art
6 – 12 dicembre 2021

Fondazione Baruchello presenta il progetto di Gianfranco Baruchello Psicoenciclopedia possibile. Esercizi per farla, realizzato grazie al sostegno dell’Italian Council (VII edizione, 2019), programma di promozione internazionale dell’arte italiana della Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura. Fulcro del ciclo di mostre e presentazioni è l’opera omonima Psicoenciclopedia possibile, una reinterpretazione dell’identità stessa dell’enciclopedia, realizzata da Gianfranco Baruchello tra il 2017 e il 2020, commissionata e pubblicata dall’Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana Fondata da Giovanni Treccani. Il primo incontro espositivo è ospitato dal Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève dal 14 settembre al 17 ottobre 2021, seguito dal Centre Georges Pompidou di Parigi dal 25 settembre al 24 ottobre 2021 e dal CIMA – Center for Italian Modern Art di New York che conclude il palinsesto dal 6 al 12 dicembre 2021

Artista trasversale, che ha usato linguaggi e tecniche differenti, dalla pittura, all’oggetto, all’installazione e alla scrittura, con questo imponente e complesso progetto, in 816 pagine Baruchello ha realizzato un sistema complesso che connette attraverso adiacenze inattese 1200 voci (nella prima parte del volume) e 200 tavole di immagini (nella seconda parte). Le voci derivano da scritti editi e inediti, appunti e trascrizioni di sogni, mentre le immagini sono il risultato di un lungo lavoro di selezione e montaggio a partire da diverse fonti, in parte preesistenti.

È davvero possibile estendere la conoscenza fino a esaurirla completamente? Secondo quali logiche sono ordinate le informazioni che ci trasmettono le enciclopedie? Quali criteri seguono le associazioni di definizioni linguistiche e tavole illustrate? Con Psicoenciclopedia possibile Gianfranco Baruchello si pone queste domande e mette in questione le forme tradizionali del sapere per creare inedite connessioni tra linguaggio scritto e visivo. Come artista, espone la propria interpretazione del mondo e invita a indagare identità inconsuete, creando anche un nuovo senso e valore dello storico modello di impresa editoriale che è l’enciclopedia. È propria, infatti, alla pratica di Baruchello, la decostruzione di ogni forma di consequenzialità e il disinnesco dei tradizionali sistemi di causa e effetto. In questo lavoro, proprio l’alfabeto, è stato il dispositivo utile a scompaginare le connessioni (narrative, visive, semantiche) più consolidate. “La Psicoenciclopedia possibile è costruita come se fosse un volume dell’Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, ma non lo è”, dice Baruchello.

La politica e la storia, il sogno e il rimosso, la natura e l’ambiente, il racconto e la memoria trovano in quest’opera forme inedite di convergenza e inattesi accostamenti attraverso l’instancabile curiosità che ha portato Baruchello a interessarsi a ogni aspetto del sapere. Come in ogni altro suo lavoro, pittura, scultura o installazione, anche questa volta, seppur in un volume, l’artista si avventura nel territorio dell’incerto, del “piacere di pensare” e delle aperture possibili di ogni sistema assoluto del sapere e del vedere.

Le mostre che avranno luogo a partire da questo recente lavoro di Gianfranco Baruchello, sono quindi concepite come installazioni che fanno esplodere il volume nello spazio, all’interno delle quali il visitatore è invitato a produrre propri percorsi o addirittura a progettare una enciclopedia fa-da-te. Le tavole rotonde che affiancheranno le mostre costituiscono invece l’occasione per molteplici approfondimenti sia sul processo che ha determinato il progetto di una enciclopedia nel XXI secolo, sia su alcuni aspetti del lavoro di Baruchello: l’archivio, il montaggio, la pittura come un piccolo sistema così come Baruchello ama descrivere la ricerca del proprio linguaggio.

