Paesaggi d’aria Luigi Ghirri and Yona Friedman / Jean-Baptiste Decavèle

A project curated by Chiara Bertola and Giuliano Sergio.
Result of the collaboration between the Querini Stampalia Foundation,
Livio Felluga and RAM radioartemobile

Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice 20th november 2015

at 4 p.m.
Conversation
moderators: Chiara Bertola and Giuliano Sergio

at 6 p.m.
Opening of the “Luigi Ghirri Fund” exhibition with the screening of “Livio Felluga 100” documentary by Luigi Vitale about Yona Friedman’s and Jean-Baptiste Decavèle’s Vigne Museum (2014) “Paesaggi d’aria. Luigi Ghirri and Yona Friedman/Jean-Baptiste Decavèle”.

A conversation and an exhibition: first act of a research program connected to the “Ghirri Fund”, recently created at Querini Stampalia thanks to the passion and kindness of collector Roberto Lombardi.
A project curated by Chiara Bertola and Giuliano Sergio in collaboration with Livio Felluga and RAM radioartemobile, which includes a round table on Friday 20th November at 4 p.m. with: Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, artist; Angelo Maggi, professor of the IUAV University of Venice; Chiara Parisi, director of “La Monnaie” of Paris Cultural Programs, and Elena Re, art critic. Chiara Bertola and Giuliano Sergio will moderate the conversation. Later, at 6 p.m., the opening of the Ghirri Fund exhibition will take place (from 21st November 2015 to 21th February 2016) with the screening of “Livio Felluga 100” documentary by Luigi Vitale about Yona Friedman’s and Jean-Baptiste Decavèle’s “Vigne Museum” (2014), which will be shown until the 21st of February 2016.
The round table will be recorded and broadcast on RAM LIVE, the web radio about
contemporary art, 24-hour live streaming on http://live.radioartemobile.it/.

Thanks to Cà Sagredo Hotel of Venice for the hospitality given to some guest speakers.

The interaction between photographer Luigi Ghirri and Friedman/Decavèle duo occurs in a common context of many art studies after the Second World War: the need is to demolish a perception of works and places structured by means of frames, showcases, pedestals and architectures, and to subvert the distinction between the object and its containers, the building and the environment.
According to this interpretation, “Paesaggi d’aria” suggests thinking over the work of the two most original innovators of photography and architecture. The Italian landscape is in the middle of this debate, a field where both authors build their point of view, each one in his own way, going beyond that tourist convention stuck into the established idea of heritage and museum, that photography and architecture can subvert. Hence the idea of comparing Luigi Ghirri’s shots to the aerial and free landscape museum, conceived inside Livio Felluga’s vineyards by the visionary genius of Friedman/Decavèle duo, through the documentary made by the photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Luigi Vitale, who tells the reason of the “Vigne Museum” birth and its building phases. Imagined as a meeting and observation place, it examines the area and its landscape. Since the structure is deeply-rooted and does not have walls, it provides a cause for meditation on the concept of museum and on its current function for contemporary art and for architecture.

Luigi Ghirri looks for a balance point with his framing, leaving the formal expedients in order to combine the experience and memory of gaze. It is not only about understanding the place and showing its aura, but also about living it and being able to read it when the sun shines and under the light of the night, and about considering it as a point of view from where it is possible to look at the landscape through windows and portals.

Yona Friedman and Jean-Baptiste Decavèle imagine the museum, especially the “Vigne Museum”, as an open structure, an instrument integrated in the area, which overturns its function, addressing it outward. The museum loses its walls, and becomes an insubstantial monument, a goal to reach. The work-object disappears together with its container: the museum itself is a frame, which teaches the gaze and allows to find the “works” again among buildings and squares, glimpses of towns and countryside, and to identify them in the folds of history, like Luigi Ghirri’s pictures do.

Ghirri Fund
In September 2015, the contemporary art collector and friend of “Querini Stampalia” Roberto Lombardi gave a number of works by Luigi Ghirri to the Venetian Institution as loan for use.
The Fund has thirty-one photos, mostly from the group called “Il profilo delle nuvole” dated between 1985 and 1990. The series is conceived as an “artist’s book”: a story devoid of characters about the Po valley landscape, between Veneto, Emilia and Lombardia. While revisiting the photographed places, the author does not take into account the topographic dislocation, but rather he follows a path inside the associative memory: melancholy, vagueness of memory, sense of levitation and fascination are the feelings that vivify his trip.
Ghirri develops the project with Gianni Celati, who accompanies his friend’s gaze of narrator with a text.
Once computerized and classified, the “Ghirri Fund” will be preserved among the rare and precious materials of the Library and made available to researchers. Periodically it will suggest a number of research activities, in-depth analysis, combinations, comparisons and thematic incentives, starting from the extraordinary visual sensitivity of this Italian artist.
A new publishing series of notebooks published thanks to the collaboration of Galleria
Massimo Minini in Brescia, will give back gradually the considerations resulting from the
specific activities.

For info:
Fondazione Querini Stampalia onlus
Santa Maria Formosa, Castello 5252, Venezia
tel +39 041 2711441 fax +39 041 2711445
manifestazioni@querinistampalia.org www.querinistampalia.org
Ufficio stampa Fondazione Querini Stampalia
Sara Bossi
T. +39 041 2711411 / M. +39 339 8046499
s.bossi@querinistampalia.org
Ufficio stampa Vigne Museum
PR di Giovanna Felluga e Samantha Punis
Samantha Punis +39 339 5323693 / Giovanna Felluga +39 328 4174412 info@atemporarystudio.com
www.atemporarystudio.com