Brigitte March Niedermair with Horizon. Transition Giorgio Morandi | “are you still there” in Bologna

The Museo Morandi continues the promotion of its own collection through a programme of temporary exhibitions showing the work of Giorgio Morandi alongside that of artists who have in various ways explored and reinterpreted his approach to art. After the exhibitions dedicated in recent years to Bernd & Hilla Becher, Alexandre Hollan, Wayne Thiebaud, Tacita Dean and Rachel Whiteread, it will be the turn of Brigitte March Niedermair from 15 November to 3 April 2016, who will be presenting two series of photographic works in dialogue with the collection of the museum in a show called Horizon.
The works on display at the MAMbo – Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, which houses the collections of the Museo Morandi, spring from two different lines of research, carried out in places that are not just physically but conceptually distant. On the one hand Giorgio Morandi’s studio on Via Fondazza, a snug and intimate place, custodian of the mystery of his poetics, and on the other the pyramids of Egypt, imposing and majestic works of funerary architecture,
repositories of the greatest mysteries of the civilizations of the past.
And yet there is an unseen but coherent thread that connects these two lines of research: the study of the horizon, that invisible mental space which marks the limits of the visible and which symbolically represents the boundary of an inner spiritual quest.
The series of photos transition_Giorgio Morandi (2012-13) starts out from a reflection on the painting of Giorgio Morandi and his ability to speak to us about an open universe, one that goes beyond the dimension of the individual object and poses continual questions rather than providing answers. Through the eye of her camera Niedermair has taken a close look at the objects in
the artist’s studio, in an attempt to understand the tensions, the emotions and the complexity of his apparently simple still lifes.
“I wanted to see through his eyes, to feel the same emotional tensions, chase after his forms and put myself to the test by literally using his objects in the space, which is nothing but a mental space.” With these words the artist from Alto Adige explains the origin of her project, in which she went many times to the studio on Via Fondazza, entering into intimate relationship with Morandi’s models. She spent whole days peering at them with her lens, with respect
and modesty, taking blurred pictures in which the only element in focus is the sharp and clearly defined line of the horizon, i.e. of the plane of composition, as if it were an inner horizon, a metaphor for an open universe in which to lose oneself in order to find nothing but the essential.
The object, in Brigitte’s photos, loses the significance that it has in Morandi’s works; it is no longer a pretext to mull over the formal and geometric aspects of the composition, but becomes a mysterious presence that at a certain point even disappears to leave room just for the horizontal line, the ultimate limit to which we can push our vision, symbol of a human space in continual motion, but always in equilibrium.
“are you still there” concentrates on one of the largest works of funerary architecture in history: the pyramids of Egypt, monumental and extraordinary constructions that are a symbol of the passage between this life and the next. Brigitte March Niedermair’s research, carried out from 2011 to 2014, after arduous and complex investigations in Egypt, probes the horizon of the
pyramids, a mysterious boundary between earth and sky, between visible and invisible. In some photos this seems to have faded, to have become almost impossible to find. Heaps of stones, piled up after the collapse of the pyramid, trace lines with sinuous forms that symbolically represent the point of transition between the material and the spiritual world.
With her view camera always pointed at the sky, at Saqqara, Abusir, Dahshur, Meidum, Hawara and el-Lahun, Niedermair went in search of the horizon of these mysterious constructions, as if wishing to investigate the line that separates life from death, the very fine line that marks the point of division, according to Egyptian mythology, between Nut, goddess of the sky, and Geb,
god of the earth.
In an extremely refined photographic operation, the artist presents her personal vision of the pyramids, explored from a completely new viewpoint, showing us images that do not speak of monuments and architectural complexes, but of spirituality and energy, of the quest for the inner and secret horizon that runs through the existence of each one of us.
Three works from the “are you still there” cycle anticipate the exhibition at the Museo Morandi and have been presented beforehand as part of the major Egypt. Ancient splendour exhibition under way at the Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna, which presents most of the Egyptian collections of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Dutch National Museum of Antiquities)
in Leiden: 500 items dating from the Pre-Dynastic period to Roman times. Brigitte March Niedermair’s photographs are thus placed in original juxtaposition to the finds, some of which come from where the pictures were taken.
This preview is part of the programme of events accompanying the exhibition at the Museo Archeologico involving various sites of the Istituzione Bologna Musei, which have analysed and fragmented a theme that is both fascinating and yet apparently unconnected to Egypt, adopting and enriching it alongside the main exhibition.
The publication of a catalogue is planned for Horizon, edited by Gianfranco Maraniello, with a wide selection of images of the work of Brigitte March Niedermair and of the exhibition in Bologna. The volume will be presented on the occasion of ART CITY Bologna and Arte Fiera 2016.
Biography
Brigitte March Niedermair (Merano, 1971) has been taking photographs for over 20 years, during which time she has gained a great deal of experience in the fields of both art and fashion. She started out conducting research in the area of staged photography, investigating the question of the female body with profound ethical commitment, and has subsequently taken her work in
a more strictly conceptual direction.
WORKS
transition_Giorgio Morandi (2012 - 2013)
Brigitte March Niedermair
transition_Giorgio Morandi, 2012-2013
20 c-print, cm 57 x 72,5
“are you still there” (2011 - 2014)
Brigitte March Niedermair
“are you still there” (2011 – 2014)
16 works
(check list attached)

Brigitte March Niedermair
Horizon
transition_Giorgio Morandi | “are you still there”
curated by Gianfranco Maraniello
Istituzione Bologna Musei | Museo Morandi | MAMbo – Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna
November 5, 2015 – April 3, 2016
General information: www.mambo-bologna.org