Exhibition October 17. 207 9 - March 29, 2020 Parque del Retiro, Palacio de Velazquez

Mario Merz Time Is Mute

Rinoceronte [Rhinoceros], 1979. Private collection, Madrid. (Photo Paolo Mussat Sartor)

MUSEONACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE ~*~GOBI ER~O HINISTERIO mmOEESPANA DECULTUR.A, REINA SOFIA Y DEPORTE Mario Merz: Time Is Mute

Associated with the movement that favored the use of "poor" materials from nature and from the waste of the consumer society. Mario Merz (.1925-2003) is a key figure for understanding the evolution of European art in the second halfof the twentieth century. Merz created a conceptually rigorous oeuvre of great poetic and iconographic power that was also a radical critique of industrial and consumerist modernity. He believed that the zeal to accumulate drove human beings away from nature and into an alienated life from which consciousness of communal life had been banished. along with the possibility of establishing emotional rather than merely instrm11ental connee-lions with the environment. ~

Igloo (Tenda di Gheddafi) [Igloo (Qaddafi's tent)]. 1958-1981 Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, . (Photo Paolo Pel lion) October 77, 207 9 - March 29, 2020 Mario Merz: Time Is Mute

Like other povera artists, Merz used recycled Che fore? [What is to be done?), 1968-1973 objects and materials oforganic origin (sand, ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. clay, wax, branches, coal .. .) and from the Acquired jointly through the d'Offay Donation with.assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008 . industrial world and consumer culture (tiles, ICJTate. London. 2079 glass, neon lights, wire, newspapers) to create his , , and installations. a Teduccio], 1971). Works such as this, which Merz embraced a certain anachronistic Merz made withthe workers in a Neapolitan perspective that is key to his work. To factory in southern , help to establish express this, he used a range ofsymbolic the political dimension ofhis art, which and iconographic strategies, from the idea of was influenced by the pressing needs ofhis nomadism, which runs through his oeuvre, historical context in the industrialized city to the use ofpremodern and protoindustrial ofTurin and northern Italyin the 1960s references that evoke prehistoric times, and1970s. In this transition from Fordism as in Rinoceronte (Rhinoceros, 1979) and to post-Fordism, with its intensification of Piccolo caimano (Small alligator, 1979). "-----..:..------~ the workers' struggle, Merz expressed his Merz sought to invoke a kind of mythical visceral rejection ofthe consumerist world, time and space, free from the shackles of which he considered the main instrument historicity and productivity, an aspiration ofdomination and alienation in advanced admirably encapsulated in a metaphor he capitalist societies. oftenused when he spoke about his work: such as Noi giriamo intorno alle case o le progression, an infinite series ofintegers the "prehistoric wind from the frozen case girano intorno a noi? (Do we go around introducedbythe Italian mathematician Merz's artistic practice was an exercise in mountains." This invocation was not a mere houses, or do houses go around us? 1982), Leonardo de Pisa (1170-1241), in which resistance against the predatory designs rhetorical device or a melancholic appeal and Casa sullaforesta (House in the forest, each number is the sum ofthe two that ofcapitalist modernity. An exercise that to an idealized past but a powerful means 1989)-had been distorted by modernity, precede it: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34... This he believed could be carried out only by ofcritique: it allowed him to express his when dwellings became an extension of mathematical formula, which describes a exploding the rationalist and productivist rejection ofthe increasing consumerism of factories. recurring pattern ofgrowth in the biological paradigm on which it is based. This led contemporary society and highlight the need world (seashells, tree branches and leaves, him to generate a hybrid artistic practice to (re)connect with fundamental human Another key elementin Merz's work is the plants, etc.), has been used extensively inthe in which the political combined with the experiences such as building and dwelling, table, which interested himbecause ofits fields ofscience and art since its discovery poetic to form an indivisible whole, as can to bring (back) to the center our relationship polysemy: a table is an everyday object and inthe thirteenth century. Merz's almost perhaps most clearlybe seen in some ofthe with nature. also an altar, a space for working andfor obsessive fascination with the series is due works he made with neon lights (a material intimacy, a place for meeting and celebration. to its ability to explain and represent highly he often used). Che fare? (What is to be Although he had startedworking as an artist A simple board to which legs are added sums complex biological, physical, political, and done? 1968), which is a direct reference to in the 1950s, it was in the late 1960s, against up Merz's "povera" methodology, in which social phenomena. Transcending the limits of the text in which Vladimir Lenin outlined his the backdrop ofpolitical and artistic upheaval the humblest materials in our ordinary Cartesian mathematics, the series strategic and organizational proposals for in Italy and around the world, that Merz laid surroundings become art and are endowed shows that there is an organic connection revolutionary parties; Igloo di Giap (Giap's the foundations ofhis artistic vocabulary. It with aesthetic value bya poeticizing gaze. between numbers andthe natural world: igloo, 1968), on which he placedthe motto was then that he made his first installations The paintings and installations Merz created that the human and the natural worlds ofNorthVietnamese general and strategist with igloos, a motifhe sawas a metaphor using tables arranged or portrayed in the are part ofa continuum. This numerjcal Vo Nguyen Giap; Citta irreale (Unreal City, capable ofinvoking the primordial and form ofa spiral, such as Peri tavoli (Forthe progression from the individual to the group 1968); and Sciopero generale azione politica ontological sense ofdwelling. Merz (like the tables, 1974) and Tavolo a spirale (Spiral table, in a social context canbe seen inFibonacci relativa proclamata relativamente all'arte situationists, to whom he was close) believed 1989), are onevariation ofhis prolific artistic Napoli (Fabbrica a San Giovanni a Teduccio) (General strike political action relative that this idea-whic h is expressed in works research andcreation aroundthe Fibonacci (Fibonacci Naples [Factory in San Giovanni proclaimed relatively to art, 1970), are October ll 2079- March 29, 2020

