Lavori luminosi

Già quarantanni! November 1974 – May 2014

­

In 1973, while trying to figure out the programming for the gallery I was about to open, I visited a few artists to announce the upcoming launch. One was Daniel Buren, whom I’d known for some time.
So I went to Paris,and told him about my new undertaking.“Who are you going to show?”he asked.“I don’t know yet, it depends on the answers I get… and that includes yours!”
“Then here’s what we’ll do,” Daniel told me. “Open your gallery, do the shows you want to do, send me the invites. After three years I’ll tell you whether I can work with you or not. In any case, if I decide to, I’ll want to know who will be showing right before me and right after”.
Quite a lesson. It taught me I was under observation: a few words can beworth more than a specialized degree.
But it must have gone well, since just twelve months later, Daniel called to say I’d passed the test.
His first show with me came a year later, in 1974, and so now we’re celebrating the fortieth anniversary of that first time, with a new exhibition subtitled “forty years already!”…an exclamation of Daniel’s, who seems more surprised than me at how time has flown.
Unless I’m mistaken, this is our sixth exhibition together, along with other adventures outside the gallery.
The first was titled “GOTICO”, with 8.7-centimeter-wide paper stripes glued to the arches of the Via Agostino Gallo space, arranged alphabetically by the name of their color in Italian (azzurro, blu, giallo, rosso, verde…)
The show that’s opening now, on Saturday, May 24, will feature light-based works, and what do you know, once again the colors will be alphabetically arranged (azzurro, blu, giallo, rosso, verde…)

Tout se tient. To be continued…