MAURIZIO NANNUCCI Top Hundred
Curated by Andreas Hapkemeyer
27 February - 23 April 2016
Press release
The Marino Marini Museum in Florence will launch its 2016 exhibition calendar on Saturday 27 February with Top Hundred, a project by Maurizio Nannucci. These one hundred works – artists' multiples, limited editions, books and records, videos, magazines, documents, and ephemera by leading international artists from the 1960s to the present – were selected from the Zona Archives collection, which Nannucci founded in 1967. In this developing project, each new presentation returns to the idea of an open archive, and the "Top Hundred" become a statement on display and content. The exhibition's Florence run follows that held at Museion, Bolzano, where the first "Top Hundred" were presented from September 2015 through January 2016.
The exhibition offers an itinerary across art forms in which the biographical aspect of Nannucci's work coincides with the historic aspect of certain art practices. Top Hundred is a reflection on the concept of reproducibility in artwork, which, once it is freed from the aura of uniqueness and unrepeatability, is opened up to a wider, more democratic circulation in which economic value becomes relative. The exhibition thus documents various experiences and trends, ranging from poesia concreta to Fluxus, conceptual art, and experimental multimedia works up to the recent art movements of the 2000s. Top Hundred thus becomes a journey through the art of the last fifty years, revealing the wealth and innovative strength of the various languages that have characterized it. To present the one hundred works – artists' multiples, books and records, posters, audio works, videos and ephemera – Nannucci's presence at the Marino Marini Museum has been integrated with its permanent collection. For the occasion, a catalogue will be published with texts by Andreas Hapkemeyer, Maurizio Nannucci, Gabriele Detterer, Letizia Ragaglia, Alberto Salvadori, and contributions from Caterina Toschi and Alessandra Acocella. The exhibition forms part of a research project on contemporary archives undertaken by the Marino Marini Museum and begun in 2014, with the exhibition devoted to Centro Di and the private collection of Alessandra Marchi; it was followed by the archive of contemporary artists' books selected by Gregorio Magnani in 2015.
The exhibition includes multiples and documents by Vito Acconci / Saadane Afif / Vincenzo Agnetti / Laurie Anderson / Carl Andre / Archigram / John Armleder & Ecart / Art & Language / Avalanche / John Baldessari / Robert Barry / Gianfranco Baruchello / Base progetti per l’arte / Joseph Beuys / Pierre Bismuth / Bit / Alighiero Boetti / George Brecht / AA Bronson & General Idea / James Lee Byars / Chris Burden / Daniel Buren / John Cage / Maurizio Cattelan & Permanent Food / Christo / Claude Closky / Gianni Colombo / Concrete Poetry / Martin Creed / Guy Debord & Internationale Situationniste / Herman de Vries / Antonio Dias / Nico Dockx / Brian Eno / Cerith Wyn Evans / Valie Export / Hans Peter Feldmann / Robert Filliou / Ian Hamilton Finlay / Henry Flint / Lucio Fontana / Terry Fox / Marco Fusinato & John Nixon / Katharina Fritsch / Rainer Ganahl / Liam Gillick / Global Tool / John Giorno / Piero Golia / Felix Gonzales Torres / Dan Graham / Rodney Graham / Guerrilla Girls / Hans Haacke / Damien Hirst / Jenny Holzer / Pierre Huyghe / Dorothy Iannone / Isidore Isou / Christian Jankowski / Allan Kaprow / Martin Kippenberger / Peter Kogler / Koo Jeong-a / Joseph Kosuth / Jannis Kounellis / Ferdinand Kriwet / Barbara Kruger / Yayoi Kusama / Robert Lax / Le point d’ironie / Sherry Levine / Sol Lewitt / Roy Lichtenstein / Richard Long / Francesco Lo Savio / George Maciunas & Fluxus / Piero Manzoni / Christian Marclay / Gordon Matta-Clark / Allan McCollum / Marshall McLuhan / Cildo Meireles / Méla / Gustav Metzger / Maurizio Mochetti / Jonathan Monk / Olivier Mosset / Matt Mullican / Antoni Muntadas / Maurizio Nannucci / Bruce Nauman / Carsten Nicolai / Olaf Nicolai / Claes Oldenburg / Yoko Ono / Gabriel Orozco / Ou / Giulio Paolini / Philippe Parreno / Richard Prince / Markus Raetz / Recorthings / Tobias Rehberger / Pipilotti Rist / Gerwald Rockenschaub / Dieter Roth / Allen Ruppersberg / Ed Ruscha / David Shrigley /Seth Siegelaub / Gianni Emilio Simonetti / Something Else Press / SMS / Michael Snow / Daniel Spoerri / Spur / The Fox / Rirkrit Tiravanija / Niele Toroni / Franco Vaccari / Ben Vautier / Bill Viola / Wolf Vostell / Andy Warhol / Lawrence Weiner / Franz West / Emmett Williams / Christopher Wool / Heimo Zobernig / Zona…
Maurizio Nannucci (b. Florence, 1939) has been a key figure in Italian art for decades, and is one of the best known worldwide. Since the mid-1960s, he has been exploring the complex relationships between art, language and image, creating fresh conceptual offerings characterized by his use of different media: neon, photography, video, sound, limited editions, and artist's books. In 1967, his first neon writings brought his work a wider scope of meaning and a new sense of architectural space. His works have been displayed in over 300 exhibitions in museums and international expositions from the Venice Biennale to documenta in Kassel. His most recent solo exhibition has just closed at MAXXI in Rome. In parallel, Nannucci is also actively engaged in publishing activities, beginning in the 1960s with the Exempla editions and continuing with Zona Archives and Recorthings; he has published artists' books and records, multiples and documents by other artists, many of whom are fellow travellers of his and who contributed along with him to affirming the concept of reproducibility in artwork. Nannucci is among the founders of numerous non-profits, such as Zona (1974-1985), Zonaradio (1982-present), and Base progetti per l'arte (1998-present), and has curated a variety of exhibitions and presentations of Zona Archives materials, including Small Press Scene, Zona, Florence (1975); Artists’ Books / Cento Libri d’Artista Cento, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (1978); Cent livres d’artistes italiens, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (1981); Foné, la voce e la traccia, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1984); A.B. Art in Bookform, Museum Alvar Aalto Museum Jyvaskyla (1987); Discothèque, Maison du Livre de l'lmage et du Son, Villeurbanne (1989); Zonaradio / Keeping Time, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Bourges (1995); Bookmakers, Limoges (1995); Murs du son, Villa Arson, Nice (1995); Fonoteca, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena (1998) and Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City (2000), Maurizio Nannucci Featuring James Lee Byars, Museo d’Inverno, Siena (2016).
Associated Museum
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