It is undeniable that the shapes of certain buildings can influence the state of mind of a human being, triggering different feelings, from anxiety, awe and fear, to happiness, joy and coziness. For example, it may happen that a low and rectangular building with rows of windows may call to mind a school we attended when we were children and generate nightmarish visions of teachers we didn't like; hemispherical igloos may instead immediately prompt us to think about protection from the elements and from danger.
Maybe moving from these architectural considerations, the Milan-based non-profit institution Pirelli HangarBicocca announced it will organise this Autumn an unprecedented exhibition of igloos by Arte Povera pioneer Mario Merz.
Born in 1925 in Milan, Merz started drawing on different materials during World War II while under arrest and confined in jail for being part of anti-Fascist group Giustizia e Libertà. He gradually moved onto oil on canvas in the '50s and then became more experimental in the '60s, when he combined different materials and objects with his canvases, becoming assimilated with the other representatives of the movement defined by Italian art critic Germano Celant as "Arte Povera".
In 1968 Merz started creating igloos building a metal skeleton and then covering it with fragments of clay, wax, mud, glass, umbrellas, burlap and bundles of branches; at times, he also added political or literary phrases in neon tubing.
Merz continued working on the igloos throughout his life, tackling through these primordial habitations different issues, such as home and nomadic life, safety and security, regeneration and vitality, physical and conceptual space, individuality and collectivity.
Curated by Vicente Todolí, Artistic Director of Pirelli HangarBicocca (Via Chiese 2, Milan), and organised in collaboration with the Fondazione Merz, "Igloos" (25th October 2018 to 24th February 24, 2019, so there will be the chance to visit it also for people going to Milan Fashion Week...) will feature Merz's iconic structures displayed over 5,500 square metres, the main idea is indeed offering to visitors the possibility of moving in a unique landscape of great visual impact.
Dating from 1968 until the end of his life, the pieces selected to be included in the event come from numerous private collections and international museums, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Tate Modern in London, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.
Vicente Todolí stated in a press release about the exhibition: "As its starting point, the exhibition 'Igloos' takes Mario Merz’s solo show curated by Harald Szeemann in 1985 at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, where all the types of igloos produced up until that point were brought together to be arranged 'as a village, a town, a 'Città irreale' in the large exhibition hall,' as Szeemann states. Our exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca will be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-live that experience - but expanded from 12 to more than 30 igloos - created by one of the most important artists of the post-war generation."
The show opens with "La Goccia d'Acqua" (The Drop of Water, 1987), the largest igloo (12 meters diameter) ever produced by Merz for an internal exhibition space, conceived on the occasion of his solo show at the CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bordeaux.
In the space of the Navate, the exhibition will instead display pieces in chronological order, starting from the first buildings such as "Giap's Igloo", decorated with a saying by General Vo Nguyen Giap of North Vietnam - "If the enemy masses his forces, he loses ground. If he scatters, he loses force", to "Acqua scivola" (1969).
The next section will include "Marisa's Igloo" (1972), dedicated to the artist's wife, and "If the hoar frost grip thy tent Thou wilt give thanks when night is spent" (Ezra Pound; 1978).
In the '80s, the igloos became more complex, doubling, tripling or intersecting, and the curator selected from this decade "Igloo del Palacio de las Alhajas" (1982) and "Chiaro Oscuro" (1983). "Untitled" (1999), created for the museum park on the occasion of the solo show at the Fundação de Serralves, represents instead the '90s.
Through this group of works, the exhibition reveals the most innovative aspects and themes of Merz's research, his observations on the transformation of nature and human life and his passion for certain scientific and mathematical themes (remember his obsession with spiralling forms and the Fibonacci sequence?), and his use of natural and industrial materials.
The "Igloos" show may prove inspiring also fashion fans and prompt them to rediscover a connection between Merz and fashion: in 1996, in occasion of the first Biennale of Florence, Merz collaborated indeed with German fashion designer Jil Sander.
Assigned an individual pavilion designed by architect Arata Isozaki, Sander and Merz transformed it into a wind tunnel of sheer white fabric twisted and filled with blowing leaves. An oculus allowed viewers to gaze into a vortex of blowing leaves and flowers through the length of a suspended fabric cone (that was actually a rigorously formulated mathematical shape calculated by tensile engineers in New York).
The exhibition "Igloos" will not have any direct connections with fashion, but it is definitely relevant to our times, especially when we consider the hostile climate created by the current Italian government and in particular by the Italian Minister for the Interior, engaged in a fascist battle against migrants and refugees.
Merz's igloos may be different one from the other, but there is a link that connects them all - they are not closed to the outside world, but they are open and allow outsiders to come in or insiders to contemplate what surrounds them. "The igloo is a home, a temporary shelter", Merz stated in an interview in 1984, "since I consider that ultimately, today, we live in a very temporary era, for me the sense of the temporary coincides with this name: igloo". Maybe come this Autumn Merz's igloos will turn into symbolic safe havens against those political forces intent on sowing the seeds of hate and racism and denying shelter and refuge to people in need.
Image credits for this post
1.
Mario Merz
Acqua scivola, 1969
Installation view, GNAM - Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna e contemporanea, Rome, 2017
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: © Silvio Scafoletti
2.
Mario Merz
Auf dem Tisch, der hineinstösst in das Herz des Iglu, 1974
Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2008
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: © Paolo Pellion
3.
Mario Merz
Auf dem Tisch, der hineinstösst in das Herz des Iglu, 1974 (detail)
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: Angelika Kauffman, 1974
4.
Mario Merz
Senza titolo, 1985
Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2009
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: © Claudio Cravero
5.
Mario Merz
Senza titolo, 1991
Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2005
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: © Paolo Pellion
6.
Mario Merz
Le case girano intorno a noi o noi giriamo intorno alle case?, 1994
Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2005
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: © Paolo Pellion
7.
Mario Merz
Senza titolo, 1999
Installation view, Fundação de Serralves, Porto, 1999
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: Rita Burmester
8.
Mario Merz
Senza titolo, 1999
Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2010
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: © Paolo Pellion
9.
Mario Merz
Spostamenti della terra e della luna su un asse, 2003
Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2011
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: © Paolo Pellion
10.
Mario Merz
Igloo di Giap, 1968
Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2018
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: Renato Ghiazza
11.
Mario Merz
Is space bent or straight?, 1973
Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2018
Courtesy Fondazione Merz, Turin
Photo: Renato Ghiazza
12 and 13.
Mario Merz
Exhibition view, Kunsthaus Zürich, 1985
Courtesy Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2011.M.30)
Photo: Balthasar Burkhardt
14.
Mario Merz
Schaffhausen (CH)
Comments