ART UP 2/17 – WOLFGANG TILLMANS
curated by Enrico De Pascale

Wolfgang Tillmans, Paper drop (Krischnamurti) II
2007, C-print, 50,8×61 cm
Bergamo, Collezione Banca Popolare di Bergamo

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ROCHELLE GOLDBERG

The Cyclops:
Binocular vision is the combination of visual impulses from two separate eyes that enable three-dimensional perception. The Cyclops has a single oculus, and thus inhabits a two-dimensional world, where the conditioning of a three-dimensional awareness occurs through a learned feeling for things. Sensorial sight is then re-informed as a haptic encounter. The focused stare anticipates touch to reify the visual field.

Rochelle Goldberg

On Thursday 6th April, The Blank invites at The Blank Kitchen | Cook with the artist, a culinary event, organized at DOMUS Bergamo, located in Piazza Dante, during which will be proposed an artist menu, born from the meeting of creativity, professionalism and contemporary art.

Protagonist of the event is the artist Diego Marcon that, together with the students of the Scuola Alberghiera of Clusone, will cook for the guests neofolk specials, fusion of the rich Lombard gastronomic tradition with supermarket packaged food, intended as post-industrial experimentations. During the evening Marco will interact with the audience, explaining his work in an informal and direct way.

The menu (with vegetarian options)
STARTERS:
– bratwurst stick in cornflakes crust with balsamic vinegar, cream and shallot cream
– mini hamburger with corn cakes
– pasta salad with strawberries, berries and porcini mushrooms biscuit
– casoncello in Grana Padano crust
MAIN COURSES:
– fried pizzoccheri in the can
– cordon bleu coated in Fonzies breadcrumbs
PUDDING:
– beignet with nutella cream and Haribo gummy bears

Reservation required (max 30 people)
Contribution: 22,00 euros

The event is made possible by the precious support of Azienda vinicola Castello Bonomi Franciacorta (Coccaglio – Brescia) and MOGI caffè (Bergamo).

“Ottetto” is a serie of 8 exhibitions organized by “L+R” (Adelio Leoni e Roger Rota) in collaboration with Ars Arte+Libri

* 01.06 – 01.12.2017
Marco Grimaldi
Anemos, Adelio Leoni

* 01.13 – 01.19.2017
Alfredo Colombo
Når Mitt Øie, Trett Av Møye, Norske Traditional

* 01.20 – 01.26.2017
Paolo Facchinetti
Preghiera, Roger Rota

* 01.27 – 02.02.2017
Audelio Carrara
Fairest Isle, Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

* 02.03 – 02.09.2017
Franco Bianchetti
Si Dolce è ‘l Tormento, Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

* 02.10 – 02.16.2017
Domenico Pievani
Sommernatt Ved Fjorden, Ketil Bjørnstad

* 02.17 – 02.23.2017
Manuela Manzini
Flow My Tears, John Dowland (1563 -1626)

* 03.24 – 03.03.2017
Cinzia Benigni
Lascia Ch’io Pianga, Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759)

Speakers: Marcello Jori and Giacinto Di Pietrantonio

Set in the rural Taleggio Valley in northern Italy, the NAHR program offers a lively space to productively think and create, collaborate and interact, and our residents take full advantage of the surrounding natural landscapes as well as Italy’s rich material culture, which combines vernacular traditions with innovative approaches to space and place, people and their communities.

NAHR is a one-month residency (June) offered to six multidisciplinary professionals and one university level student active in the fields of bio-inspired arts, design, architecture, as well as anthropology, botany, natural sciences, literature, technology, economy or a cross-disciplinary blend of any of these. An international jury will select the residents based on their proposals. Selection criteria will include feasibility, originality, and overall quality of the proposals. Each NAHR residency is supplied without fees; lodging is provided.

Residencies will be awarded according to independent project proposals that best explore the 2017 topic Rock and stone: material culture and cultures of making; candidates are asked to consider how their proposals might best explore how to build dynamic relationships and articulations between the Valley’s ecological resources, socio-cultural practices, and the built environment.

Proposals will consider the Taleggio Valley as a case study and will understand the residency is an opportunity to develop individual research paths. Proposals must aim to explore in-depth the domains of nature and landscape alongside the identity and memory of the valley situated in the heart of the Orobie Alps. Approaches may include the tangible and intangible heritage of rural buildings, artifacts, works, as well as oral stories, knowledge, know-how, traditions, crafts, flavors, habits of the local population and communities that participate, legitimize, perpetuate, and generate an in situ cultural logic of people and place.

