From Monday 28 October to Sunday 2 February 2024, in the spaces of the Fondazione in Via Limone 24, Turin, Fondazione Merz presents the second part of the Qualcosa che toglie il peso che mantiene l’assurdità e la leggerezza della favola exhibition dedicated to Mario Merz, on the occasion of the centenary of the artist’s birth on 1 January 2025.
The exhibition presents a selection of works including installations, igloos, panels, canvases and works on paper. In addition to the works already present in the first exhibition, three other imposing works in terms of content and size are added for this new phase.
The exhibition project starts from the concept related to the need to identify the profound nature behind the models to arrive at the basis of human thought, which in its diversity is always defined by laws that evade the passage of time and change of environment. The phrase that gives the exhibition its title was extrapolated from a text by Mario Merz and relates to this need to look at nature and the passage of time in order to achieve a sense of conceptual lightness, which can be found in the nucleus of works presented. In the works on display, there are elements and concepts that are repeated and linked in a path that, again quoting Merz, maintains the absurdity and lightness of the fable…
The dreamlike and delicate atmosphere that has pervaded the exhibition space to date, irradiated by the golden reflections emanating from the Senza titolo (foglie d’oro) igloo (1997), from the wax of the Quattro tavoli in forma di foglie di magnolia (1985), exhibited on this occasion for the first time in Europe, from the transparency of the vases of L’Horizont de lumière traverse notre vertical du jour (1995) as well as from the works on the walls already in the exhibition, gives rise to a dominant counterpoint, resulting from the installation of two more igloos from 1989 and 2002 and an imposing pictorial work, Geco in casa (1983).
Like an iconic virtuoso pas de deux between the canvas and the crocodile with the Fibonacci numbers, an old presence in the Foundation, the works bounce from one side of the exhibition space to the other, linking one to the other in a fairy-tale atmosphere; an apparent disorder in which things from the world mingle and become responsible for their transformation to reappear in a harmonious union.
