Berlin’s IIC (Italian Institute of Culture) presents four days full of events dedicated to Michelangelo Pistoletto: from Friday 1st to Monday 4th June the festival “Dedika” will have the artist from Biella as its protagonist. For the occasion, which every year celebrates a different Italian cultural figure, the Institute has organized a documentary exhibition enhanced with historic installations by the artist and a series of opportunities to shed light on the philosophical and critical aspects of his thought and artistic activity. Specifically, the programme includes a site-specific installation, an exhibition, a film showing and two public conferences; Pistoletto will exceptionally be present at all events.
“Michelangelo Pistoletto’s first exhibition in Berlin – we read on the event’s Facebook page – was held in 1978, during his year-long stay in the city as a guest of the DAAD. After forty years, the artist is back to present a selection of his works at Berlin’s Italian Institute of Culture and Italian Embassy. In the courtyard of the Embassy a new site-specific version of the Third Paradise will be installed, open to the public throughout the summer. The Italian Institute of Culture will host an exhibition gathering the artist’s main works from his last fifty years of activity instead: you will be able to see the Mirror Paintings, which earned him his first international recognition in the ‘60s, the Minus Objects and the famous Venus of the Rags”.
On 1st June, after the introductory press conference, at 18.00, the Third Paradise installation in the courtyard of the Italian Embassy will be unveiled: the material chosen for this version, Berlin’s “sampietrini”, which also trace the line of the Wall that used to divide the city, charges Pistoletto’s work with deep meanings, placing it in a relationship with the German capital’s recent history. At 19.00, the exhibition on the third floor of the Italian Institute of Culture will be opened.
On the following day, at 19.00, the Akademie der Künste in Pariser Platz will host the conversation between the artist from Biella and Nike Bätzner (professor of History of Art at the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle). Sunday will be the day of the showing of Daniele Segre’s documentary about Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Klick Kino cinema. Closing the programme on 4th June will be the debate between the artist and Georg W. Bertram, professor of Philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin, held at the IIC.
“The culture of each country – writes Luigi Reitani, director of Berlin’s Institute of Culture, on the leaflet of the event – thrives thanks to the men and women able to hand down and renew its tradition. Focal points of collective experiences and sensitive witnesses of their time, these subjects refer to landscapes impregnated with meanings, historic constellations, relationships with other cultures. With the project Dedika, every year Berlin’s Italian Institute of Culture wants to offer an organic cycle of initiatives dedicated to an emblematic figure from contemporary Italian culture. Through conferences, readings, theatrical representations, film showings, concerts, exhibitions and study moments, the different aspects of their work and the micro-cosmos underlying it will be highlighted. The protagonist of Dedika’s 2018 edition will be Michelangelo Pistoletto, one of the most eminent Italian and European artists. His work places the human being at the centre: their mirroring, relationships, utopias. Art descends from its pedestal and beauty surrounds itself with rags. The spectators are invited to reflect [themselves], becoming co-protagonist. An art from our present, necessary for our future.”
An initiative by Berlin’s Italian Institute of Culture, the Italian Embassy and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, in collaboration with ENIT, Akademie der Künste and Lichtspieltheatre KLICK-O-TONART.
