The title of the group exhibition that concludes the programming of MACRO under the artistic direction of Luca Lo Pinto borrows the phrase to suggest an approach to the results of a project that over a span of five years has led the museum, as an institution, to question its own identity, its own modes of production and relation with artists and the audience.
The works on view include pieces by historically acclaimed artists like Luciano Fabro, Isa Genzken, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Simone Forti, and by some of the most outstanding exponents of the younger art scene, such as Issy Wood, together with the opportunity to come across more rarely seen figures like Pierre Guyotat or Absalon, or others who have brought an artistic perspective to fashion, such as Maurizio Altieri, and to design, including Paolo Pallucco & Mireille Rivier. The overview also focuses on emerging artists like Hamishi Farah and Sandra Mujinga.
Following the metaphor of a magazine, the project has developed across five years with an editorial structure of eight thematic sections, corresponding to the various rooms of the museum. Some have investigated the idea of the exhibition itself, while others have challenged its conventions, incorporating figures from outside the system and other languages like design, music, publishing: a palimpsest composed of over 60 exhibitions, involving 250 artists, under the title of Museum for Preventive Imagination.
While the concept of the museum is intrinsically linked to the idea of History, the institution itself has been conceived as an exhibition, experimenting with a poetic approach with respect to a linear narrative, avoiding the History of the museum and entering the stories of exhibitions. The project has attempted to propose a different model of the museum that would reflect the spirit of the present day, in which every subject is forced to rethink its way of being in the world.
With Tolia Astakhishvili (featuring Thea Djordjadze, Heike Gallmeier, Dylan Peirce), Absalon, Vincenzo Agnetti, Maurizio Altieri, Alex Bag, Beatrice Bonino, Victor Cavallo, Francesca Cefis, , Buck Ellison, Luciano Fabro, Hamishi Farah, Simone Forti, Pippa Garner, Alberto Garutti, Isa Genzken, Lenard Giller, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Adam Gordon, Pierre Guyotat, Sohrab Hura, Thomas Hutton, Allan Kaprow, KUKII (aka Lafawndah), Rosemary Mayer, Sandra Mujinga, Charlemagne Palestine, Paolo Pallucco & Mireille Rivier, Lorenzo Silvestri, Diane Simpson, Lukas Wassmann, Gillian Wearing, Issy Wood.