Fortino 1 Project - Michael Beutler

Fortino1, exhibition project by Helmut Friedel, Giovanni Iovane, Salvatore Lacagnina Fondazione Brodbeck arte contemporanea Catania On 22 February 2009, the first exhibition spaces of the Fondazione Brodbeck will be inaugurated in Catania. The Foundation is situated inside an immense early 20th century industrial complex: a former liquorice factory made up of a number of buildings and pavilions, with a total area of approximately 6000 sq.m

The project and intention of the Foundation are to restore a massive industrial architectural complex, set in the historical centre of Catania, and transform into an “art space”. An area, indeed almost a territory, in which to enable and experiment with different methods and forms of contemporary art (exhibitions, display spaces, collections, production and research), also in relation to the history and the social context of the city. After more than a year of work, a small block and a pavilion have now been restored and reconverted into offices and art spaces.

This first significant step, within the overall process, is also marked by the presentation of an exhibition plan, entitled Fortino 1, curated by Helmut Friedel, Giovanni Iovane and Salvatore Lacagnina.

The plan envisages, during a three-year period, the realisation of personal shows by international artists. Each selected artist will carry out a project having the particular and specific show space of the Foundation as its strategic basis. A truly felt face-to-face with the architecture of the place, with the peculiarities of the city of Catania, but also and above all the participation, through the work, in the transformation of the former factory into an art space.

Michael Beutler is the first artist to show in the cycle of the Fortino 1 exhibitions. The choice of the thirty-three year old German artist to inaugurate the space can be considered a kind of cultural and critical manifesto of the Foundation.

Indeed, in the arc of just a few years, Beutler has drawn attention from international criticism in that he expresses one of the key points of research and artistic practice since modernism up to now: the relationships between art and architecture, with particular focus on the reconversion of industrial spaces and the specific nature of the exhibition spaces. For Beutler, the given exhibition space is always the departure point for the elaboration of his artistic project. The artist analyses forms, functions and materials that make up the show space to then create architectural details that involve the viewer until making him a player in the process of reconversion.

In this very real process of transforming a place, the artist at times also uses “machines” (which he makes himself) with the twofold function of work of art and art makers, elevating in such a way the sculpture not only to object but also a tool for making art works. The obsolete industrial spaces of the former factory and the restructuring yard of the Brodbeck Foundation of Catania represent, thus, for Beutler a special occasion to participate “architectonically” in the transformation of this new structure with different functions and with a new image for both the quarter and the entire city.

Beutler intercepts this particular moment of transition with interventions, that the artist himself defines as “additions”. These do not cancel out the memory of the architecture and materials of the old factory but rather highlight or, better still, revive their history, and, at the same time, the transformation of use into an art space.

Michael Beutler has recently exhibited at Portikus, Frankfurt, at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the Witte de With in Rotterdam and at the Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm. He has participated in numerous Art Biennials, among which Berlin and Moscow (2005) and Gwanju (2006).

Fortino 1 Project
Michael Beutler
Kuratoren: Helmut Friedel, Giovanni Iovane, Salvatore Lacagnina