ARCHIVE - EXHIBITIONS
out&Theis
Office for urban transformation
8 May - 26 June 2010
Opening
Saturday, May 8th - h 18.00
In collaboration with
Federico Bianchi Contemporary Art – Milano, Lecco
Bert Theis is perhaps one of the most consistent supporters of the art as a moment of relationship, never giving up the quality of the artworks he creates.
He focuses on a sort of reinterpretation of the topical moments of modernism: one only needs to think about the “Supremacist platform”, shown in Tirana in 2008, or about the recent structures shown at Museo Pecci in Prato and obtained from Walter Gropius’ projects for a philosophy institute (“Building Philosophie”). These projects grow out of the modernist language, but they are always careful to encourage a free use by the people. They are structures designed to receive, making possible to have a break, to seat down, to lie down, to look at, etc.
Bert Theis’ proposals (only utopian?) about bringing back the urban space to a state of nature are well known: his projects let a few buildings, which identify cities, emerge from thick greenery.
During the last few years, his artistic research and production have been more and more interlaced with his activity as a curator and a promoter of public projects able to involve people in protecting and qualifying the urban environment in a grassroots way, and also in supporting a new idea of community and conviviality.
In 2002 Theis and few friends of him opened a sort of operating system at the Isola District, near Garibaldi railway station in Milan, which had supported active events, conferences, exhibitions, meetings. Its name is out, an English acronym that indicates a self-organized office dedicated to urban transformations.
Considering the transformations currently related to Venetian terra firma, Galleria Contemporaneo hosts a new exhibition project personally curated by the artist, who, besides showing his work, has invited some other members of out(office for urban transformation) to participate in the exhibition with their own contribution: Marco Vaglieri, Alice Pintus, Mariette Schiltz, Alberto Pesavento, Mara Ferreri.
Bert Theis (born in 1952, in Luxembourg, he lives and works between Milan and Luxembourg). In 2002 he created the office out (office for urban transformation), located in Milan and Mexico DF. He has participated in several international artistic events, such as the Venice Biennial, in 1995, Sculptur. Projects in Münster in 1997, Arte all’Arte, in 1998, Manifesta, in 1998, Gwangju Biennial, in 2002, Tirana Biennial, 2003, Busan Biennial, 2006, Taipei Biennial, 2008.