Antonio Rovaldi

Casa Italiana Zerilli - Marimò. Manhattan, New York, Stati Uniti

March 3, 2020

The Italian artist Antonio Rovaldi meets Dr. Steven Handel, professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, in a dialogue on the landscapes and physical and perceptive limits of the city of New York. Organized by the Magazzino Italian Art Foundation in collaboration with the GAMeC - Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery of Bergamo, Rovaldi presents two related works - End. Words from the Margins. New York City, winner of the 5th edition of the Italian Council, and the book The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill: New York City. Recently featured in exhibitions at the Harvard School of Design and GAMeC, the projects reflect Rovaldi's unique practice, which combines photography, video, sculpture, writing and design in the construction of narratives rooted in landscapes and explorations of space and distance.

End. Words from the Margins. New York City explores the metropolis, which has become a symbol and icon, from the point of view of the city limits, analyzing the boundaries of its five neighborhoods that the artist walks along the external perimeters. The project testifies to the possibility of describing the city and its development through a physical journey, considering the idea that a conscious rebirth of society can expand to the most marginal places.

The project finds its fulfillment in the publication of the book The Sound of Woodpecker Bill: New York City, published by Humboldt Books, which includes a selection of 100 black and white photographs documenting Rovaldi's journey around the perimeter of each area, accompanied from texts by the artist. The book includes geographical maps created by landscape architect Francesca Benedetto with contributions from Francesca Berardi, Cecilia Canziani, Anna de Manincor, Claudia Durastanti, Lorenzo Giusti, Steven Handel and Mario Maffi.

End. Words From The Margins. New York City is a project by Antonio Rovaldi promoted by GAMeC - Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, in collaboration with Harvard - GSD, Magazzino Italian Art, and the St. Gallen Kunst Museum, supported by the Italian Council (5th edition , 2019), the program for the promotion of Italian contemporary art in the world of the General Steering Committee for Contemporary Creativity of the Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities for Tourism

Antonio Rovaldi

Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

February 13 - May 18 Maggio 2020

The artist Antonio Rovaldi brings the End. Words from the Margins, New York City project to Bergamo, presented last November at Harvard University.

The exhibition The sound of the woodpecker, hosted from 13 February to 17 May 2020 in the spaces of the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, represents the second chapter of the End. Words from the Margins project, New York City, promoted by GAMeC in partnership with the '' Harvard University (Graduate School of Design), the Kunstmuseum of St. Gallen and Magazzino Italian Art of Cold Spring (NY), with which the artist won the fifth edition
of the Italian Council, the program for the promotion of Italian contemporary art in the world of the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity and Urban Regeneration of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and for Tourism.

Curated by Lorenzo Giusti, Director of the GAMeC, together with Steven Handel, Visiting Professor of Ecology at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard and Francesca Benedetto, Design Critic, the exhibition - as well as the entire project - is an eulogy of the journey, of 'physical crossing of the most marginal spaces, and is based on the idea that precisely from these borders - not only geographical, but also political and anthropological -, a
conscious rebirth of society.

The project presents the most iconic metropolis in the world from the point of view of its suburbs and the extreme edges of its five boroughs - Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island -, along which Rovaldi walked, and returns the experience of the artist in a photographic series capable of representing its complexity.
In his research, Rovaldi has addressed issues such as green in the suburbs in relation to urban expansion, urban debris, the link between photography and literary production, and still photography as a visual novel that is built around the city.
From this experience, a series of images was born that can present a peripheral and less known New York, with its vast lagoons near the ocean, motorway junctions and uncultivated and not easily accessible areas.

In addition to the fifty black and white photographs in analogue print that will occupy the walls of the exhibition space, the exhibition will present some geographical maps created by the landscape architect Francesca Benedetto that show the urban, geographical and meteorological transformations of the city, alongside a sound installation and two bronze sculptures made especially for the exhibition.

Five Walks. NYC, 2017-2020 was born from the collaboration between the artist and the sound designer Tommaso Zerbini and offers, through a constant flow of voices and sounds, the image of an elastic geography in which boundaries expand step by step, stop after stop , with the slow and thoughtful rhythm of a long walk.

The first of the bronze sculptures represents the copy of a limulus (horseshoe crab), a Pleistocene, armored and primordial creature, beached along the American East Coast and in particular around New York, with which the artist intends to remind us that edges of the city have ancient forms and stratified geological times. The second is a debris from a keyboard found along a Staten Island beach which, positioned vertically on a base like a small monolith, could recall an ancient and future deity at the same time, a devotional object from a city submerged in gray waters. of the ocean.

The installation is completed by the video The Rest of the Images, created in collaboration with the director Federica Ravera: a film that is documentation of the artist's practice and, at the same time, of the close relationship between walking, the photographic image and construction of a sequence.

In parallel with the exhibition, GAMeC, in collaboration with the G. Carrara Academy of Fine Arts in Bergamo, will promote a series of workshops, excursions, explorations, meetings and conferences that will involve artists, architects, urban planners, philosophers and writers.
During the appointments of the first cycle of the Public Program in 2020, Antonio Rovaldi's experience in New York will be transformed into a model of investigation to explore the boundaries of the city of Bergamo.

THE VOLUME
THE SOUND OF THE WOODPECKER BILL: NEW YORK CITY

The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill: New York City, published by Humboldt Books, forms the centerpiece of the project.
It is divided into five chapters - like the five boroughs of the city -, each made up of a selection of one hundred black and white photographs documenting the walk around the perimeter of each borough.

The volume includes, in addition to the text by Antonio Rovaldi, the maps created by Francesca Benedetto and contributions by Francesca Berardi, Cecilia Canziani, Anna de Manincor, Claudia Durastanti, Lorenzo Giusti, Steven Handel and Mario Maffi.
Through their interventions, the authors share an ordinary, hidden and distant New York, helping to provide an essential and contemporary look through which to glimpse the future of the city, its neighborhoods and its inhabitants.

The publication will be presented for the first time in Italy on Wednesday 26 February 2020, at the Sozzani Foundation in Milan; will follow the presentations at the Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò (New York University) promoted by Magazzino Italian Art of Cold Spring, and at the Kunstmuseum in San Gallo (Switzerland).

Antonio Rovaldi

Sala della Torre - GAM A. FORTI, Palazzo della Ragione , Verona

Thursday 14 December 2017, at 4.30 pm, at the Achille Forti Gallery of Modern Art, the winning works of the 2nd edition of the Contemporary Art Award for the Achille Forti Gallery of Modern Art "OTTELLA for GAM" will be presented:

• Antonio Rovaldi, Notes for a book (Dear Michael), 2017
• Julia Bornefeld, Bianco, 2017