Giovanni Anselmo is one of the most radical artists of Arte Povera. The capacity of communicating complex themes such as Everything, Particular and Infinite through simple and extremly synthetic immages caracterize his creative art. His artworks are capable of provoking primary energies in the moment materials such as stone, water, steel are transformed into pure tension. Made from organic and inorganic materials such as stone, earth, metal, water and cotton, Anselmo’s works are installed and dotted around in the main exhibition spaces of the gallery. Rather than acting as separate metaphors or simulacra, they embody and translate into perceptible experience basic but generally unnoticed phenomena of knowledge: gravity, energy, the relation between general and particular, finite and infinite, culture and nature, the flow of historic time and the hypothesis of the eternity of universal physical laws, the realist, almost scientific method of experiencing and the abstraction of philosophical principles.

The catalogue is pubblished in occasion of the exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna and offers a complete documentation of the artist's research through his artworks: it also contains a comprehensive biographic profile and bibliography and new critical essays by Tacita Dean, Rosalind Krauss, Susan van de Ven and Gianfranco Maraniello and an interview with the artist curatedd by Andrea Viliani.

Giovanni Anselmo was born in Borgofranco d’Ivrea in 1934. He lives and works in Turin. In 1990 he was awarded the Golden Lion for painting at the 44th Venice Biennale.

The artist’s book is published on the occasion of Tanatosi (Thanatosis), a project by the Italian artist Marzia Migliora, curated by Beatrice Merz, held at the Merz Foundation in Torino, from 9 November 2006.

Perception is the guiding thread, and the use of all our senses becomes the unit of measure and the instrument for relating with the external world.

The artist develops this theme into a wider discourse, reflecting in particular on the state of blindness. This becomes a metaphor for fears which cannot be seen or touched but which are such ‘solid’ presences that the perception of reality is altered.

This cycle of works attempts to stimulate the seeing spectator to look not only by means of their eyes but also, for example, by creating a tactile relationship with objects or by listening to the sound that is refracted in space.

The artist gets the sighted person to put themself in the shoes of the person who cannot see, and gives the unsighted person various useful instruments for enjoying an exhibition of contemporary art.

Touching, looking, listening, counting... like an exercise that results from experience.

This book accompanies the project, recounting the stages of the exhibition through relief drawings and texts in Braille. It also includes the photographic documentation of the exhibition, together with a text by Jérôme Sans, artistic director of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead (Great Britain).

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 monography dedicated to the Italian artist Sabrina Mezzaqui for the exhibition held at GAM from November 9th 2006 to January 28th, 2007.

The catalogue, that tells deeply about the artistic personality of the artist through his works, opens with the photographic documentation of the exhibition to tell then through the images the art of Mezzaqui from 1990’s up to today, showing installations made by large found objects and paint. She assembles these objects to create new spaces and sculptures. Sabrina Mezzaqui focusses her attention on the most minute things in life. Hers is a really reserved and solitary work, made of repeated gestures, of times dilated up to the point that they become a sort of reflective and auto-imposed discipline, of manual skill and exercise dropped into the temporal suspension of a ritual. Mezzaqui uses ordinary materials: pencil or felt-pen drawing, paper, cut-outs. Also writing is often part of the work, recovered or transformed, or even only imagined or again denied in the chequering of a partially cut sheet whose cut off pieces fall to the floor, suspended between persistence and instability. In her installations, projections of shadow or light or again images of reallife filming with fixed camera, achieve strong suggestions.

The book includes one essay by Elena Volpato, a poem by Mariangela Gualtieri and some writings of the artist.

The monograph reproduces the photographic documentation of the solo exhibitions held in 2005 at the Fondazione Merz, Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum and GAM Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, representing the most important spaces dedicated to contemporary art in Torino. This monograph, the most complete published collection on the artist, contains the complete iconographic documentation of his artworks, representing an archival documentation and providing an unprecedented understanding of Merz’s working process.
The volume includes a comprehensive artistic career history, bibliography and biographical chronology and which is the most updated and complete examination of the artist. The book is enriched by the inclusion of unpublished material showed for the first time at the Fondazione Merz. It documents Mario Merz selected artistic production, including paintings, sculpture, installations, drawings, neon and Fibonacci series works. Some critical essays complete the volume, providing a deep and high reflections on the artist and his significative role in contemporary art.

This volume marks the start of a series dedicated to contemporary art promoted and coordinated by Catalogarte. Archivio del catalogo d’esposizione d’arte moderna e contemporanea, set up in 1985 at the Department of Culture. For twenty years Catalogarte. Archivio del catalogo d’esposizione di arte moderna e contemporanea has been documenting and preserving the historical memory of exhibitions in Turin and Piedmont. This is the basis for the decision to give the Archive a series of publications which, through its double value as a tool for documentation and analysis, provides, with the succession of volumes, a useful contribution to the in-depth study and knowledge of particular themes and topics stimulated by the daily evolution of artistic events, reconstructing their history and providing of reference from which certain events and experiences originate in a straightforward way that nevertheless reflects any problem areas, in order to evaluate better not only the premises but also their development. 

The book is the catalogue of Tony Cragg’s solo exhibition, curated by Ludovico Pratesi at the Centro Arti Visive Pescheria in Pesaro, from 22 July to 7 September 2006. The exhibition, created to celebrate the first ten years of the centre’s opening, consisted of seven monumental sculptures made in recent years, from 1999 to 2006. The sculptures, all in different materials, underline one of the most interesting aspects of the artist’s work and research: the relationship between form and material. The book, which includes a wealth of images of the installation, includes a conversation between the artist and the curator, a critical text by Ludovico Pratesi and an in-depth biography and bibliography of the English artist.