CITTADIMILANO / Giorgio Andreotta Calò

•

Feb 14 – Jul 21, 2019

Pirelli HangarBicocca

Giorgio Andreotta Calò / Courtesy of Pirelli HangarBicocca

CITTÀDIMILANO brings together for the first time a wide selection of sculptural works by Giorgio Andreotta Calò. The artist conceived the exhibition display, transforming the Shed into a fluid environment in which the visitor can “navigate” and create his own reading through the many links and references between the exhibited works, which together form an archipelago of symbolic elements and connotations, each linked to a particular geographical context.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò / Courtesy of Pirelli HangarBicocca

Among the contexts evoked, the city of Milan provides one of the central premises of the exhibition, which Andreotta Calò presents as a real yet also imaginary place. In particular, the prelude – Senza titolo (Jona) (2019), the video visitors encounter entering the show – and Città di Milano (2019), the large photographic print that acts as a backdrop, offer a sublimated vision of the city.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò / Courtesy of Pirelli HangarBicocca

The exhibition meanders between these two polarities through the series Carotaggi – together with the new and striking work Produttivo (2019) – which, laid out on the floor, structures the exhibition space, breaking its orthogonal shape and creating a circular movement. The arrangement of these core samples relates to the depth under the ground from which they are extracted, thus creating an analogy between depth and the length of the Shed. In addition, Carotaggi generates a new perspective whose vanishing point corresponds physically and metaphorically to the focal point of the photographic print.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò / Courtesy of Pirelli HangarBicocca

Giorgio Andreotta Calò is one of the most remarkable Italian artists of recent years and represented Italy at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). His works include sculptures, large-scale site-specific installations and spatial works that transform both fragments of buildings and entire landscapes; they are often designed to be included in a rich patchwork of self-referencing connections, in part through the use of natural elements dense with symbolic meanings, such as water, light and fire.

His work is rooted in conceptual and processual practices typical of artists of the sixties and seventies but it also evolves into new directions. It always comes as the result of a long process of research into materials – from the more classical, such as bronze and wood, to the more unusual, such as caranto clay, the submarine layer beneath the city of Venice – processing techniques and their origin. His interest in organic materials links his works to current international debates on the use and dispersal of raw materials and themes of socio-ecological change.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò / Courtesy of Pirelli HangarBicocca

The constant re-elaboration and reconfiguration of his works based on the geographical and cultural context in which they are exhibited is an integral part of his artistic methodology. For CITTÀDIMILANO the artist focuses on his sculptural practice, displaying works created since 2008, and here conceived as part of a single landscape that transforms the perception of the environment and highlights the links existing between the artworks in a close dialogue.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò has also carried out research into the history of the Pirelli Company, creating new works that bring to light previously unknown stories from the past, such as the one of the wreck of the steamship Città di Milano [City of Milan] from which the exhibition takes its name.