Museion Out & About: REVUE, Verbovisual works from the Museion Collection

REVUE: the “Peter Mitterhofer” Typewriter Museum in Partschins presents, from 6 September, over 50 works from the Museion/Archive of New Writing collection.
The exhibition, curated by Andreas Hapkemeyer (Museion), sees a historic museum, which this year celebrates 25 years, collaborate with Museion, the modern and contemporary art museum of Bolzano, on the bond between word and image. The exhibition is part of the “Out & About” initiative, with which Museion brings contemporary art outside the institutional venue, also involving unexpected places.

It is an art that incorporates writing and a writing that becomes art that is at the center of the works on display in Partschins: letters and words typed, painted, cut out, photographed, oscillate in a continuous border between what the mind reads and what the eyes see. The word, an exclusive medium of literature, began to appear in works of art in the twentieth century. In this sense, the itinerary starts from the collages of Erika Giovanna Klien and Fortunato Depero, dating back to the 1920s - to present a wide selection of works up to the 70s and 80s, with some more recent positions: collage , printed matter, but also painting belonging to the artistic movements of “Concrete Poetry” and “Visual Poetry”. Sometimes single words, typed or printed, are enough to form works, as in the artist Augusto de Campos; other times it is a single letter, shattered or segmented, that becomes art, as in the German artist Franz Mon. In others, written texts are combined with images, often taken from newspapers, as in the collages by Nanni Balestrini, who in another series also uses plastic bags. In Gerhard Rühm, clippings of articles form a single, new composition, in which words and meaning are fragmented. In more recent positions, such as that of the Austrian Thomas Feuerstein, photography and the alphabet come together. As a tribute to the host museum, the exhibition also includes a section of works dedicated to the typewriter.

Edited by Andreas Hapkemeyer

Artists on display: Nanni Balestrini, Carlo Belloli, Irma Blank, Ugo Carrega, John Cage/Calvin Sumsion, Eleonora de Barros, Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Corrado D’Ottavi, Thomas Feuerstein, Ken Friedman, Heinz Gappmayr, Hiršal/Grögerova, Jiři Kolař, Brenda Miller, Franz Mon, Stelio Maria Martini, Maurizio Nannucci, Seiichi Niikuni, Decio Pignatari, Gerhard Rühm, Adriano Spatola, Jiři Valoch.

Inauguration: 05/09/2018, 7pm
Exhibition duration: 06/09/2018 – 19/05/2019
Partschins, Church Square 10, 39020