This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Petrit Halilaj. Shkrepëtima curated by Leonardo Bigazzi and held at Fondazione Merz from 29th October 2018 to 17th February 2019.

“In recent years, Petrit Halilaj has succeeded in transforming his own biography and the recent history of his nation, Kosovo, into living matter for his works. Despite working with a public and collective dimension, his work often originates from a personal experience, and is usually the result of an intimate process shared with the people dearest to him. Using sculpture, video, performance and drawing, Halilaj has developed a deep reflection on the construction mechanisms of cultural identity, on the value of memory and on the role of art in the shaping of collective consciousness in contemporary society.

The catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition So as to find the strength to see held at Fondazione Merz from 6th March to 27th May 2018.

“Examining the work of Fatma Bucak is like looking down on a deconstructed map. Here we find trails travelled and then cancelled out, landscapes designed and then abandoned, a geography that continually redraws itself, intertwining facts and biographies, erased events and non-identities. In the artist’s recent work, these landscapes expand from Turkey to Syria and North Africa and then reach Europe and the United States with the aim of investigating a political framework that is particularly difficult to define. The artist’s research can be understood as a constantly evolving visual practice that refers directly to the etymology of the Greek verb prássein, the meaning of which is not limited to making or doing but also picks up the idea of travelling, walking, crossing.” (Lisa Parola, Maria Centonze)

“With characteristic buoyancy of spirit, Bucak called this exhibition So as to find the strength to see. Five years after the fall of the Turkish spring, she wonders if we can smell the roses of a country besieged by forces with conflicting agendas and a shared love of violence. Lands that today reek of gunpowder can once again smell of roses. This is the vision we are asked to find the strength to see.” (Kaya Genç)

The catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Carlos Garaicoa. El Palacio de las Tres Historias held at Fondazione Merz from 30th October 2017 to 4th February 2018.

“El Pensamiento as logos and affection, word and intention, memory and distance, history and attention, metaphor and irony; this is the common thread that Carlos Garaicoa has for years spun with his art. ” (Claudia Gioia)

The catalogue reproduces the photographic documentation of the exhibition at the Fondazione Merz and a selection of Garaicoa‘s works from the 1994 to 2017. A text by the exhibition curator Claudia Gioia enlightens the dialogue between art and architecture, exploring the site specific installation at the Fondazione Merz.

The book also includes a specially commissioned text by acclaimed Cuban novelist Leonardo Padura.

The catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Massimo Bartolini. Four Organs held at Fondazione Merz from 3 July to 1 October 2017.

“It’s the first time that works planned individually are presented together and play together, like in a concert. There is a polyphony. The instruments of this quartet are four organs, called Otra Fiesta from a poem by Roberto Juarroz, Voyelles from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, In a Landscape from a piece by John Cage and Three Quarter-tone Pieces from a piece by Charles Ives. Maracas, instead, comes along with the title of the Four Organs exhibition. I had been listening to a lot of Steve Reich for some time. There is a very good record (Four Organs): it seemed like a suggestion that I could not allow to go by. So I extrapolated Reich’s title.” (Massimo Bartolini)

The catalogue reproduces the photographic documentation of the exhibition at the Fondazione Merz and a selection of Bartolini‘s works from 1989 al 2016. A conversation between the artist and Luca Cerizza enriches the site specific installation at the Fondazione Merz.

This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Marzia Migliora. Velme curated by Beatrice Merz and held at Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice from 13 May to 26 November 2017.

“Attracted by the charm of the lagoon city, with its complex history and its most current contradictions, Marzia Migliora relates Venetian affairs and those of the world of labour through a series of legendary, literary and social implications, conceiving a project steeped in elements drawn from history and current events, making use also of some works conserved in the historic building. ” (Beatrice Merz)

The catalogue reproduces the photographic documentation of the exhibition at Ca’ Rezzonico and a selection of Marzia Migliora's works from 2002 to 2016. The project drawings realized by the artist in preparing of the exhibition stands by the curator Beatrice Merz text. A conversation between anthropologist Alberto Salza and the artist enriches the site specific installation by Marzia Migliora, whom works are on display in several rooms of the Museo del Settecento Veneziano in the historic Palazzo Ca’ Rezzonico.

This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Wael Shawky: Al Araba Al Madfuna curated by Abdellah Karroum and held at Fondazione Merz from 2nd November 2016 to 5th February 2017.

“Shawky is an artist who embraces the exhibition space in a gesture of giving and sharing fragments of a world that is impossible to translate into controlled physical forms. […] Wael Shawky: Al Araba Al Madfuna invites the viewer to walk through elements of the films and their processes of production – architectural artefacts, sculptures, and drawings on animal skins – placed inside a built landscape of sand. The viewer moves in temporal reverse, beginning with the last film, Al Araba Al Madfuna III, in colour, followed by three-dimensional elements taken from the storyboard, and then, finally, Shawky’s older films in black and white. [...] The entire Al Araba Al Madfuna project was inspired by a journey, a place within history, and a personal experience of that place. The storyboards, drawings, sculptures, and films that emerged were made between Abydos, the place of the artist’s site of expedition, and the exhibition spaces and museums where the artwork is later made visible. His journey to Upper Egypt is marked and made of places and encounters, of archaeological sites, of the people who care for the memory of the past, the people who wait, the people who dig, and finally, of those who write. It is this latter category, embodied by the work of the Egyptian novelist Mustagab, that is the most influential for Shawky in this project. In a way, the artist looks at humankind’s experience of history as his own experience, of both accountability for some pressing issues in the world and watching as older values die or mutate into other forms of life.” (Abdellah Karroum)