GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Bergamo presents TIM ROLLINS & K.O.S. – On Transfiguration 28 September 2011–8 January 2012
GAMeC is presenting the first solo show of Tim Rollins & K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) to be held at an Italian museum.
Curated by Alessandro Rabottini and staged in collaboration with the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, which will host the show starting on 21 January 2012, the exhibition presents a selection of works offering a broad overview of the research that Tim Rollins has conducted since 1982, on art as a form of collaboration and individual creativity as an agent of social change.
The art of Tim Rollins and K.O.S. is a poetic tribute to sharing, but it is also a political appeal to individual potential. It blends the sense of measure of the classical culture with the exuberance of the street culture, the search for beauty with the expression of rage, and the tradition of painting with the power of the word as an instrument of denunciation.
In the work of Tim Rollins and K.O.S. the concept of “transfiguration” is at once conceptual and symbolic—related to the individual identity—and strictly inherent in the materials and processes used for painting, which sometimes become performance. The exhibition is thus a cross-section of their work interpreted through knowledge as a means of individual and collective transformation.
‘On Transfiguration’ features recent works inspired by the Latin philosophical conversations of Giordano Bruno on the infinite possibilities of matter, as well as a selection of works from different periods originating from reflections on texts such as Collodi’s Pinocchio, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth and Kafka’s America.
In addition to the works inspired by Bruno’s writings, there will also be a new series on paper, created in Bergamo during a workshop that the American artist led with several students from the G. Natta High School of the Applies Sciences, thus emphasizing that his entire oeuvre is based on the principles of education and collaboration.
The exhibition catalogue, published by JRP I Ringier and completed in collaboration with the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel and the Fondazione Galleria Civica in Trento, will be put out in 2012. It will contain critical essays by Nicholas Cullinan, Curator at the Tate Modern in London, and Suzanne Hudson, Associate Professor of Art History at the Center for the Study of Modern Art at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and a conversation between Tim Rollins, Alessandro Rabottini, Nikola Dietrich, Curator of the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, and Andrea Viliani, Director of the Fondazione Galleria Civica in Trento, which will host a workshop led by the artist at the end of January 2012.
The publication will be conceived as a guide to the work of Tim Rollins and K.O.S., analysing the group’s artistic method from its formation through today. The objective is to set up an index that groups all the books on which the group has worked: each one will be discussed based on the reasons it was selected, with images of the works inspired by the study of the texts.
GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Bergamo
Via San Tomaso, 53
24121 Bergamo – Italy
T +39 035 270272
F +39 035 236962
www.gamec.it