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.

The art book is published for the exhibitions held at the Kunstmuseum in Winthertur (September 6th / November 23rd 2003) and at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York (January 24th / February 21th 2004): it’s a black and white and color collection of drawings made by Marisa Merz between 2001 and 2004.

“Forty-three images on white paper, not contained within outlines but mere indications of figures: fine, dark visions which seemed to collect on the surface only to disperse again – barely any lines, just a suggestion. […] The drawings concentrate on the features of a face: eyes and a mouth, reference points which seem less to belong to a person than to occupy the space – not with any regularity, but sporadically like an assembly congregating, a throng of beings settling here and there.  […] Speed and energy shape these drawings, the gesture of the artist’s hand audaciously denies what has been before and forges ahead instead of sinking into the paper.” (Dieter Schwarz)

Marisa Merz was born in Turin and has participated in the creative activities that coalesced in the Arte povera group, showing at the Deposito d’Arte Presente in 1967 and in the group show Arte Povera + Azioni Povere, in Amalfi in 1968. In addition to having participated in some of the most important group shows in the last thirty years, Marisa Merz has also exhibited at many editions of the Venice Biennale, winning the Prize in 2001 edition. 

The catalogue was published on the occasion of the Non toccare la donna bianca. La liberazione delle diversità exhibition held at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin from 17 September 2004 to 8 January 2005. The exhibition at Fondazione Sandretto, curated by Francesco Bonami, is a reflection on the artistic role of women in a society shaped by male identity. The book, which constitutes the exhibition catalogue, aims to investigate this reality through the creative language of nineteen women artists whose works include installations, drawings, videos and photographs, mixing heterogeneous languages used to interpret the theme of women artists’ freedom in contemporary culture.

The book has been produced maintaining the creative layout specially conceived by the artists who have interpreted the pages dedicated to them in an autonomous and original way: a series of images follow one another without interruption, in a lively alternation that sees the works of well-known artists such as Shirin Neshat juxtaposed with those of emerging ones such as Maja Bajevic.

Accompanied by a text by the exhibition’s curator Francesco Bonami and by the entries for each work files and including a biographical and bibliographical appendix, the catalogue offers an original interpretation of the selected works of Micol Assaël, Maja Bajevic, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Marlene Dumas, Ellen Gallagher, Carmit Gil, Fernanda Gomes, Lyudmila Gorlova, Mona Hatoum, Michal Helfman, Emily Jacir, Koo Jeong-a, Daniela Kostova, Senga Nengudi, Shirin Neshat, Shirana Shahbazi, Valeska Soares, Nobuko Tsuchiya and Shen Yuan.

The book was published on the occasion of the Domenico Bianchi Mario Merz exhibition dedicated to the two artists as part of the Art&Maggio event, held at the Castello Svevo in Bari from 1 May to 30 June 2004.
The catalogue collects the photographic documentation of the exhibition and opens with the images of Mario Merz’s artistic project set up in the inner courtyard of the Angevin castle: it is a large igloo built in 1998 to be exhibited in the park of the Fundaçao Serralves in Porto and presented in the Bari exhibition as a tribute to the recently deceased artist. The iron structure of the igloo is surmounted by a deer that symbolically underlines the spiritual dimension of the work.
The second part of the catalogue is dedicated to the creations conceived by Domenico Bianchi and arranged in the castle’s Sala Angioina: eleven large paintings made using materials such as wood, wax, palladium and fibreglass.
The last part of the book uses images to illustrate some of Bianchi’s most significant experiences in exhibitions for indoor spaces and Merz’s works for outdoor spaces.

If Michelangelo blocks of marble already contained I Prigioni that the sculptor later digged out, the materials protagonists of Storie di pietra e d’altro (Tales of stone and more) had already inside them the artworks that the man will take out and the tale that will make of him an artist. The young readers of Tales of stones and more find out materials as the artists of our century have already done - Anselmo, Penone, Pistoletto, Merz, Kounellis - who bring to the extreme limit the sensitivity that makes them catch "the artistic "inside the substance and inside the shape, before the human agency. In Quarzo microcosmos, so close to the children's one, stones can think, but their thinking is not as fast as their becoming sand; growing trees destroy the skyscrapers' order; clothes thrown in the room becomes a rainbow; and all the tales connect one thing to the other as in a kind of an illustrated Mille e una notte of art materials.

Guido Quarzo, born in Torino 1948, winner of the Andersen Baia delle Favole Prize in 1995 as best author, is primary school teacher and wrote nursery rhymes, novels, tales for children among which Seconda storia del Principe Faccia da Maiale, L'ultimo lupo mannaro in città, Comefuché, Il viaggio dell'Orca Zoppa, Sogno disegno matita di legno, Luì e l'arte di andare nel bosco  (first book of the series hopefulmonster La favola dell'arte), and theatre texts played in schools and theatres of Torino.