GAMeC, Bergamo | TI BERGAMO Una comunità | opening: 1 ottobre 2020

Curated by #lorenzogiusti and Valentina Gervasoni 

October 1, 2020 – February 14, 2021

Free admission 

The exhibition Ti #bergamo - Una comunità opens at the GAMeC 

From October 1, 2020 to February 14, 2021 the GAMeC - Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo presents Ti #bergamo - Una comunità, curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Valentina Gervasoni. 

The exhibition takes its title from the drawing produced and donated to the museum by the Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi in support of the fundraising campaign for the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital which the GAMeC promoted on its social platforms throughout the emergency period caused by the spread of the coronavirus. 

The project emerges from the emotional short circuit triggered by the convergence of dramatic events and acts of solidarity performed during the most acute phase of the health crisis. Through the alternation of artworks and grassroots production, photographic images, film footage, gestures, and thoughts from those artists who, at various times, have recounted #bergamo, its places, and its history, the exhibition provides the visual testimony of a community which, in its hour of need, found itself to be a genuine community once again, and which by sharing its present, also managed to rediscover its past. 

Not an exhibition in the traditional sense, but rather a heterogeneous collection of materials and testimonies; a manifold tale characterized by different narrative levels and various timescales. 

The first section of the exhibition will turn its gaze to a series of initiatives linked to the print medium, featuring a collection of issues of the newspaper L’Eco di Bergamo alongside drawings on the pandemic produced by Dan Perjovschi, including a set prepared especially for the GAMeC, later taken up by the social platforms of the MoMA in New York during the first lockdown. The section is completed by the recent images by the famous Bergamasque artist Bruno Bozzetto; the project by the illustrator Emiliano Ponzi for The Washington Post, telling of the everyday life of a Milanese citizen in quarantine; the report by Davide Agazzi, a reporter for Bergamonews, broadcast last April on RAI 2 as part of the program Mizar, and the docufilm Noi, #bergamo. Architettura di una rinascita, produced by the cultural startup Squareworld Studio, thanks to the involvement of twelve young artists and creatives. 

The second section will involve a number of Bergamasque artists from various generations, including Tea Andreoletti, Filippo Berta, Mariella Bettineschi, Mario Cresci, Gianriccardo Piccoli, and Andrea Mastrovito, who will present his latest film I Am Not Legend, dedicated to his hometown and destined to become part of the collection of the #museo del Novecento e del Contemporaneo in Palazzo Fabroni, Pistoia, following the awarding of the sixth edition of the Italian Council funding program. 

Thanks to the collaboration with the Museo delle storie in #bergamo, the section will also host the sixteen images made available by the Archivio fotografico Sestini for UNOSCATTOXLARICERCA. Bergamo attraverso gli occhi dei suoi fotografi, a project which draws on the participation of seventy Bergamasque photographers with a view to financing the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri. 

A room in the museum will be entirely given over to Radio GAMeC, the project which started life on the social platforms of the Gallery during the health crisis. In the exhibition, it will be possible to listen once more to the sixty-six episodes of the podcast—presenting Italian and international voices from a wide range of backgrounds, from culture to research, and from #entertainment to sport—and through the use of a QR code, listen to the recordings of the five editions of Radio GAMeC Real Live, with live encounters in the museum courtyard which in the MASBEDO Videomobile saw artists such as Nic Cester&The Milano Elettrica, Andrea Pennacchi with Giorgio Gobbo, Cristiano Godano, Alessandro Sciarroni, and Virgilio Sieni. There will also be the visual contributions produced by a number of the artists who took part in the project: Jeremy Deller, Simone Fattal, Goldschmied & Chiari, Thomas Hirschhorn, Michael Höpfner, Ragnar Kjartansson, Julian Rosefeldt, Olimpia Zagnoli, and Adrian Paci, who decided to bring together here the twenty-six posters from the initiative Poster Quotidiano, conceived together with Iva Lulashi and Fabio Roncato, and curated by Giuseppe Frangi and Rischa Paterlini, in support of the Fondazione Progetto Arca Onlus. 

On the occasion of the exhibition, the artistic duo MASBEDO will also present two new works produced especially by GAMeC and In Between Art Film, the film production company founded by Beatrice Bulgari which investigates the borders between #contemporaryart, cinema, and video art.

Thanks to the collaboration with the Fondazione Accademia Carrara, the artists’ project draws inspiration from the masterpiece by Pellizza da Volpedo, Ricordo di un dolore (Ritratto di Santina Negri), on loan from the city’s picture gallery and on show inside the GAMeC throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Pellizza’s oil on canvas—portraying a young woman in the very moment she learns the tragic news of a death—becomes an emblematic image of personal suffering, entering into dialogue with MASBEDO’s video, also titled Ricordo di un dolore: the silent climb of a man to the peak of the Presolana, carrying a reproduction of the painting on his back, telling of the solitude of a moment of pain and its sublimation. The canvas and the action, placed side by side, reunite and express the communion between the individual and collective pain of the valley and of the city.

