Gary Kuehn
«Il diletto del practicante»
GAMeC Bergamo (IT)

Exhibition:
June 8 – August 26, 2018 

Curated by Lorenzo Giusti under the patronage of the GAMeC, the exhibition pays homage to the novel artistic curriculum of the sculptor born in Plainfield (New Jersey, 1939), and will comprise four sections, hosted by the museum’s display areas and Palazzo della Ragione’s prestigious Sala delle Capriate, in Bergamo Alta’s Medieval heart.

Critics associated Kuehn’s work with Post-Minimalist and Process Art currents, with his participation in watershed exhibitions like the famous 1966 Eccentric Abstraction, curated by Lucy Lippard, and the 1969 When Attitudes Become Form, curated by Harald Szeeman, but it escapes classification and lingers on the borders of various artistic movements. His raw, radical language developed from an initial reflection on the physicality of materials and played a significant role in the birth of a new conception of sculpture, equidistant from the subjectivism of Expressionist abstraction and the objectivity and geometric rigor of minimalism.

From a working-class family, and a manual worker himself when he was a student, Kuehn spent over five decades exploring the tension between change and deformation, his intent being to refute «the dogma of the cube», as he has repeatedly declared, and «to subvert the force of pure forms».


The exhibition will present a significant core of about fifty works, including sculptures, drawings, paintings, and installations, among the most important in the artist’s corpus, dating from the early 1960s to the most recent pieces, with a series of new items specifically made for this occasion. The narrative explores a multidirectional path that aims to recover Gary Kuehn’s stylistic evolution and highlight the surprising relevance of his language.

Bergamo’s venerable Palazzo della Ragione, built in the late twelfth century, will host a selection of quintessential 1960s sculptural works, almost all of which have not been seen before in Italy. The works are all on a large scale and will interact with Sala delle Capriate’s fascinating architecture. Deemed the ideal size for the works, the room will be emptied of all furnishings for the occasion, thereby underscoring its unusual beauty. The entire historical series – from the «Wedge Pieces» to the «Bolt Pieces», from «Melt» to «Mattress Pieces», and the «Pedestal Pieces» – will be represented here, affording the visitor an exhaustive overview of the first, fundamental, creative decade, and an introduction to the second part of the exhibition, hosted in the GAMeC rooms.

(Excerpt from GAMeC's Press Release)