MAXXINational Museum of XXI century Arts
SpaceFrom the museum's collections of art and architecture
30 may 2010 - 23 january 2011
curated by Pippo Ciorra, Alessandro D'Onofrio, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Gabi Scardi
The common premise of the two souls of the MAXXI, and the building that contains them, space is the underlying theme of the inaugural exhibition of the permanent collection of the two museums of art and architecture. Artists have always considered space as one of the essential elements of their research and their creative practices. There are those who work physically in space and with space in order to understand and represent the reality that surrounds them. Others, instead, seek a possible truth in spaces of the mind and in individual or collective memory. Finally, the architect sculpts space as if it was pure matter, or patiently investigates the mutation and evolution of its predicates: residential, or urban, individual or metropolitan, rational or post-Cartesian. Space is that of the museum, understood as both a physical and instituional presence. In more general terms, space is the context in which we live. Space is all that is defined by the indivdual and by society, by geographic, historical and cultural contexts. Space is also that which is extremely close by, it is the intimate and the everyday, it is a house to be inhabited, that welcomes personal necessities and desires, as well as our closest relations. Space is shared; it is where we confront diverse subjects and identities, made from a web of relations and social conventions. Space, finally, is that of architecture and urbanism, that of the designed city. It is the incommensurable space of the immagination, the transcendental to which it aspires, that of the interior universe. It is the other space of the theatre, of literature, of the virtual. It is the space of art, that wishes to inherently capture all of the above. None of these meanings can leave aside the others. There is no interruption between interior and exterior maps. The existing and the imaginable, for the artist everything becomes the field of critical voyage and of possibility. Everything is fused in the complex dynamics that transform the world which we live. The architects invited to create site specific interventions for the MAXXI have produced a comparison between their own work and the diverse conceptions of space present in the pieces of the MAXXI Arte collections. Through assonace of meaning or formal association, the works displayed have been subdivided into four thematic areas: Natural Artificial/ from the Body to the City/ Maps of Reality/ the Stage and the Imagination.
from the booklet at the MAXXI
MAXXINational Museum of XXI century Arts
Maxxi arte
Maxxi architectura
via Guido Reni 4/A
00196 Roma
www.fondazionemaxxi.it
info@fondazionemaxxi.it