Selection priority will be given to proposals that demonstrate both a direct engagement with the surrounding nature and the human habitat, through objectives and methods, and the ability to produce an artifact such as an installation, a thematic path, a sculpture, paintings, texts, food recipes, as new types of landmark on the Valley’s territory.

Applicants need to demonstrate via their portfolio a strong commitment to research and investigation, as well as demonstrate the production of previous work relating to the scope of NAHR. Proposals will include a description of how the Taleggio Valley can be the appropriate case study for ongoing work.

NAHR’s multidisciplinary laboratory propels innovative and creative thinking. Annually dedicating research toward a specific natural element so as to examine the resiliency of the ecological systems located in Taleggio Valley, NAHR is pleased to launch the 2017 summer residency, entitled Rock and Stone: Material Culture and Cultures of Making.

Rock represents the substrate of life, and gives shapes to the natural landscape, conferring character to vernacular built environments. Rock has been used for human tools, and the tradition of shaping and sculpting rocks continues today. Rock is also used to create concrete, that most common of construction materials, and it is at the basis of silicon that gives substance to the hi-tech world, a paradigm shift to mark the onset of the current Anthropocene geological age.

Revealing connections between the natural and artificial, rock is both a repository of the geological past as well as a material that shapes our future.

NAHR’s 2017 theme will explore the material that also constitutes the foundations of the Taleggio Valley. Omnipresent at different scales – from the monumental mountains to the sedimented minerals, from the historical traditional architecture to structural details and small handmade objects – the presence of rock can initiate material and poetical explorations to inspire and encourage creative design actions.
Visits to quarries, walks to the mountain peaks, dedicated lectures by specialists will guide the observation and analysis of the rock surrounding NAHR, and this summer’s residency program expects to explore interactions and relationships within the valley’s ecosystem by offering site-specific investigations and opening up the possibility of a range of inter- and cross-disciplinary research opportunities.

NAHR is particularly invested in expressing the resiliency of nature in four domains:

Regenerative Economy:
Encourages the study of local culture and production/exchange relations extending to observations on local ecosystems in order to generate economic models based on concepts of restoration, regeneration and circularity. These models are ideally exportable to future developments at both local and global scales, promoting a resilient use of natural and cultural resources, eliminating obsolete concepts such as waste and pollution.

Bio-Inspired Design and Architecture:
Development and/or creation of projects and artifacts inspired by form, functions and processes found in the nature of the Valley.

Body Performing Nature:
Artworks production and critical investigations that embody relationships to nature, landscape, sustainability and ecology, extending to all types of performances, dance, choreography and art happenings.

Designed Futures, Technology & New Media:
Use of emerging technology tools/engines: virtual and augmented reality, 3D printing, scanning, artificial intelligence, sensor based systems, robotics, simulations – to investigate the shifting boundary between technology and nature, infrastructure and ecosystem.

99 WORDS WITH RICCARDO BERETTA

RICCARDO BERETTA, ARAZZETTO GQ, EMBROIDERY AND THREADS ON PAINTED COTTON VELVET, 32X32 CM, 2016.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALLERIA FRANCESCA MININI, MILAN

On occasion of The Blank Benefit 2016, annual meeting to support the association’s network activities, Riccardo Beretta has realized a series of fifty velvet hand embroidered tapestries, realized as a unique thanks to a pictorial intervention and to a manual making process.
Each work, Arazzetto GQ, pays homage to the figure of Giacomo Quarenghi (1744 – 1817), in concomitance with the celebrations for the death bicentenary.
During the Benefit Dinner, planned on Thursday 15th December in the frame of Spazio ALT, a harpsichordist will present a repertoire of musical pieces referable to the historical period of Quarenghi, playing the harpsichord Birba (2009 – 2011), an instrument which is also an artwork, realized by Riccardo Beretta.

Exhibition of the thesis projects of the graduating students: Viola Acciaretti, Linda Alborghetti e Marco Bellini, Marco Bellobono, Barbara Boiocchi, Sara Carraro, Francesco Crovetto, Dario Frettoli, Marco Manzoni, Marica Martella, Lorenzo Misia, Federica Mutti, Veronica Suardi, Sara Ravelli, Andrea Toscano.