“Art is a medium, a language that allows us to start from zero. If you have an idea, you are always free to start from zero. You don’t have to think about the final format, you can start moving in any direction. And I really like this.”
– Cildo Meireles
Pirelli HangarBicocca presents Cildo Meireles: Installations, curated by Vicente Todolí. This is the first exhibition in Italy by this artist who works on multi-sensorial perception. Twelve installations in which visitors are physically involved will be showcased from the 27th March to the 20th July 2014.
Vicente Todolí states that “the exhibition at HangarBicocca will give an in-depth understanding of the physical, sensory and poetic aspects of the works of Cildo Meireles, which bring into question and often overturn our preconceived ideas and clichés. His art offers perceptual and conceptual challenges through the mechanisms of juxtaposition, accumulation and metaphor, in order to attain a complete poetic subversion. The artist uses seduction to entice the visitor into the installations, as though into a spider’s web. And with great ironic and critical skill, he gives us the chance to experience new thoughts and forms of behaviour.”
Partly co-produced with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain) and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves (Porto, Portugal), the solo exhibition of works by Cildo Meireles is a unique opportunity to come to grips with the lyrical vision of this extraordinary connoisseur of artistic languages, who gives us a view of a very diverse, always unpredictable world. The show winds its way through twelve works – eleven very large installations and one minuscule sculpture. It starts with a 9 mm cube made of sacred wood and ends with a pier that stretches out over a sea of seventeen thousand books.
Cildo Meireles (Rio de Janeiro, 1948), known as one of the pioneers of the international movement of conceptual art, has over the years gone beyond the limitations of any artistic current. Experimenting with different techniques and conceptual strategies, in his sculptures and installations he uses an ample variety of objects and materials, which he chooses for their symbolic significance. He explores human perception in its entirety, addressing universal themes, some of which are dramatic, such as dictatorship, colonialism, globalisation, and the repression of human rights. His artistic incursions in the 1970s, which at the time were seen as an authentic system of counter- information in Brazil, have become legendary. Cildo Meireles was one of the first Brazilian artists to take part in an exhibition at MoMA in New York (1970) and the first ever to put on a solo exhibition at Tate Modern in London (2008). He has taken part on a number of occasions in major exhibitions such as documenta in Kassel (2002) and the Venice Biennale (2009).
- Artists:
Cildo Meireles - Open:
Thursday, 27 March 2014 - Close:
Sunday, 20 July 2014 - Address:
Fondazione HangarBicocca, Via Chiese 2, 20126 Milano - Mail:
info@hangarbicocca.org - Phone:
+39 02 66 11 15 73 - Web:
HangarBicocca - Opening hour:
Thu – Sun | 11am-11pm - Closing day:
Mon, Tue, Wed - Photo credits:
Cildo Meireles: 1. Abajur, 1997/2010; 2. Amerikkka, 1991/2013; 3. Eureka/Blindhotland, 1970-1975; 4. Marulho, 1991/1997; 5. Olvido, 1987-1989; Installation views at Fondazione HangarBicocca, 2014 Foto/Photo Agostino Osio, courtesy of the artist and of Fondazione HangarBicocca, Milan; 6. Portait by Agostino Osio, (detail)
