POST SCRIPTUM – A MUSEUM FORGOTTEN BY HEART AT MACRO MUSEUM

Images courtesy of MACRO shot by ©piercarloquecchia ©dsl__studio_DSC
“Forgetting by heart” is an expression coined towards the end of the 1960s by Vincenzo Agnetti (1926-1981).

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.

Vincenzo Agnetti, Dimenticato a memoria / Forgotten by heart, 1972, fire-engraved and painted felt
The museum is reflected in an exhibition spreading throughout its architecture, in an area of over 10,000 square meters.

The works are by 37 Italian and international artists, including those created for the occasion by Tolia Astakhishvili (featuring Thea Djordjadze, Heike Gallmeier, Dylan Peirce), Maurizio Altieri, Beatrice Bonino, Francesca Cefis with Alassan Diawara and Lukas Wassmann, Pippa Garner, Lenard Giller, Thomas Hutton, KUKII (aka Lafawndah), Rosemary Mayer, Charlemagne Palestine, Lorenzo Silvestri, Gillian Wearing.

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.

Paolo Pallucco & Mireille Rivier – Table Tankette, 1987 ca, Courtesy of Studio Shapiro for Ketabi Bourdet
Simone Forti – Rubbings, 2015
Graphite on paper, Courtesy of the Artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan
Alex Bag – Untitled (Margiela Autoerotic Asphyxiation Doll), 2022
mixed media
dimensions variable Private Collection, Richmond VA
“Post Scriptum. A museum forgotten by heart” is an exhibition that mirrors Editorial, the group show spreading through the entire museum in 2020, launching Lo Pinto’s programming with a statement of intentions and directions.

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.

KUKII (aka Lafawndah), Ph Francesco Nazardo

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.

Lorenzo Silvestri- Amo Roma, Scappo da Roma, 2022 
03’07”, HD video with stereo sound
For its conclusion, in keeping with a precise, coherent curatorial script in a perfectly circular context, the museum returns to its neutral state, with the dismantling of the editorial structure that has defined it in these years, to make room for an exhibition that looks to the past and the present with a future perspective.

The exhibition does not follow a linear narrative, but instead creates an open finale made of unexpected associations, different languages and unprecedented insights into the tradition of institutional critique, absorbing them and returning them to the museum as a living entity in a state of becoming.

In the run-up to the opening of the exhibition, from 5 September the courtyard of the museum hosts Yard by Allan Kaprow, an environment from 1961 that is still the manifesto of an art capable of interacting with existing spaces and social contexts, criticizing the idea of individual power of the artist as opposed to collective action, and rejecting the notion that the work should necessarily aspire to achieve a definitive status.

The exhibition is promoted by Assessorato alla Cultura di Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo.

Sohrab Hura – From the series Snow (2015 – Ongoing), Courtesy of Sohrab Hura / Experimenter

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.