The Garden of Resonances invites visitors to walk among eras that mirror each other, forms that seek each other out, artists separated by centuries yet engaged in intense dialogue, as if history were not a line but an echo, a garden in which every creative gesture still vibrates among the branches of time.

The exhibition offers an innovative dialogue between the works preserved in the storerooms of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna – many of which are rarely seen by the public – and the research of sixteen contemporary artists active on the Bologna scene. The connections that emerge in the spaces of the Pinacoteca and MAMbo are symbolic and formal resonances, capable of crossing eras, languages and sensibilities.

The “garden” evoked in the title is a cultural and conceptual image: a space of relationships, tensions and harmonies, in which the human and the natural intertwine and mirror each other: ancient bonds that the processes set in motion by the industrial revolution have caused us to lose sight of, but which still echo in our language, starting with the term “culture”, from the Latin colere, “to cultivate”.

An exhibition that invites visitors to question the meaning of the collection, memory and transformation.

Il Giardino delle Risonanze's artists: Josef Albers, Anna Tappari, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Jean Couy, Cuoghi Corsello, Anton Raphael Mengs, Giorgio Alvise Baffo, Eva Marisaldi, Enrico Serotti, Alessandro Algardi, Francis Bacon, Zapruder, Giorgio De Chirico, Felice Giani, Filippo Scandellari, Daniel Seghers, Erasmus Quellinus Il Giovane, Arianna Zama, Giorgio Morandi, Alessandra Dragoni, Giuseppe De Nittis, Luigi Venturi, Riccardo Baruzzi, Ubaldo Gandolfi, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Emma Masut, Domenico Maria Viani, Italo Zuffi, Hans Fronius, Fanny & Alexander, Luigi Serra, Paolo Chiasera, Otto Dix, Bruno Munari, Jean Arp, Kurt Regschek, Zimmerfrei, Alessandro Tiarini, Tommaso Silvestroni, Valentino Solmi, Filippo Tappi, Maestro Vpr, Federico Zamboni, Guido Cagnacci, Emidio Clementi, Stefano Pilia, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Savinio, Antonio Muzzi, Enrico Romolo

English artist Tony Cragg exhibits ten sculptures that reconnect with the genius loci of the Reggia in a sort of post-modern redefinition of the Baroque and Rococo styles.

After his installation for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Tony Cragg returns to Italy to stage an exhibition at the Reggia di Venaria featuring a selection of ten sculptures created between 1997 and 2021. The sculptures by Cragg, one of the world's most acclaimed contemporary British artists, are set within the permanent exhibition space of the Reggia, starting from the Court of Honour, continuing through the Upper Gardens and ending in the interior hall at the head of the Juvarrian Stables.

These large-scale works, crafted from a variety of materials – from bronze to wood, fibreglass to steel – are all characterised by the artist's signature sinuous, undulating lines, which appear to have been modelled on a giant potter's wheel.

Tony Cragg's work analyses the multiple relationships between human beings and the environment. Using a wide selection of materials and sculptural techniques, the artist explores the complex connection between the figure, the object and the landscape, which for Cragg includes both geological and microbiological systems as well as urban and industrial contexts.

Luigi Mainolfi (Rotondi, Feb. 16, 1948) is an Italian sculptor who is internationally known as one of the main representatives of the so-called post-conceptual sculpture, which was imposed at the beginning of the 1980s.

Over twenty sculptures by Luigi Mainolfi, created between 1978 and 2020, were housed in the Court of Honor, the Grand Parterre of the Gardens of the Reggia di Venaria and the Chapel of St. Hubert in the summer of 2024.

From the zoomorphic-themed sculptures comes the title, Bestiary, which refers to medieval illuminated codices illustrated with real and imaginary animals, but also to the fantastic zoology of Jorge Luis Borges. This is a recurring theme in Mainolfi, already the author of Bestiario del Sole with its polychrome metamorphic creatures between myth and fairy tale. Mainolfi's Bestiary settles into the architecture, invades the green geometries of the gardens and comes into contact with the living presence of fawns and other wildlife in the park and surrounding forest. Fantastic and mutant creatures, in dialogue with the fairy tales and modeled and painted animals of the Reggia di Venaria, entirely dedicated in the 17th century to the myth of Diana, goddess of the moon and the hunt.

Luigi Mainolfi (1948) practices sculpture made with natural materials such as terracotta, plaster, wood, lava stone, or bronze castings, elaborating his own personal language through which he evokes the popular cultures of our country.

