Galleria Gottardo, the Cultural Foundation of Banca del Gottardo, is proud to present the exhibition Esprit Sphérique, spheres from the Legler Collection in Bergamo, from 27 September to 23 December 2006.
The name Esprit Sphérique is intended to express all the richness and the conceptual and material intensity inherent in spherical objects. These are spheres of many different kinds, ranging from balls used in games to spheres produced by artists, from spheres with military uses to spheres with magical or religious significance, or made by master craftsmen. The multitude and the accumulation of these objects, which have all been almost obsessively gathered by collectors over a period of years in many different countries, present a precise, concrete experience as well as something more suggestive, prompting feelings and reflections, and all from the starting point of a very specific physical characteristic: the shape of the sphere.
Exclusive attention to a shape is therefore a definite feature |
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of this exhibition, but it also, and straight away, shows that it is open to the many references that the spherical form evokes; in the field of art, but also in that of material culture, and of theoretical, cultural, scientific and social connections, where form and matter, symbol and substance mix and meld.
This abundance of signs and meanings led the organisers to create a publication on the theme of the sphere, to coincide with the exhibition. This serves not only as a precise reference for the objects and works exhibited at the Galleria Gottardo, but also to prompt further reflection and the exploration, in various fields, of the elemental reasons behind the widespread appeal of this shape.
Esprit Sphérique thus becomes a sort of indispensable device for reassessing the sphere as a place of pure geometry, with intense meanings, histories, inventions and symbolic references, while the publication gathers up these thoughts, seeking, with the variety of the contributions, to |
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establish a richer and more complete image of the spherical spirit.
The Legler collection in Bergamo is owned by a branch of a family of industrialists who emigrated in the 19th century from Canton Glarus, and went on to found a flourishing textiles business in the north of Italy.
Accompanying the collection is a selection of works that round out the theme of the sphere from an artistic perspective. There are works by artists from the surrealist period, predating the Second World War, which were generously lent by the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona. Also on display are works by a small but important group of Swiss artists from the post-war era, which belong to the Banca del Gottardo Collection. The choice of works on display is intended to show various forms of artistic expression, including sculpture, painting, photography and video. |
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The title of the exhibition, “Esprit Sphérique”, strongly urges visitors not to see the sphere as merely “a solid figure formed from points in space that are less than or equal in distance from a given segment”, but rather to assess the complex mass of meanings that can be drawn from this pure form, delivered here in a tangible way.
Starting with an idea of perfection, of no roughness, of completeness, and opening up for example to the ambiguity of the concave and the convex, or the container and the contained, the theme of the sphere brings with it complex qualities - themselves diverse in terms of sense, legitimacy or grade of abstraction - which the Legler collection succeeds, with its many examples, in demonstrating, by means of extraordinarily rich and surprising material.
The variety of examples available led the organisers of the exhibition to explore the theme of sphericity in depth, following some of the paths by which the sphere - whilst never changing, through time and across many cultures - |
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has been able to establish a powerful and flexible presence in so many different fields, ranging from work to play, from war to geometry, from ideas of the universe, to talismanic function and to art.
Prestigious representatives of contemporary culture generously welcomed the invitation to explore the theme of the sphere from various viewpoints, within the specially created monograph. Through a diversity of disciplines and cultural sensibilities, they have offered original and incisive contributions, bearing witness once again to the richness of the themes that the sphere elicits, and exemplifying them here in writings which differ in their points of departure and their treatment of the subject matter. Each of these essays is exemplary and unique, although they all focus on a single theme. This is clearly a limited and partial investigation, but it nevertheless provides glimpses of a multitude of developments and openings around a theme that spans many historical and conceptual experiences. |
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The publication therefore has a double aim: that of constructing a catalogue to accompany the objects and works exhibited, and presenting high-quality images to show them to best effect; and that of creating an awareness of new horizons, albeit partially overlapping, with the various theoretical contributions.
With the “Esprit Sphérique” exhibition, as with the exhibition “Beyond Bering: The Russian Colonies of the North Pacific” in 2004, Galleria Gottardo, apart from fulfilling its institutional role as an art promoter, is embracing in organic fashion a theoretical reflection, this time around the theme of the sphere, with an interest that goes far beyond the specific field of relevance of the exhibition itself. But perhaps this is the true task of a Foundation such as Galleria Gottardo: allowing for the expression of art and human labour, but also acknowledging the demands and the impulses to which these give rise.
The authors of the various essays are as follows, in |
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alphabetical order: Brahim Alaoui, Director of the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Carla Burani, art critic, Lugano; Laura De Carlo, Ordinary Professor of Descriptive Geometry, Faculty of Architecture, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”; Ubaldo Fadini, Associate Professor of Contemporary Aesthetics, Università degli Studi di Firenze; Mino Gabriele, Ordinary Professor of Iconology and Iconography, Università degli Studi di Udine; Marco Garzonio, analyst and psychotherapist; Giorgio Israel, Ordinary Professor of Mathematical History, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”; Llilian Llanes, founder and director of the Centro Wilfredo Lam, Cuba, and Jury Member, 51st Biennale di Venezia 2005; Marco Lorandi Bedogni Pietri, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History, Università degli Studi di Bergamo; Giuseppe O. Longo, Ordinary Professor of Information Theory, Faculty of Engineering, Università degli Studi di Trieste; Tomás Maldonado, Emeritus Professor, Politecnico di Milano; |
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Vittorio Marchis, Ordinary Professor of Technology, Politecnico di Torino; Christoph Riedweg, Ordinary Professor of Classic/Greek Philology, Universität Zürich, and Director of the Istituto Svizzero di Roma; Philip Rylands, Director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. |
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