Recounting the Present - Works of the Gallarate National Visual Arts Awards from the MA*GA Museum collection

Istituto Italiano di Cultura di #londra invites the MA*GA Museum for an exhibition dedicated to the promotion of Italian #contemporaryart through the recent artworks of its collection.
The MA*GA Museum and the Gallarate National Visual Arts Awards
The MA*GA Museum, open since 1966, is one of the most important #contemporaryart museums in Italy and it now has the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities as a partner. It houses a collection of more than six thousand works of art hosted in its five thousand square meter premises in Gallarate, a town halfway between Malpensa Airport and Milan, and at a branch in Legnano, located in the historical Leone da Perego Palace.
The origin of the Museum goes back to 1949, when the Gallarate National Visual Arts Awards was created, with a view to establishing a #contemporaryart museum by purchasing the works exhibited in the various editions of the #event. The first edition dates from May 25th 1950, while we have recently celebrated the 25th.
The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art was opened in 1966 on the occasion of the 8th edition of the Gallarate Awards. In 1973 the Gallery was moved and enlarged, while the establishment of the MA*GA Museum in its current headquarters was finally carried out in 2010. In more than sixty years since its foundation, the MA*GA has organized the everyday museum activities and twenty-five editions of the Gallarate Awards, paying particular attention to a variety of artistic languages from a perspective which gives prominence to the study of the most significant contemporary expressions. Among the themes of the most recent editions we would like to mention: Terzo Paesaggio. #fotografia Italiana Oggi (2009), Long Play (2012) and Urban Mining/Rigenerazioni Urbane (2016).
The Exhibition
The exhibition is part of a more global program celebrating the 50th anniversary of the MA*GA Museum. It displays some of the most interesting projects of production and acquisition concluded between 2009 and 2016, during the last three editions of the Gallarate Awards. The design of the exhibition guides the spectator through the documentary evidence of a series of working methods characterized by a complex narrative attitude and a variety of approaches, ranging from the production of context-related and site-specific art works to long-term research projects and historical or biographical experiences.
The Works
Moira Ricci, 20.12.53-10.08.04, 2007, 12 photos
20.12.53-10.08.04 is a work inspired by an autobiographical #event. #moiraricci creates her works by means of a series of meticulous photomontages: perfectly dressed in vintage clothes, she sneaks into the photos taken of her mother, who passed away untimely. In the sequence of photos witnessing moments of daily life, the only constant presences are the mother, who is portrayed in different stages of her life, and Moira herself, who on the contrary is always the same age in spite of the changes in style and looking at her lost mother with a mixture of melancholy and resignation. This last detail suggests to the attentive observer the understanding of the personal and biographical drama of the artist.
Luigi Presicce, La Sepoltura di Adamo, 2012, video
In Sepoltura di Adamo, the first episode of the cycle entitled La Leggenda della Vera Croce, Presicce continues to go further into his long-lasting work of rereading of traditional myths and histories by means of the staging of tableaux vivants, which are later videoed or photographed. This work is inspired by the legend of the holy wood used for the construction of the cross of Jesus. According to the tradition, the wood came from the tree grown on Adam’s grave and cut down by order of King Salomon to build the Temple. As in all his works, also in this particular one, Presicce takes over the role of the main character in an image built through a careful direction which proceeds by stratifications derived from myths, art history, folklore and popular beliefs which are at the same time mystical and mystifying.
Riccardo Arena, Duplice Morte Ellero ed Ecosistema Visivo, 2012, installation
This work is a reflection on the theme of identity and on how human beings can actually define its nature. The installation is composed of different elements: photos, archive materials, documents and concept maps. The central core of the whole work revolves around an investigation: the death of a mysterious character, who shot himself with a two-pistol device opening fire simultaneously thanks to a system similar to the mugshot designed by the inventor Umberto Ellero, and whose disfigured face makes him now unrecognizable. Each element of this complex work is a clue to the next one, in a continuous query by the spectator about the identity of a single person being referable to its empirical form. The project is therefore a sort of labyrinth in which each new element is superimposed to the previous one, enhancing in the spectator a feeling of bewilderment and suggesting how knowledge is not an instrument of simplification of reality but rather a search path.
Luca Bertolo, Gallarate Hardcore, 2016, 16 drawings
Luca Bertolo has observed some minute aspects of the ecosystem of the town of Gallarate and the natural environment along the river Arno that flows near the MA*GA Museum and collected fragments of scrap materials, organic remains, leaves and shells from the river bed and banks. Such
poor materials become the subject of a series of drawings, lyrical images recalling the pictures in the naturalistic treatises of the 17th century. These works attach value to leftovers, to things that are forgotten and neglected, thanks to their careful and devoted depiction in drawings which emphasize the amazing and mysterious vision typical of these small fragments.
Marzia Migliore, Made in Italy, 2010, video installation
In the last few years Marzia Migliore has dedicated herself to a wide-ranging research on the theme of work. In this particular case she takes an interest in the industrial history of Gallarate, its impressive textile production and some aspects of the current crisis and reconversion projects. The images of urban decay and suffering that the buildings abandoned by bankrupt companies show are placed side by side with those documenting the purification of the water of the river Arno in Gallarate. Today the Arno is not polluted anymore by the industrial waste that used to turn its water into a coloured stream on an almost daily basis and the river is once again home to the native fauna. This process of degeneration – regeneration is the central point of a lyrical and evocative video installation based on the poetics of the fragment, where a series of details suggest the contradictions of the development and the crisis of this segment of industrial culture and history.

Recounting the Present
Works of the Gallarate National Visual Arts Awards
from the MA*GA Museum collection
2009 – 2016
Curated by Emma Zanella and Alessandro Castiglioni

www.iiclondra.esteri.it/IIC_Londra/it/