The major video screening set up at the GAMeC echoes the documentary Condivisione di un ricordo, on show in the room of the Accademia Carrara, where the painting is usually on show. This work presents the operation which concerned #bergamo and the municipalities of the Val Seriana over the summer, in which numerous posters portraying the painting were displayed, thanks to the involvement of #people encountered by the artists. 

A major installation will bring together the more than two hundred photographs from the initiative 100 Fotografi per Bergamo, a project launched last March by the community magazine Perimetro and developed in collaboration with the Associazione Culturale Linke and the contribution of the Liveinslums charity, in order to finance the Reanimation and Intensive Care departments of the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital. The operation involved numerous Italian and international photographers, including Jacopo Benassi, Francesco Jodice, Delfino Sisto Legnani, Giovanna Silva, Oliviero Toscani and many others.

Alongside the photography exhibition, the recording of the concert by the Israeli singer Noa is also presented: held in April thanks to the collaboration between the #bergamo Jazz Festival (organized by the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti) and I-Jazz also in support of the city hospital. 

The various sections will host some of the works from the GAMeC Collection linked to the city of #bergamo, by artists such as Gabriele Basilico, Alberto Garutti, and Luca Vitone, as well as Orfeo Locatelli, Trento Longaretti and Alberto Vitali. The rooms of the GAMeC will also feature the works of a number of creatives who were protagonists or promotors of acts of generosity and social reflection: Susanna Alberti, Chiara Bigatti / Gruppo Publionda, Camilla Marinoni, Officina Tantemani, Franco Rivolli, and Alessandro Adelio Rossi (for #bergamo Sottosuolo). Furthermore, the exhibition will also feature the video produced by Confartigianato Bergamo on the occasion of the opening of the field hospital in the fair district. 

One room of the museum, here transformed into a school hall, will give a new lease of life to the desks abandoned by the schools over recent months. A choice which is at the same time metaphorical and concrete, aiming to describe the GAMeC as a place of life-long learning. The room will in fact welcome classes from across the territory, inviting teachers to work with the art on display and decline the contents to reflect their own subjects, either independently or with the support of the Educational Services of the Museum. What’s more, every Tuesday, the Aula Magna will host lessons on art history held by the museum educators and others on history provided by the Fondazione Dalmine, which this year has collaborated with the museum to devise proposals aimed at schools. 

Inside the room, videos will be on show from the REC project, the fundraising campaign in support of access to online education promoted by AMACI – Associazione dei Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani and Sky Arte in collaboration with Save the Children and Sanità di Frontiera: 35 camei d’artista, featuring the voices and faces of eighteen AMACI museum directors reading the text of Art. 34 of the Italian Constitution on the Right to Education. 

Lastly, GAMeC renews its collaboration with Cesvi: the Bergamasque charity committed both in Italy and around the world to supporting the most vulnerable populations in the promotion of human rights and for sustainable development, and which, during the coronavirus emergency, stood out by setting up a major healthcare, social, and economic support program across our territory. On the occasion of the exhibition, thanks to the contribution of Santini Maglificio Sportivo, a t-shirt will be produced with the drawing Ti Bergamo by Dan Perjovschi. Half of the profits made from the sales will be devolved to Cesvi to contribute to financing a major program dedicated to the promotion of projects for children in Bergamo, which foresees both scholastic and recreational activities; courses in positive parenting; training courses for professionals who deal with infancy and psychological support programs for children. The other half will cover the costs of the exhibition, admission to which will remain free of charge throughout the opening period. 

The Ti #bergamo - Una comunità project is supported by Banca Galileo.

INFORMATION AND CONTACTS  

The exhibition will open to the public on Thursday, October 1.

Admission from 7:30 pm, with reservations required at

comunicazione@gamec.it. 

Museum access is allowed for up to 50 visitors at a time, at 45-minute intervals.

Last entry at 9 pm. 

GAMeC - Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo

Via San Tomaso, 53

24121 Bergamo

Tel. +39 035 270272

gamec.it 

OPENING HOURS – OCTOBER 2020

Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 4-7 pm

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 10 am - 7 pm

Closed on Tuesday 

FREE ADMITTANCE

Access to the museum is allowed to a maximum of 50 visitors at a time. 

Reservations are not required for single visitors. 

Reservations required for Schools and Groups (maximum 20 people). 

Schools

Education Department

Viola Sidoti

E-mail: servizieducativi@gamec.it 

Groups

Promotion

Manuela Blasi

E-mail: manuela.blasi@gamec.it