Pittore, scrittore, filmmaker, Baruchello fin dalla fine degli anni Cinquanta e soprattutto dai primi anni Sessanta, assembla in ogni suo lavoro, parole, immagini o oggetti alla ricerca di possibilità sempre inedite del pensare e dell’immaginare. Il bianco, le scatole/vetrina, le opere su plexiglass, il montare materiali diversi e in parte trovati, la scrittura come ricerca e soprattutto la riduzione nella pittura, fino quasi all’illeggibilità, di immagini, parole, ritagli, sono soltanto alcuni aspetti di una ricerca che ha reso Baruchello uno dei più audaci e provocatori sperimentatori del XX secolo.

L’edizione del 2020 del volume Psicoenciclopedia possibile ha avuto una tiratura di 250 esemplari e XV prove d’artista. L’opera è racchiusa in un cofanetto insieme a una serigrafia dell’artista, che propone una sorta di “riflessione” intorno a una delle tavole, la n. 128, e al libro Note a margine. L’arte come esperimento del sapere di Carla Subrizi, che racconta la genesi del lavoro e offre al lettore alcune possibili chiavi di lettura per addentrarvisi. In concomitanza con le presentazioni e le mostre di Ginevra, Parigi e New York, è in corso di stampa una edizione “minor” del volume in 1000 esemplari.

Il volume sarà esposto in occasione delle mostre e delle tavole rotonde.

Press office PCM Studio, All rights reserved.

Photo: Julien Gremaud

Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. On the growing of an ideal place. 11.12.2018 – 08.02.2019

An exhibition created on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Fondazione Baruchello 1998-2018
curated by Maria Alicata and Daniela Zanoletti
Opening: Tuesday, December 11, 7 p.m.
Via del Vascello 35, 00152, Rome

Well, my idea then was that all of this would be art, art and not economics, that art could become an indicative example in the satisfaction of hunger as a human need on a purely human basis, no longer tied to exploitation, and that in the end there would be so many potatoes that we could give them away to everyone.
– Gianfranco Baruchello

Twenty years after the birth of the Fondazione Baruchello, the exhibition Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. presents for the first time the ideas and outcomes of what was one of Gianfranco Baruchello’s most significant works: an artistic, economic, livestock and agricultural project that later became the ideal basis of the Fondazione itself.

In 1983, recounting the experience of this long undertaking (1973-1981) that had sought to reconcile art with agriculture and animal husbandry, Baruchello spoke of everything that he believed would be art: art as the satisfaction of basic needs, “potatoes” that could be given to everyone;  art, therefore, as utopia—political and poetic action at the same time. With the birth of the Fondazione, this idea was translated into the very donation of works and goods to be placed at the basis of the cultural enterprise. No longer a cultivation of vegetables, wheat, or beets, but the more metaphorical “cultivation” of ideas, actions to be carried out, training and resources to be made available for the younger generation—this became the concrete and practical premise of the Fondazione Baruchello.

Since 1998, through an activity that has favored the realization of artist-led seminars, lectures, conferences, exhibitions, performance events, and publications, the Fondazione has built a platform for dialogue, the exchanging of ideas, and research. Artists, philosophers, art historians and scholars have collaborated over the years and participated with proposals and ideas for the creation of a dynamic, ever-renewing heritage of thought that, for the Fondazione, constitutes the very reason for its action.

The exhibition—set up in the premises inaugurated two years ago in the Roman neighborhood of Monteverde Vecchio—intends to solicit a reflection on an inexhaustible process, which, from Agricola Cornelia to the Foundation, is identified not only in the focus of a series of stages, but in the continuous transformation of ideas, motivations, and objectives around which the Fondazione does not stop carrying out its work of research, study and presentation.

Curated by Maria Alicata and Daniela Zanoletti, the exhibition presents works from the 1970s and unpublished documents belonging to the Fondazione Baruchello collection, all centered around the idea of Agricola Cornelia.

Works on aluminum and canvas, drawings and sculptures alongside photographic documentation, films, photocopies, biodynamic experiments, objects, documents and records of agricultural and livestock activities, and diaries from 1973-1981 come together in an installation that, for the first time, restores the complexity of an activity that placed art and life on the same plane.

In January, a series of meetings will be a further moment of reflection to interrogate what has been done in these 20 years, and to understand what art and the current era require today, and how much the two concepts are intertwined.