This book documents the experience of the food4thought project, its development, the exhibitions and performances which have accompanied it, the thoughts and experiences of its creators and of the experts, artists, cooks and protagonists of the world of art and culture that helped make it happen.

Four chefs of international acclaim and five of the most fascinating artists on the contemporary scene take visitors on a unique discovery of the complex rituals connected to food, including nourishment, taste, instincts and consumption. There are four leading concepts around which the exploration revolves: food/future, food/substance, food/environment and food/exchange.

Artists: Raúl Cárdenas Osuna, Francesco Jodice, Dunja Scannavini, Sissel Tolaas, Ben Vautier

Cooks: Burkhard Bacher, Herbert Hintner, Thomas Mayr, Davide Scabin

The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition held at the Estorick Collection in London from September 14th to December 18th 2005.

From Futurism to Arte Povera: Works from the Marcello Levi Collection exhibition brings to London for the first time over fifty paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations from the collection of Marcello Levi, one of the leading collectors of contemporary art in Italy. Levi began collecting Futurist drawings and masters such as Klee and Man Ray, before becoming one of the earliest collectors of Arte Povera. His incredible foresight enabled him to gather together a remarkable body of work that has rarely been shown in public before.

Levi was active during the same years as Eric Estorick, but tended to favour abstract rather than figurative art. The exhibitions selection, installation and display of key works reveals fascinating parallels and differences in their approaches to collecting, making this a particularly stimulating and insightful venture for the Estorick Collection.

The book includes two essays by Robert Lumley (Professor of Italian Cultural History at University College in London) and by Francesco Manacorda, art critic and curator of the Levi collection, plus a conversation curated by Maria Centonze.

The catalogue is published on the occasion of the solo exhibition held at the Institut Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt (Germany) from July 23rd to September 4th 2005.

This monograph, which documents several works, including paintings, sculpture, installations and drawings, is the most updated and complete examination of the artist. It is a rich iconographic recognition of the artist’s activity and an updated monograph that contains four selected essays. The works reproduced here represent Zorio entire artistic carreer. This catalogue raisonné presents the complete oeuvre of this important artist: his works from the 60s, Sedia (Chair), Tenda (Tent) and Senza titolo (Untitled), up to the latest series of Stella (Star) and Canoa (Canoe). This catalogue provides new insight into the many aspects of this extraordinary artist.

Gilberto Zorio’s artistic activity began through his involvment in the Arte Povera movement which developed in Italy at the end of the Sixties, as part of a more general tendency toward anti-form, anti-geometry. The interest in space and form was replaced by a focus on human activity and desire for organic harmony between art, culture and nature. Zorio uses primary material (metals, glass, rubber, wood, animal hide, alcohol, acids and minerals, water, fire and light), he concentrates on energy processes and is concerned with language as a medium and processes of linguistic communication.

The book includes a chronology with numerous photos and documents and an updated biobibliography.

This book is published on the occasion of the solo exhibition held at Institut Malthildenhöhe in Darmstadt from July 23rd to September 4th 2005. It collects 70 drawings by the artist and his text concerning some reflections over the contemporary painting role.

“These notes are for those who think my paintings are a more or less elegant exercise in decorative aestheticism. I would like to tell them that I believe and trust in the lyrical value of color and signs, but I do not think of painting, and art in general, as an escape from reality, a free zone. Just the opposite: I believe art continues to be a tool of awareness and therefore of immersion in reality.” (Giorgio Griffa)

Giorgio Griffa was born in Turin in 1936. Since 1968 he has held about one hundred solo shows in public and private spaces, including the 39th Venice Biennial in 1980, and the GAM in Turin in 2001-02. He has published the following texts: Non c’è rosa senza spine (Ed. Martano, Turin 1975); Cani sciolti antichisti (Martano and Samanedizioni, Genoa 1980); Drugstore Parnassus (Martano and Ottenhausen Verlag, Aachen 1981); In nascita di Cibera (Studio Noacco, Chieri 1989); 434-442-443-... (Ed. Franco Masoero, Turin 1992); Il principio di indeterminazione (Ed. Maestri Incisori, Milan 1994); Di segno in segno (with Martina Corgnati - Ed. Stefano Fumagalli, Bergamo 1995); Come un dialogo (Lorenzelli Arte, Milan 1997); Approdo a Gilania (Galleria Giancarlo Salzano, Turin 1998); Intelligenza della materia (Galleria Giancarlo Salzano, Turin 2000); 60 schizzi da opere 1968/2000 e un testo (Ed. Franco Masoero, Turin 2000); Nelle orme dei Cantos (Libri Scheiwiller, Milan 2001).

This book collects 19 drawings in a double version, with lightness and darkness view.

Gilberto Zorio exhibited in a number of the defining group shows of Arte Povera in 1967.He has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States. Retrospective exhibitions of Zorio’s work have been presented at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1979; the Kunstverein in Stuttgart in 1985; the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris 1986; the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno in Valencia 1991; Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato 1992; Documenta inKassel 1992; Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea in Trento 1996; Dia Center for the Arts 2001 and Sonnabend Gallery in New York 2004.

This book is a new, revised and corrected edition of the artist’s writings first published in 1985. In line with the work system adopted by Mario Merz, the transcription of the texts does not maintain a chronological order, but identifies three moments of typological distinction in which different referential identities emerge in the development of the writing.

“Voglio fare subito un libro” (I want to make a book right now) is a collection of published and unpublished texts written by Mario Merz up to 1985, in which the dialogue between the ’forces’ of art and those of literature erupts at times luxuriantly and brilliantly and at times harshly and critically; it is concentrated or dispersed in various topics that flow through the pages like a river in flood. The poetic freedoms that Mario Merz appropriates in the act of writing are interwoven with suggestions and references to his art. An art managed on the basis of inventions: of architectural structures (the progression of tables, spirals or the better-known igloos...), of pictorial constructions (which have developed since the birth of Merz the artist), on the natural cyclical and numerical development of the elements (the application of Fibonacci’s numerical progression), on the use of materials rejected by society (broken glass, old newspapers...), on strategic statements (“Se il nemico si concentra perde terreno, se si disperde perde forza”, “Objet cache-toi”, “Città irreale…”) which are included in his works as axioms and emerge as traces in the reading of this book.” Harald Szeemann