“Pensare come una montagna” at the GAMeC in Bergamo: When Art Broadens Horizons
How do mountains think? The GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Bergamo seeks to answer this question with a widespread programme that will involve museum spaces as well as the Pre-Alpine mountain ranges, the lower hills of the Bergamasque valleys, the city woods of the Parco dei Colli of Bergamo, and the river and agricultural areas of the Bassa Bergamasca. The goal? To create a biennial journey where artistic experiences intersect on the themes of sustainability and community. The program involves twenty artists, with the first five introduced last week during the opening ceremony. These include stars such as Sonia Boyce, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, who presents “Benevolence,” a site-specific project designed for the Sala delle Capriate at the Palazzo della Ragione; Mercedes Azpilicueta, who staged the performance “Que este mundo permanezca” at the Oasi della Biodiversità in Brembate; and Chiara Gambirasio, who presented “M’Ama” and “V’arco,” two sculptural works discussing relationships and the connection with nature, in Castione della Presolana. Meanwhile, the GAMeC hosted a homage exhibition to Lin May Saeed, featuring works populated by animals and figures from fairy tales and myths, and the “Massi Erratici” project by Studio Ossidiana, which reconfigures the museum’s access spaces with modular surfaces and volumes. Among the guests who attended the opening were Elena Crippa, Chris Sharp, Julia Koropoulos, Luca Santiago Mora, Edoardo Bonaspetti, Nicola Ricciardi, and Giorgio Gori.
A final note, almost obligatory, is related to the title “Thinking Like a Mountain.” Director Lorenzo Giusti was inspired by an expression from ecologist Aldo Leopold, taken from his book A Sand County Almanac. He reinterpreted and transformed the concept into an invitation to take a critical distance from our habits to observe society from a broader perspective.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Vincenzo Migliore
