A golden floor and a carpet of seashells at Binari 1 and 2 of the former Officine Grandi Riparazioni: OGR Torino Art semester begins

In Turin, great protagonists of the international contemporary art scene - Maria Hassabi and #ninacanell, collaborations with local, national, and international top-notch organization, up until the project in Venice for the Biennale Arte 2022

Turin, February 10, 2022 - From February to June 2022, OGR Turin will be hosting an art program with a strong international stance focused on the most innovative and experimental languages of the contemporary art scene. It all begins on February 25 with the research projects by the two artists Maria Hassabi and Nina Canell. Visitors of the immersive exhibitions at OGR Binari 1 and 2 will have the chance to experience the environmental installations and imagine new relationships with time as they redefine the impact of their physical presence on the surroundings.

With her work HERE, Maria Hassabi brings inside OGR six dancers immersed in an installation that covers Binario 1 in gold and invites visitors to live in the present moment by restoring a suspended space and time. While in Binario 2, the installation HARDSCAPES by #ninacanell changes and evolves with the physical presence of the visitors, underlining how human beings can influence and leave a mark on the surrounding environment.

A redefinition of the relationship with the world around us and its evolution - from conflicts to the environmental transformation of the Anthropocene – will characterize the exhibitions scheduled in April: Alluvium, the site-responsive project by Ramin Haerizadeh, #roknihaerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian that marks the return of OGR Torino to the lagoon of Venice for the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale, along with the new exhibition project conceived with Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea. OGR Torino is thus consolidating its research along two lines: strengthening ties with institutions of excellence in the area and opening up to experimentation with leading artists and organizations belonging to both the national and international scene, similar in intention and vision, such as Secession and Wiener Festwochen, Vienna, Onassis Foundation, Athens, and GAMeC, Bergamo.

The 2022 exhibition program strongly reflects OGR's mission and Fondazione CRT's broader commitment to investing in new projects – says Massimo Lapucci, CEO of OGR Torino and Secretary General of Fondazione CRT. Starting from the attention paid to climate change and sustainable development, artistic research contributes to the creation of social value. Projects in tune with the 2030 Agenda and the rich palimpsest of activities and exhibitions conceived 'for all', give a concrete and profound meaning to our inclusion goal and bring closer an ever wider public to the multifaceted world of art and to the key themes of contemporaneity.

After the last exhibition dedicated to labor in the post-industrial and digital context, in which we explored the new delicate balance between work and leisure, we want to contribute to the reflection on a new paradigm – says Fulvio Gianaria, President of OGR Torino. We need to slow down to observe, reflect and regain possession of our own pace, rebalancing the relationship between humans and nature. Starting from the work of the two artists, Hassabi and Canell who, despite their extremely different practices, find points of encounter in the probing of the relationship between body and built environment. Through art, OGR becomes once again an amplifier of the delicate twine of reflections on personal and social change.

EXHIBITIONS – MORE INFORMATION

The exhibition season kicks off with two major solo shows by Maria Hassabi and Nina Canell, which open simultaneously from February 25 to March 27, 2022.

A sculptural environment will take over Binario 1 creating the landscape for HERE, a live-installation by Maria Hassabi curated by Samuele Piazza with Nicola Ricciardi, commissioned by Secession and Wiener Festwochen - Vienna, produced by OGR Torino in collaboration with Onassis Foundation - Athens with the support of Milvus Artistic Research Center (MARC) - Knislinge, and Onassis Stegi - Athens. The bodies of the artist plus five dancers will inhabit the sculpture as they invite visitors to join in a mutual sharing of time and presence. The micro-movements that distinguish the choreography are an encouragement to anchor one's awareness to the present, to being here, in time and space. Since the early 2000s, Maria Hassabi has created a unique choreographic practice focused on stillness and the empty space in-between movements. At the core of her choreographies, stillness and deceleration are used both as techniques and as subjects, as the performing body oscillates between dance and sculpture, subject and object, live body and still image.

At Binario 2, instead, there is Nina Canell’s solo exhibition: HARDSCAPES. Curated by Samuele Piazza with Lorenzo Giusti and in collaboration with GAMeC Bergamo, the exhibition is in an ideal dialogue with another of Canell’s exhibitions, commissioned and produced as part of the Meru Art*Science Research Program at the Bergamo Museum. A large led-wall will project Energy Budget (2017-18) - a video work created together with Robin Watkins that probes the different ways in which energy manifests and circuits, sometimes invisibly, in unprecedented symbioses between nature and the anthropic environment. Alongside the video-sculpture, the artist has also conceived specifically for OGR, a new version of her work Muscle Memory, originally commissioned by GAMeC: simultaneously created and destroyed by the movement and density of bodies, this sculpture literally crumbles under the feet of visitors. The seashells that make up the sculpture are actually the raw material found at the core of most of our built world, being calcium carbonate a fundamental ingredient for the making of concrete.  

From April 20 to November 27, 2022, OGR will be back in Venice, inside the Complesso dell'Ospedaletto, for the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, presenting for the first time in the lagoon the Iranian trio of artists, Ramin Haerizadeh, #roknihaerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian with ALLUVIUM, a site-responsive project curated by Samuele Piazza, produced by OGR with the support of Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT and set up in the spaces of the Atrio Moderno of Ospedaletto Contemporaneo. After the OGR Prize at Artissima 2017 supported by Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, and the 2018 exhibition Forgive me distant wars for bringing flowers home, the Venetian presence marks a new collaboration between the Dubai-based collective and OGR.

The collaboration with Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'arte contemporanea, inaugurated with the commission of William Kentridge's work Procession of Reparationists and the 2018 exhibition Cuore di Tenebra, continues with a new exhibition inside OGR, Naturecultures. Art and Nature from Arte povera to the present. From the Collections of Fondazione CRT per l'Arte at Castello di Rivoli. Curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Beccaria, and Samuele Piazza, from April 28 to September 22, 2022, Binario 1 and 2 will welcome selected works from the collection of Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT on loan to the Turin Museum. Born from a nucleus of acquisitions tied to the Arte Povera movement, the CRT collection in custody at the Castello di Rivoli has expanded over the years, following some important lines of research that saw in the premises of the movement born in Turin in the Sixties, a generative moment for a series of practices and issues at the center of the contemporary artistic debate. OGR Torino offers its spaces to the presentation of historical and contemporary works within an architecture that is completely different from the one that usually hosts them, proposing new interpretations and new exhibition possibilities for the works themselves.

OGR Torino is an international hub spanning 35,000 square meters in the heart of Turin, committed to contemporary art and culture, innovation and business acceleration, and food. In 2017 it reopened as an inclusive space that welcomes visitors with site-specific art exhibitions, music events, educational projects and initiatives developed with international partners. OGR Tech implements a real "chain of innovation" where applied research, startups and scaleups, SMEs and large corporations meet in a dynamic environment and on an international scale. OGR is a space in constant renewal that welcomes everyone to come and find out more.