Exhibition: Mainolfi. Sculptures. Bestiary
La Venaria Reale, Venaria, Turin, 21th June 2024 - 10th November 2024

Guide to the work of the famous English artist and the exhibition at the Venaria Reale (Turin) from 31th October 2024

William Blake (1757-1827) is a leading figure in British art and literature. Ignored when he was alive, his visionary works in painting, print and watercolour have inspired entire generations and are now recognised as a unique contribution to world culture.

The catalogue of the exhibition held at La Venaria Reale offers a selection of his finest works from the collection of the Tate UK, set in the context of a convulsive moment in British art, imagination and history. Blake lived through a revolutionary period, a time of radical transformation of ideas about art and the imagination, in which artists pushed art into new and unexplored imaginary territories.

Blake's timeless images are juxtaposed with those of the artists who most inspired and influenced him, including Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West and John Hamilton Mortimer.

The volume is accompanied by in-depth texts on William Blake, on some of the artists close to him and on the artistic current of Romanticism by David Blayney Brown and Alice Insley.

Exhibition Blake e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno (Blake and His Age. Journeys in Dreamtime)

La Venaria Reale, Venaria, Turin, 31th October 2024 - 2nd February 2025

The first volume of the catalogue raisonné of the artist's work is dedicated to igloos. Based on the exhaustive research conducted by art historian Maddalena Disch, it is an editorial project of the Fondazione Merz, with the support of the Scientific and Editorial Committee composed of Mariano Boggia, Luisa Borio, Richard Flood, Beatrice Merz, Frances Morris and Vicente Todolì. The volume is introduced by a text by Beatrice Merz and an essay by Maddalena Disch. Each work is presented with an analytical historical and biographical profile supported by accurate bibliographical references and an exhaustive photographic repertoire.

The volume includes texts by the artist and interviews with Jean-Christophe Ammann, Mirella Bandini, Sergio Barana, Matteo Benvenuti, Achille Bonito Oliva, Germano Celant, Bruno Corà, Danilo Eccher, Corinna Ferrari, Piero Gilardi, Marlis Grüterich, Claudio Guarda, Michael Haerdter, Richard Koshalek, Corrado Levi, Salvatore Licitra, Beatrice Merz, Linda Morris, Fumio Nanjo, Suzanne Pagé, Gabriele Perretta, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Mila Pistoi, Barbara Reise, Giuseppe Risso, Harald Szeemann, Laura Tansini, Caroline Tisdall, Tommaso Trini, Paolo Vagheggi, Gemma Vincenzini and Francesco Vincitorio; as well as a biographical note and bibliography edited by the Merz Archive.

The book, consisting of 560 pages and 350 images, is published in two editions, one in Italian and one in English.

The project is realised thanks to the support of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture within the framework of the Italian Council programme (2023).

In Turin, for the first time, Khalil Rabah's Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind takes the form of an archaeological site, in which the visitor is invited to immerse himself in a historical narrative rendered through testimonies and clues. In the spaces of the Fondazione Merz, the artist challenges the role of the museum as a mere container and focuses on art as a tool for the interpretation and correction of history. Khalil Rabah's artistic practice ranges between painting, sculpture and installation to construct a lucid and careful analysis of history and its interpretations, questioning their narrative modes and the perception they generate. Fundamental themes such as change, memory and identity intersect in his work, creating new ways of representing communities and relationships. ways of representing communities and the relationships that make them up.

The catalogue accompanies the project conceived by Khalil Rabah for the Fondazione Merz and was created as an extension of the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (PMNHH). Developed as a nomadic museum institution that the artist inaugurated in 2003, Rabah's museum, which includes departments such as geology, botany and palaeontology, has seen several iterations around the world and is identified as a project in constant evolution.

Khalil Rabah is a Palestinian conceptual artist born in Jerusalem in 1961. He studied Architecture and Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Arlington and has resided in the United States for over a decade. His most recent solo exhibitions include Casa Árabe, Madrid (2016); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2015); e-flux, New York (2013); and Beirut Art Center (2012). As well as major group exhibitions, including Manifesta 12 Palermo (2018); Sharjah Biennial (2017); Marrakech Biennial (2016); Kochi-Muziris Biennial (2014); Thessaloniki Biennial (2013); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2012); Mathaf, Doha (2010); and Venice Biennale (2009). Rabah is the initiator and artistic director of the Riwaq Biennale and a co-founder of the Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem. From 2011 to 2015 he served on the curricular committee of Ashkal Alwan's Home Workspace programme in Beirut, Lebanon.