Cut a rug a round square Curated by Jessica Stockholder

The American artist curates an exhibition of works from the collection of ”la Caixa” Foundation and CRT Foundation for Modern and Contemporary Art and turns them into a large environmental installation.

From February 11
Free admission
Thursday and Friday, 3PM – 8PM, last admission 7.30PM
OGR Cult, OGR - Officine Grandi Riparazioni
Corso Castelfidardo 22, Turin 

Turin 10 January 2021. Many times has the "end" of painting been declared and just as many times its "rebirth" has been attested: with the desire to investigate the limits and contemporary potentialities of painting, from February 11 OGR - Officine Grandi Riparazioni presents Cut a rug a round square, a new site-specific commission developed for the former industrial spaces of OGR Turin by the American artist Jessica Stockholder.

Chosen for her peculiar perspective, Jessica Stockholder has played over the last twenty years a crucial role in the ongoing debate on painting and its limits, expanding the concept in a relentless dialogue amid various media, between form and space, by forcing the limits of painting towards the sculptural and installation dimension.

In her work, the artist combines apparently disparate and ordinary objects to create complex installations that hoard and stratify materials and colors: plastic bags and containers, extension cords, lumber, carpets, and furniture: in her hands, these often-neglected objects recover aesthetic and formal qualities in a practice reminiscent of abstract expressionism, color field painting, and minimalism.

For the project set up inside Binario 1 of OGR Cult, the area of OGR dedicated to art and culture, the artist #jessicastockholder converted into an exceptional curator and created a unique installation with works from two important collections: the Collection of Contemporary Art "la Caixa" of Barcelona, and that of the CRT Foundation for Modern and Contemporary Art, whose works are on permanent loan to the Turin museums Gam - Gallery of Modern Art and Castello di Rivoli, Museum of Contemporary Art. 

To plan her route across the rich heritage at her disposal, the artist developed a concept that is both rigorous and poetic: "I am exploring how the generally rectilinear geometry inherent in the contour, or edge, of paintings, generates meaning both inside and outside the paintings. - states #jessicastockholder - In relation to both their exposure and internal mechanisms, paintings make use of geometry and its resonance with the scale and form of the human body. (...) Casting a glance through the collections, I was struck by the many works in which the circle and square intersect. Often these works literally feature circles and squares themselves. I began to think of the representation of the human body as a kind of circle within the square, as in Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. The paintings are themselves usually characterized by rectilinear geometries. What happens inside pushes against the edges. The edges are both literal and abstract and are defined by the end of the material support, but the rectangle, identified as a mapping, is understood by virtue of abstraction."

Combining works of disparate production and origin, the artist investigates the ways of painting and its categorical definitions across genre boundaries, studying its literal and metaphorical edges.

Works range from Directions by Vito Acconci, a photograph documenting the exhausting performance of a man with his arms and legs spread to evoke the Vitruvian Man, to Combustion by Aurelio Amendola, whose shots portray Alberto Burri in the act of melting plastic with a flashlight to create a circle in a square. From Bonded Eternmale, Monica Bonvicini's installation of two chairs covered in studded black leather exhibited on a circular red carpet, to A REMOVAL OF THE CORNER OF A RUG IN USE by Lawrence Weiner where written words protrude from the surface of the wall like paint does on his canvas. From 9 to 5 by Edward Ruscha, who painted the time cycle of a working day trapped inside a claustrophobic rectangle to Undercurrent (Red) by Mona Hatoum where the floor surface acts as a pictorial plane for a large carpet of electric cables. And again, among others, the works of Marlene Dumas, Richard Tuttle, Tracey Emin, Diego Perrone, and Jessica Stockholder herself, are exhibited in a display specially designed by the artist who succeeded in transforming the entire exhibition into a work of art in itself, a large environmental installation that evokes, in an experiential form, the clash between the circle and the square as an image of the productive clash between rationality and imagination, order and superabundance, body and idea. 

Cut a rug a round square is an opportunity for the public to admire, in complete safety and free of charge, in the spaces of OGR, a treasure preserved by the city's museums and enriched over the years by the CRT Foundation, with a newfangled interpretation from the point of view of an artist across the works of yet another international collection. The exhibition focuses on the theme of painting, dear to both collections, which have a rich heritage of pictorial works, by taking the cue from one of the most discussed and loved media – even by the more general audience. Cut a rug a round square reshapes the boundaries of this discipline and weaves a discourse that takes from the forms and phantasmagorias of painting, keys to reading the contemporary world, inviting visitors to lose themselves in a world of shapes and colors. 

Jessica Stockholder (1959, Seattle, WA. Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois) has exhibited widely in museums and galleries internationally. Her work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; MoCA Los Angeles; MoMA San Francisco; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The British Museum, London; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include Stuff Matters at the Central Museum, Utrecht and Relational Aesthetics at The Contemporary Austin, Austin in 2019. 

OGR: FROM EX-WORKSHOP FOR TRAINS TO SPACE FOR ARTISTIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE HEART OF THE CITY

Former train workshops built in the nineteenth century, OGR was reborn as a workshop of ideas, creativity and innovation, after the major redevelopment work of the CRT Foundation which invested over 100 million euros. Inaugurated in September 2017 on an area of ​​35,000 square meters in the heart of Turin, it has become one of the most productive and dynamic centers of production and experimentation in the cultural, artistic and technological fields, as well as one of the greatest examples of venture philanthropy in Europe. In the first two years of activity, OGR welcomed over half a million visitors, involved over 200 artists, offered more than 20 exhibitions, 70 concerts and 90 OGR Public Program events to the public. Site-specific works and personal exhibitions of some of the most important names in contemporary art were created, while heterogeneous protagonists of the world music scene took turns on the OGR stage. Significant international collaborations have also been launched: with the Tate Modern in London, the British Council and the “la Caixa” Foundation in Barcelona.

On June 25, 2019, the OGR project was completed with the opening of the Tech area: a new hub for scientific, technological and industrial research, able to attract partners and specialized operators from all over the world, with the aim of catalyzing half a billion euros in investments and 1,000 new start-ups to be accelerated in twenty years. The collaboration with Techstars in 2020 and 2021, global leader in supporting the growth and development of start-ups and based in Colorado, has led to OGR events of international importance, such as the #torino Startup Week and the OGR Global Summit, and has laid the foundations for the first acceleration program in Europe dedicated to smart mobility, now in its second edition. In December 2019, OGR and Microsoft signed an agreement to promote technological innovation and research in the country. The goal of the agreement is to allow the OGR Tech business community to access innovative technologies and Microsoft's global network through a partnership with Microsoft for Startups.

2021 will see the third edition of the Endeavor Italia: Elevator scale-up program take place at OGR Tech. The six-month program is developed at OGR Turin with the support of Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT and EY and is aimed at helping entrepreneurs to grow their companies and activate international contacts.