“One looked like a dinosaur. Another one looked like a anteater. Another one a big lizard or a crocodile. They are not just figures or signes among the stars. They are living creatures that move up in the sky – I said – the Universe is full of dinosaurs, kites, lizards and lions, men with arrows and rhinos”.
Have you ever looked at the sky discovering stars and constellations in courious shapes and wondering maybe someone else is doing the same on the other side?
From the synergy between Marosia Castaldi’s words and Mario Merz’s images, a tender fable telling about a world made of imagination that is inside everyone, told through a swift language that goes with the colours and shapes of Art.

La favola dell’arte, or a fabulous way of entering the world of art. The art of writing and the art of the figure in a close synergy at the service of fun and learning.

Mario Merz (Milan 1925-2003) was one of the leading exponents of Arte Povera. His works have been shown in permanent collections of the most important and prestigious museums all over the world: from Guggenheim in New York to the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Los Angeles, from Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam to Nationalgalerie in Berlin, from Israel Museum in Jerusalem to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He received the Japanese Imperial Praemium for sculpture on November 2003.

Marosia Castaldi born in Naples, lives in Milan. She has studied philosophy and art. It’s ages since she dedicates herself completely to writing. She has published narrative texts, Abbastanza prossimo (Tam Tam 1986, finalist at mondello Prize 1986), Casa idiota (Tringale 1990), Piccoli paesaggi (Anterem 1993) and novels, La Montagna (Campanotto 1991), Ritratto di Dora (Loggia dè Lanzi 1994, finalist at Palazzo al Bosco Prize 1992), Fermata km 501 (Tranchida 1997), Per quante vite (Feltrinelli 1999, finalist at Premio Bergamo 2000 and at Premio Chianti 2000).

An illustrated overview of the architectural development of the Fondazione Merz, this is the book of the building. With beautiful photography it describes the finished building, the ideas behind it and the way in which it was designed and built. This visual narrative includes views of the construction and the Fondazione completed and in use.

The Fondazione’s site, a former heating plant for the Lancia factory, is a 1930s industrial building owned by the City of Turin and given in concession to the Fondazione Merz. It is located in Borgo San Paolo, an area now undergoing the urban and cultural revitalisation and refurbishment affecting much of Turin in recent years.

The refurbishment and restoration, supported by both private and public funds (City of Turin and the Regione Piemonte), has affected the whole building, defining the interior spaces and taking into account the cultural purposes the Fondazione intends pursuing. The building has an overall area of 3,200 m2, of which 1,400 for an exhibition area over three floors and including an external area.

The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Drawing Marble organized by Comune di Carrara and held at the Academy of Fine Arts from October 23rd 2004 to February 26th 2005.

The purpose was to bring together forty artists – sculptors, architects, designers, photographers and painters – to test the possibility to make this traditionally “cold” material a great author of modernity. The book collects works of art characterized by linguistic and stylistic elements which can be translated on marble.

The artists in the book are: Stephen Antonakos, Rinaldo Bigi, Enrica Borghi, Andrea Branzi, Gao Brothers, Simon Callery, Bruno Ceccobelli, Mario Ceroli, Joan Fontcuberta, Omar Galliani, Marco Gastini, Susy Gomez, Franco Guerzoni, Joseph Kosuth, Nicolas Leiva, Luigi Mainolfi, Javier Marín, Eliseo Mattiacci, Nino Migliori, Aldo Mondino, Gian Marco Montesano, Giordano Montorsi, Max Neuhaus, Nunzio, Perino & Vele, Vettor Pisani, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Carol Rama, Nicola Salvatore, Denis Santachiara, Alberto Terrile, Ivan Theimer, Enzo Tinarelli, Grazia Toderi, Vito Tongiani, David Tremlett, Antonio Trotta, Luisa Valentini, Fabio Viale, Bernd Zimmer, Gilberto Zorio.

The volume was published on the occasion of the Filippo Scroppo. Un artista tra pittura e critica exhibition organized by the Accademia Albertina, with the support of the City of Turin and the Piedmont Region, and hosted at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti di Torino from 1 December 2004 to 30 January 2005.

The goal of this volume is to recall some of the most significant moments in Filippo Scroppo’s artistic career, both through images of his works and through the testimony of his autograph writings and critical essays that deepen not only our knowledge of the artist but also his activity as a critic and curator.

“In the paintings produced between 1946 and 1948, the juxtaposition with Cézanne and Matisse, already recognizable in the canvases of the late 1930s, gives way to a more intense confrontation with the Cubist tradition. [...] Without crossing the analytical and self-reflective frontiers of the New Painting of the 1970s, he was a secret interpreter of the manner, and in the title of a painting of 1978 – Infiorescenza mentale – he perhaps wished to propose a poetic but also subtly ironic definition of the ruins and challenges into which artistic research was venturing”. (Maria Teresa Roberto) 

The catalogue reproduces about eighty works on display in the Turin exhibition and includes critical texts by Pino Mantovani, Maria Teresa Roberto and an extensive anthology edited by Ivana Multaro.

The series of catalogues published by hopefulmonster for GAM, Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Torino, reserved for artists of the new generation, continues with a monograph dedicated to Vedovamazzei for the exhibition held at GAM from October 6 2004 to January 6 2005.
Founded in 1990 Vedovamazzei is the working name of Italian artists Stella Scala and Simeone Crispino. The book includes also two essays, one by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and the other by Charlotte Laubard.
“Most of their works evince a familiarity with reality and at first exude a certain seductiveness, mixing humor with a sense for melodrama, they seem to wish to escape from interpretation at whatever the cost. Luminous and rash, heroic and impudent, the oeuvre of Vedovamazzei confronts the violence of the visible with eyes wide open. Their gaze fears neither sun nor death.” (Charlotte Laubard)

A myriad of trucks loaded with coal, cycles cart overflowing with round back coal bricks, and an acrid smell: we are in Beijing… The black sobering dust of coal is everywhere: behind the temples, in the alleys, at the corner of big avenues, inside the main entrances, on the stairwells. Patrizia Bonanzinga has followed the path of Chine's coal industry that runs along the Datong- Beijing axis. She has discovered a touching whole, but a very tough universe. She shows this reality in a simple manner through the human interaction with coal. The text that goes together with the photos is written with the same spirit: free from militant engagement, it shows this complex human whole, so simple but also very proud, and it presents the problems linked to the utilization of coal, such as the destruction of the environment, without excluding the tenderness of life that revolves around coal. The aim is to sketch a picture giving life to this Chinese coal world where the human relations are formed by the hardness of the task.

The photographic work shows the various phases of the production and the routing of the coal between Datong (in northern Shanxi province) and Beijing: the various types of coal mines, including one major state-owned mine in Datong with 2000 workers, a small or "local" mine in Datong with 200, and a collectively-owned mine with 25 workers.

Patrizia Bonanzinga, graduated in mathematics at the University of Siena and has worked for about ten years in telecommunications sector for an institute of scientific research. She spent numerous long periods abroad (Mexico, Algeria, USA, France, and China). her passion for photography started during her university studies. She settled in Beijing between 1995 and 1998 and during these days she worked on various subjects linked to China which she has published and exhibited in: the gallery of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (December 1997), the national Gallery of Modern Art, Rome (June-July 1999), the Italian Institute of Culture, Marseille (April 2001), the Atelier François Seigneur & Sylvie de la Dure, Arles (July 2001). She took part in the realization of the book Grammaire de l'objet chinois by Michel Culas (Edition de l'Amateur, Paris 1997), producing, among other things, the cover photo. For two years (1996-1998), she worked on the project The Road to Coal, utilizing only black and white film.