Minimum/Maximum

From 12 May to 12 July 2017, the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, will host a highly original, wide-ranging journey of discovery into the work of Alighiero Boetti, a leading 20th-century Italian artist, at a time when his art is enjoying great popularity. Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, the Director of the Institute of Art History at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, with the collaboration of the Alighiero Boetti Archive, Alighiero Boetti: Minimum/Maximum shows the results of an unprecedented selection and comparison: the exhibition will explore the contrast between the smallest and largest formats of all the most representative series of works by the Turin artist, thus focusing on one of the themes that best illustrate Boetti’s creative procedures. The exhibition has been organized by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in collaboration with Tornabuoni Art.

An exhibition celebrating the genius of the Turin artist with over twenty striking works selected for the first time according to format to produce a comparison of “minimum” and “maximum” in his most significant series

Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero with the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, the show includes a special project by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Agata Boetti on the theme of the photocopy, entitled COLOUR = REALITY. B+W = ABSTRACTION (except for the zebras).

Divided into sections with a total of over twenty works, the exhibition includes Boetti’s most significant series (Embroideries, Maps, Everything and Biro), and some lesser known works such as Coloured Tokens, The Natural History of Multiplication and Covers. There are also some previously never publicly shown works, such as the coloured tokens of Summer 70 (1970) – loaned directly by the artist’s family – and Titles (1978), one of the largest formats in the monochrome Embroideries. In the exhibition there will also be one of the largest works from Mimetic (1967), a very early Boetti series, on loan from the Fondazione Prada.

The exhibition unfolds as a precise comparison between small and large formats (minimum and maximum), with works such as The Natural History of Multiplication, Bringing the World into the World and Alternating from One to a Hundred and Vice Versa. Viewers can thus explore in a single setting works from very different periods up to the large triptych Aeroplanes (1989), on loan from the prestigious Fondation Carmignac, Paris.

In an area between the first and second rooms, a documentary will be shown: Nothing to See, Nothing to Hide made in 1978 by Emidio Greco at the time of the Boetti retrospective at the Kunsthalle, Basel. The film intersperses sequences from the Swiss exhibition with visits to the artist’s Roman studio and some significant direct comments from Boetti.

The itinerary continues with the celebrated Maps and Everything, “a miscellany of Boetti’s themes and images” – explains Barbero – introducing the important topic of the deferred realisation of a work of art, through travel and nomadism, in turn interrelated with the theme of time. This element emerges powerfully in the Embroideries, which having been begun by assistants in Rome, were sent to Kabul and then to Peshawar, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In the Pakistan city embroiderers from Afghan refugee families made the works by juxtaposing colours of their own choice but following the rules of the game dictated by Boetti. The works eventually returned to Rome, where the artist saw the final result for the first time.

The section of comparisons ends with the large-scale work entitled Covers (1984), which returns to the idea of the media’s obsessiveness and the formula of the transmitted and reused image, thus introducing the special project curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Gallery, London, and Agata Boetti, Director of the Archivio Alighiero Boetti. The project further illustrates Boetti’s essentially dialectical approach, in this case in addressing the theme of the photocopy.

Visitors are even invited to use a real photocopier at the centre of the room, but following the rules of a game specially created by the Mexican artist Mario Garcia Torres to pay homage to Boetti.