The third volume of the RADICETERNA series, which accompanies the programme of exhibitions and events inspired by Mario Merz’s Se la forma scompare la sua radice è eterna (While form disappears its Root is eternal), is dedicated to the new project for the Palermo space conceived by the German artist Björn Braun. Braun’s works oscillate, in search of balance, between Nature and Culture, the natural and artificial, proposing collages and sculptures in which the artist’s working method gives no ground to waste, to the unused, and instead proposes a continuous and careful re-elaboration and dynamisation, even of the smallest elements and residues of life, experience or creation. This new project strengthens the relationship between the project room in the eighteenth-century Calidarium, which houses the works of contemporary artists, and the luminous reading room, which contains the books on art and nature that are forming a specialised library open to all, thanks to donations from private citizens, artists and Italian and international institutions.

On the 50th anniversary of the protest movements of 1968, this exhibition provides food for thought concerning a period full of creative ferment, which triggered new processes of transformation and renewed vision of the future. The artist experienced this period as a protagonist, together with many of his travelling companions, with the aim of redefining the cultural and ideological canons. The exhibition presents a dozen works created by Merz between 1966 and 1973.

This change involved all the arts, from literature to music, theatre, cinema and, of course, the visual arts, which have seen such significant movements coexist such as minimalism, arte povera, land and conceptual art, simultaneously contrasting the then emerging American art with the European scene. It has generated a climate rich in extraordinary sensitivity, a new existential model based on a constant commitment to the concept, presentation and distribution of the art of one’s own time: breaking through the object, a constant and direct control at all times, a shift of art into life, a passionate, multi-faceted and supporting art.

The exhibition becomes a story, therefore, suspended between the historical, the political and the poetic, a narration that starts from the words of Mario Merz himself and presents some of the most important works of those years that have become icons of his artistic career.

The second booklet in the RADICETERNA series is dedicated to Katinka Bock. For the programme of research and the promotion of contemporary art that sees its first realisation in the Botanical Garden of Palermo, the German artist proposes a series of new works, especially conceived for the space of the Calidarium. Popolazione (lines and straight lines), is a composite sculpture inspired by and derived from residual natural elements of the Botanical Garden, collected and used as a base for forms designed by nature itself. The Calidarium in Palermo’s Botanical Garden, originally a heated greenhouse to allow certain plant species to survive the rigours of winter, takes on a new value as a place of care and an incubator of ideas thanks to the artists involved in the project, suitable for sheltering thoughts, experiences and narratives.

The first volume of the series inaugurating the collaboration between hopefulmonster and RADICETERNA – a series bearing the same name as the cultural association responsible for the creation of exhibitions and events, curated by Valentina Bruschi, Ignazio Mortellaro and Vittorio Rappa, in the Botanical Gardens of Palermo – is dedicated to the work of the artistic duo consisting of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. The installation called The Great Silence, a complex video work capable of narrating the relationship that human beings have with nature and the world in an original way, maintains a dialogue with the space of the historic Calidarium or hothouse in the Botanical Garden, transformed into a place of study and meditation by the project through the presence of works of art relating to the theme of nature and of a library open to the public entirely devoted to texts on works by contemporary artists who have been inspired by nature.

The catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition So as to find the strength to see held at Fondazione Merz from 6th March to 27th May 2018.

“Examining the work of Fatma Bucak is like looking down on a deconstructed map. Here we find trails travelled and then cancelled out, landscapes designed and then abandoned, a geography that continually redraws itself, intertwining facts and biographies, erased events and non-identities. In the artist’s recent work, these landscapes expand from Turkey to Syria and North Africa and then reach Europe and the United States with the aim of investigating a political framework that is particularly difficult to define. The artist’s research can be understood as a constantly evolving visual practice that refers directly to the etymology of the Greek verb prássein, the meaning of which is not limited to making or doing but also picks up the idea of travelling, walking, crossing.” (Lisa Parola, Maria Centonze)

“With characteristic buoyancy of spirit, Bucak called this exhibition So as to find the strength to see. Five years after the fall of the Turkish spring, she wonders if we can smell the roses of a country besieged by forces with conflicting agendas and a shared love of violence. Lands that today reek of gunpowder can once again smell of roses. This is the vision we are asked to find the strength to see.” (Kaya Genç)

The catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Carlos Garaicoa. El Palacio de las Tres Historias held at Fondazione Merz from 30th October 2017 to 4th February 2018.

“El Pensamiento as logos and affection, word and intention, memory and distance, history and attention, metaphor and irony; this is the common thread that Carlos Garaicoa has for years spun with his art. ” (Claudia Gioia)

The catalogue reproduces the photographic documentation of the exhibition at the Fondazione Merz and a selection of Garaicoa‘s works from the 1994 to 2017. A text by the exhibition curator Claudia Gioia enlightens the dialogue between art and architecture, exploring the site specific installation at the Fondazione Merz.

The book also includes a specially commissioned text by acclaimed Cuban novelist Leonardo Padura.