This DVD reintroduces the essential 2000 VHS video documentary Arte Povera by Sergio Ariotti and Beatrice Merz, a complete, chronological overview of the radical – and defiantly unglamorous–Italian “poor art” movement that arose in the late 1960s to contest the separation of art and everyday life. It presents ample archival material from all the significant group exhibitions – from the three-day event Arte Povera + Azioni Povere at Amalfi of 1968 to the Venice Biennale of 1997 – along with footage of recent solo exhibitions and interview clips with founding member and art historian Germano Celant, and a range of other artists, critics and gallery directors. Arte Povera presents the movement in all its complexity, and includes such participants as Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gilberto Zorio.

The book, published on the occasion of Simon Starling’s exhibition The Inaccessible Poem at Fondazione Merz from 29 October 2011 to 15 January 2012, goes beyond the concept of a catalogue to become a sort of notebook, a place of relations between distant spheres and other, perhaps inaccessible, ones.

In the exhibition event in which the British artist took on the role of curator, Starling established a dialogue between the subjects that make up the exhibition, in perfect coherence with what he theorises, namely the need to create “constellations of ideas and to fix them in a reciprocal orbit”. There were therefore no works by just one artist, but a collection of works from totally different experiences, whose relationship lies precisely in the empirical way of approaching science and knowledge, of suggesting poetic deviations or ironic digressions: unaltered visions of a world that continues to show intelligence and offer perspectives. The exhibition project he conceived combined some of his works with works by Mario Merz, Sture Johannesson, James Nasmyth and James Carpenter, Faivovich & Goldberg.

The book is accompanied by texts by Maria Centonze, Guillermo Faivovich, Nicolas Goldberg, Jacob Lillemose, Hernan Pruden and Simon Starling with works by Faivovich & Goldberg, Sture Johannesson, Mario Merz, James Nasmyth, James Carpenter and Simon Starling.

This volume collects the documentation of the solo exhibition that the Fondazione Merz dedicated to Kara Walker, curated by Olga Gambari, from 25 March to 3 July 2011. The exhibition project included a review of films – a field of expression to which the artist is strongly attached – an international conference on the political and psychological dimension of racial stereotypes and a workshop with students from the Accademia Albertina and the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Turin. In addition, the participation of journalist and writer Rebecca Walker enriched the debate on the concepts of race, class, culture and gender. Kara Walker, confronting the post-industrial space of the Foundation, presented cut papers in free evolution on the walls, a video-installation, drawings, collages and tempera paintings.

The project that involves the artist and that the book illustrates with a vast photographic and textual apparatus, is centred on the mythical memory that takes shape in her work, a memory in constant metamorphosis in which the biographical dimension is placed in connection with collective experience. A historical event such as the birth of the Afro-American community in the United States, linked to centuries of slavery and the subsequent difficult racial integration, becomes a material on which Kara Walker can draw for her figurative stories, playing on shadows and silhouettes. Her black silhouettes move in a visionary and metaphorical land, between day/night and light/dark. Fiercely realistic stories, allegories of black humour are represented in installations, videos, stage sets, puppets, kinetic shadows, wall drawings, collages on various supports, from wall to canvas. But also drawings, tempera, miniatures and large dimensions for dynamic stories that hover in a dimension where the grotesque verges on the dramatic. Kara Walker’s stories become myths, fairy tales, and although they have precise roots, they become universal narratives.

This book documents the exhibition Mario Merz. Pageantry of painting held at the Fondazione Merz in Turin from 12 May to 14 November 2010. Eighteen large paintings, selected by Rudi Fuchs, were realized between 1974 and 1988, and they come both from leading European museums and from private collections. In some cases, they have not been on public display for many years. Among the exhibited works two painted igloo, Casa del giardiniere, Igloo (Tenda di Gheddafi) and the Mario Merz. Lumaca video by Gerry Schum.
Rudi Fuchs, the exhibition’s curator, describes the vision at the origin of his idea: “I remember from childhood certain ceremonial pageants of guilds in which the members carried large banners with those heraldic figures in strong colours. They marched to the town square where they then held competitions in artful banner swaying, which were acrobatic and spectacular."
The book in the slipcase includes a USB key showing a video filmed during the exhibition and an interview by the curator.

This book documents the exhibition no fire zone held at the Fondazione Merz in Turin from 10 March to 18 April 2010. The project was commissioned by the Fondazione Merz to document the great event that closed the Wolfgang Laib’s exhibition in June of 2009, when the German artist brought forty-five Brahmins from the Indian region of Tamil Nadu to celebrate the Hindu fire ceremony at the Fondazione. Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio take the Mahayagna – the fire ritual that is celebrated for the wellbeing of the entire world and all living creatures – as the starting point for their reflection upon the Sri Lanka Civil War and its implications for the Tamil ethnicity, which the Brahmins belong to. The two artists were struck by the strong contrast between the two contradicting situations: on the one hand the religious ritual and man’s quest for harmony and on the other, the oppressive abuse of power that causes unbalanced situations and overwhelming human distress. Their installations interact with Laib’s work: they juxtapose the images of Laib’s exhibition with the harsh images of the war, and the reality of the Tamil’s Diaspora as if trying to find the way to a possible dialogue in this clash. The exhibition features a multi-video installation that unfolds through the Fondazione spaces according to a circular path. It ends in the lower level where it begins again with Soul diaspora, the pivotal work around which the entire project no fire zone revolves.

Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio are twins and they were born in Turin in 1978. They live and work in Turin. Massimiliano graduated in History of Art Criticism, and Gianluca in Film History at DAMS, in Turin. They have been worked together since 1999 and during the years they have produced numerous films among which: Zakaria, My Brother Yang, Maria Jesus. Their works have been selected for various film festivals among which: Oberhausen Film Festival, Edimburgh Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival. In 2010 they had the solo exhibition Bakroman at Arge Kunst in Bozen; they also participated in the group exhibitions at Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea (Monfalcone), Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea (Trento), Maison Rouge (Paris), Centre d’Art Nei Liicht (Dudelange, Luxembourg), Participant Inc. (New York), Annet Genlink Gallery (Amsterdam), MAXXI (Roma).

This art fairytale dedicated to the imagery and world of the Italian Transavanguardia movement starts with a real narrative between an adult man and a little girl, a book made up of dialogues, questions and answers between Beatrice and Giorgio. In the story, the five protagonists of the movement theorised by Achille Bonito Oliva enter with the vibrant colours and shapes of their works, providing a pretext for a conversation between generations, triggering elements of new stories, interpretations and exercises of freedom.

Giorgio Guglielmino, born in Genoa in 1957, is an art writer and collector.

Beatrice Carpani, born in 1988, a girl at the time of the book’s publication, was living in Buenos Aires with her family.