Igloo di Giap [Giap's Igloo], 7968. Musee national d'art moderne/Centre de creation industrielle Centre Pompidou, Paris. (Photo Paolo Pellion) emblematic examples ofthis strategyat a start and in the final years ofhis career. time marked by the consequences ofMay While it invites us to engage with an intense 1968, the youth protests against the Vietnam and complex visual universe, the exhibition War, the student and workers' struggles in also seeks to contribute to reverting the Italyin 1968 and 1969, and the strikes in depoliticized and unsituated reading ofhis Poland in 1970. oeuvre, emphasizing its unwavering and indisputable critical intent. In a sense, the Mario Merz: Time Is Mute explores the growing political, social, and environmental various aspects ofMerz's work through a crisis we are facing, which calls into question selection of more than sixty pieces. The the future ofour world, allows us now more exhibition revisits the artistic artifacts and than ever to conceive ofthe symbolic nature motifs that made him famous, as well as and the relevance ofMerz's work as a critical lesser-known projects that he made at the manifesto for a new era. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Soffa

Main venue Parque del Retiro venues Related Activity

Sabatini Building Palacio de Cristal Tours Santa Isabel, 52 Palacio de Velazquez Art, Nature, and Degrowth Tours around the Work Nouvel Building Opening Hours ofMario Merz Ronda de Atocha s/n Everyday Monday October 28 and 28012 Madrid April to September Tuesdays November 5.12, 79, Tel: (+34) 91774 10 00 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. 2079-5 p.m. March and October Palacio de Velazquez. Opening hours from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Exhibition rooms Monday to Saturday November to February and public holidays from l Oa.m. to 6 p.m. Free entry subject to seating capacity. from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Preregistration is required; email: [email protected] Sundays Language: Spanish from l O a.m. to l :30 p.m. the entire Museum is open from l :30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Collection l and one temporary exhibition remain open (check website)

Closed on Tuesdays

Exhibition rooms in all venues Images: will be cleared 15 minutes

Nim 828-19-009-7 www.museoreinasofia.es 0. L.: M-32608- 2019

Education program developed with the sponsorship of: Exhibition organized by Museo Reina Sofia in collaboration with •santander Fondazione Merz Fundaci6n