Starting Thursday, May 25, Fondazione MAST presents the exhibition Andreas Gursky. Visual Spaces of Today, curated by Urs Stahel together with the German photographer Andreas Gursky.
The catalogue accompanying the exhibition is published by Fondazione MAST. It contains a foreword by the President Isabella Seràgnoli and a critical essay by the curator Urs Stahel.
Complementing the exhibition is a series of free events, guided tours, and educational activities for students, available upon reservation.
Fondazione MAST, in agreement with Andreas Gursky, participates in the fundraising campaign “Un aiuto per l’Emilia-Romagna” by Agenzia per la Sicurezza territoriale e Protezione civile dell’Emilia-Romagna: the poster Bahrain I, in a limited edition of 75 copies, numbered and signed by the artist, will be on sale for € 150 at MAST.Point and the proceeds will be donated to the populations affected by the floods.
Finally, in Autumn Fondazione MAST will produce and organize in Bologna the sixth edition of Foto/Industria, the most important photography biennial in the world dedicated to industry and work. Andreas Gursky. Visual Spaces of Today is the eleventh exhibition in the event programme.
Included in the exhibition are 40 images by the artist—who lives and works in Düsseldorf—dating from his early works (Krefeld, Hühner, 1989) to his more recent production (V&R II and V&R III, 2022), travelling great lengths, from Salerno (1990) to Hong Kong (2020), and combining modern tourism industry (Rimini, 2003) with age-old production processes (Salinas, 2021).
Andreas Gursky is considered one of the greatest artists of our time. Since the 1990s, his name has been associated with large-scale photography. His images have become iconic representations of the contemporary world and have contributed to elevating the status of photography to an art form, thus turning it into a collector’s item for museum and private collections.
“To this day, Andreas Gursky’s enormous visual power is such that entering into the universe of his images becomes each time an experience and a step towards awareness. The display of his photographs brings us into a space and time where we can physically, mentally and emotionally feel and grasp reality,” writes Urs Stahel. Gursky’s striking visual compositions show the artist’s keen eye in finely dissecting the present, his precision in setting the focus on a subject, as he goes deeper into things while, at the same time, presenting a vivid general picture. As Urs Stahel points out in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, “The large format that Andreas Gursky chose very soon in his career is in itself a statement of the artist’s visual and content-related stance, and one that challenges the viewer.”
A Double Anniversary
The first anthological exhibition of the artist in Italy inaugurates the celebrations for a double anniversary: 100 years of the G.D Company and 10 years of Fondazione MAST.
“Making work a culture and culture a work”. These are the words that bind the two organisations together. They represent the longtime, consolidated corporate culture of the company, as well as the innovative and inclusive space it created to promote thought on the topic of work.
Albeit their different functions and identities, G.D and Fondazione MAST are deeply connected by an underlying idea: work and culture as founding elements of our society and everyone’s life, mutually fostering one another in a continued and productive exchange.
G.D specialises in industrial solutions. Thanks to the ongoing participation of human capital, it has built its own constantly evolving technological identity, with a wealth of knowledge and awareness, not only in terms of work, but also in terms of social responsibility, corporate welfare, and solidarity. Fondazione MAST is a multifunctional urban complex that symbolically represents one of the many “invisible suburbs” in our cities. It houses advanced corporate welfare services and also serves as a cultural hub that is open to the community, to share and take part in cultural and artistic activities related to industry and work.
Drawing inspiration from the acronym MAST—which stands for Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione, Tecnologia (Arts, Experience and Technology)—, the visual spaces in the works selected for the exhibition by Urs Stahel and Andreas Gursky mirror these thematic worlds. The artist’s powerful images disclose new views on work, the economy, and globalization. They reveal concrete visions of production plants, goods handling centres, temples of consumption, transport hubs, energy and food industries, and financial centres across the world.
Fondazione MAST
Fondazione MAST is an international, philanthropic and cultural institution based on Technology, Art and Innovation. It opened in Bologna in 2013 and is located in a multifunctional space next to the headquarters of the Coesia industrial group. Conceived as a link between the company and the community, MAST is a cultural centre open to participation and collaboration, where everyone can access learning, arts, and photography. Its Galleries host temporary exhibitions of photography on industry and work.
More information
Andreas Gursky. Visual Spaces of Today
Curated by Urs Stahel and Andreas Gursky
25 May 2023 – 7 January 2024
FONDAZIONE MAST
via Speranza, 42
Bologna, Italy
From Tuesday to Sunday, 10am – 7pm
Free Admission
www.mast.org
Information
Fondazione MAST
via Speranza, 42, Bologna, Italy
May 25, 2023 to January 07, 2024
