This catalogue is published on the occasion of the show of the Italian artist Luisa Rabbia at the Fondazione Merz from 19 June to 20 September 2009. The exhibition evolves around three central works, consisting of a video and two installations, with traveling as the main theme, through an intimate, imaginary and surreal journey. Luisa Rabbia combines her own world of loneliness, fear, anxiety and personal memories with images taken from other people’s lives. The result is a sort of diary, a narrative that develops through a net of drawings: endless roots, fragments of the artist’s work and clips from her previous videos that are all like blood vessels of a life journey.

From January 23 to February 27 2010, the exhibition will be hosted by the Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

This is the fourth publication belonging to fondazione merz i quaderni series and it presents the exhibition hopes & doubts (curated by Costantino D’Orazio) held at Fondazione Merz from 22 January to 1 March 2009. Eight Lebanese and eight Italian artists showcase their work in both Beirut (Lebanon) and Turin (Italy). The cutting edge body of work will focus on daily life, translating the special emotional condition of the Lebanese people into paintings, photography, video and installation.

At the same time as the exhibition hopes & doubts the Fondazione Merz presented the solo show of Gabriele Basilico, Beirut 1991, which includes about twenty photographs taken from the great photographic service shot in Beirut in 1991 at the end of the civil war that devastated the country. The result is a photographic document that intends to reflect on what remains of a city after the conflict of war and how it prepares to ‘start again’.

Artists: Gabriele Basilico, Elisabetta Benassi, Ginou Choueiri, Elisabetta Di Maggio, Michael Fliri, Francesco Gennari, Pascal Hachem, Lina Hakim, Joanne Issa, Zena el Khalil, Marzia Migliora, Randa Mirza, Giuseppe Pietroniro, Luisa Rabbia, Marwan Rechmaoui, Rima Saab, Andrea Salvino.

The book collects the multi-faceted project that Matthew Barney developed in 3 days in Turin and documents the different parts of it: the solo exhibition at the Fondazione Merz (30 October 2008 - 11 January 2009), a workshop with the students of the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti and University of Turin, a public meeting between the artist and Richard Flood, opened by a paper written for the occasion by Arthur C. Danto, and a series of films screened at the Cinema Massimo.

Matthew Barney was born in San Francisco in 1967 and was raised in Boise, Idaho. He attended Yale University, receiving his BA in 1989, then moved to New York City, where he lives today. From his earliest work, Barney has explored the transcendence of physical limitations in a multimedia art practice that includes feature-length films, video installations, sculpture, photography, and drawing. In his first solo exhibitions, Barney presented elaborate sculptural installations that included videos of himself interacting with various constructed objects and performing physical feats such as climbing across the gallery ceiling suspended from titanium ice screws. In 1992, Barney introduced fantastical creatures into his work, a gesture that presaged the vocabulary of his subsequent narrative films. In 1994, Barney began work on his epic Cremaster cycle, a five-part film project accompanied by related sculptures, photographs, and drawings. He completed the cycle in 2002. Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle, an exhibition organized by the Guggenheim Museum of artwork from the entire project, premiered at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, in June 2002 and subsequently traveled to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in October 2002 before its presentation in New York.

This third quaderno is dedicated to Gino De Dominicis, as Andrea Bellini writes “can be considered one of the most emblematic and mysterious figures in the history of Italian art in the post-WWII period. He is still in many ways something of a mystery, surrounded by a legendary aura. De Dominicis was and remains an isolated case, a complex personality who always turned his back on the logic of groups and movements, cultivating a superior, noble, and solitary notion of artistic creation.”

i quaderni is a series of slender books aiming to inform the public of all the activities promoted by the Torinese institution. Each issue is based upon an event of particular importance – to be documented with images in a manner that is better and more comprehensive than the eventual catalogue – and so recreate the entire season of which it is a part, recording the gossamer threads the things of art follow. Threads that echo an interrupted dialogue with Mario Merz, with his works that are preserved and presented by the fondazione, and with his writings, an unpublished selection of which will be presented in each issue of i quaderni. Every quaderno will be rounded off with a section of Technical notes, with the lists of works exhibited, and a Chronology presenting, in synoptic tables, the complex itinerary packed with performances, readings, didactic activities, congresses, planned by the scientific committee which, alongside its president, Beatrice Merz, comprises Richard Flood (The New Museum, New York), Dieter Schwarz (Kunstmuseum, Winthertur) and Vicente Todolí (Tate Modern, London).

This book documents the exhibition, chronologically divided in two tranche, which will be held at GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino (1961-1985 from 25 October 2008 to 6 February 2009; 1985-2008 from 6 March to 5 May 2009).

The exhibition illustrates the continual emergence of photographic forms in the history of moving images. In the 1960s and 70s, which were characterised by structuralist cinema and conceptual video, still photography represented the ultimate achievement in the analysis of time. In later years, photography became a universal archive of historic time for auteur video and cinema and, by browsing through the shelves of this art form, one is taken on a journey through both past and future. As from the 1980s, the frozen time of photography was a vision in slow motion, indefinably tending towards stasis, and the ethereal substance of memory began to be released into the world of moving images. And it is precisely in the way they reconsider memory that more recent works appear once again to relate to the language of photographs.

Artists: John Baldessari, David Claerbout, Jem Cohen, Guy Debord, Jimmie Durham, Harun Farocki, Hollis Frampton, Cyprien Gaillard, Gilbert & George, Chris Marker, Luigi Ontani, Giulio Paolini, Robin Rhode, Michael Snow, Simon Starling, Bill Viola, T.J. Wilcox

The Foundation Merz prepares to celebrate its fourth birthday by publishing the quaderni, a series of slim volumes aiming to provide the public with the latest news regarding all the activities promoted by the Turin-based institute. Each issue takes its cue from a particularly important event – which it intends to document through images better and more numerous than in any eventual catalogue – in order to reconstruct the entire season of which it was part, testifying to the subtle narratives adopted by the evolution of art.

This first issue is dedicated to Sol Lewitt, the great American artist, exponent of minimalism and conceptual art, famous throughout the world for his Wall Paintings. These publications reflect an uninterrupted dialogue with Mario Merz, with his works preserved and presented by the foundation and with his writings, of which each issue of i quaderni presents a previously unpublished selection. Each issue of i quaderni is rounded off by a section of critical texts, with lists of the works on display, and a chronology that gives a synopsis of the complex itinerary – full of performances, readings, educational activities and conferences – planned by the scientific committee which, along with the president, Beatrice Merz, includes Richard Flood (The New Museum, New York), Dieter Schwarz (Kunstmuseum, Winthertur) and Vicente Todolí (Tate Modern, London).