Events

War is Over. Facets of freedom
January 2006

Exhibition
Sixty years of post-war peace have become the topic of an art exhibition in the modern art gallery of Bergamo. War is Over 1945-2005 is not a depressively pompous obligatory thing which schoolchildren and students must attend. It is a successful philosophic attempt of two Italian curators to explore different concepts of freedom. Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Cristina Rodeschini Galati built eleven topics of war and peace and selected a hundred international works. Thus art became a powerful ideological weapon.

Names, works, ideas
Exhibition posters and leaflets advertise Picasso, Warhol and Cattelan. The exhibition has Picasso’s Natura Morta con Cranio di Blue and Grande baigneuse au livre, and a video interpretation of his Guernica symbols. It has Warhol’s red Lenin. But these works, like all others don’t impress on their own. It’s the case when the sum gives more effect than its constituents.

Each hall is dedicated to a certain topic of freedom. People of the world, unite! Famous Marx’s phrase is turned into a pacifist slogan. оган. It is a collection flags sawn from patches and old clothes of allied countries. Degenerate — generate is about the attempt to destroy old art and create new. Adolf Hitler’s watercolours hang on one wall, Wassily Kandinsky’s works — on the other. We are revolution is when art objects become an instrument of achieving freedom (like the Vietnam war poster by John Lennon and Yoko Ono "War is over! If you want it"). In the name of the Father is about influence of religious values, symbols and acts which inspired Kendell Geers to make a resurrected figure of Christ in red-and-white cello tape.

Peace and cheese, pacifists and aquavit
Eleven topics of the exhibition are easily transformed to an endless number. War paintings by Mario Mafai Fantasias is nothing but scenes of feast during plague. Another surreal celebration goes on in Cafe Deutchland by Jorg Immendorff.

There is more hope in the topic of good peace. Terracotta man Giuseppe (Sislej Xhafa) holds a full plastic bag in one hand and a handful of sugar cubes in the other. Tiny pacifists by vedovamazzei are on a march in a glass ball. You can’t hear their protests, though, they are diluted by aquavit. Here’s Il Bel Paese carpet by Maurizio Cattelan which is a big copy of packaging for the same Italian cheese.

Yet the best hall is the last one. It is about the horizons of future. Tables are meant to be the main symbol. Some people need them as a place for dialogue and negotiation, but it is much nice to use them for their direct function. For good feasts. This is where future lies!

War is Over exhibition runs until 26 February 2006 in Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy