The magnificent obsession

The Mart, Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, is renewing its mission.

After ten years' activity, the museum is being transformed to become a responsive, flexible institution, more democratic in assuring access to its holdings, more agile and independent in selecting and presenting its exhibition and curatorial projects.

The aim is to become a powerful device for understanding things, focusing on the very notion of what it means to be a modern and contemporary art museum in the 21st century.

The Mart's public is the protagonist of an initial foray in this direction, starting on 26th October 2012, a date that sees the inauguration of a series of exhibitions, events, meetings with artists and interactive workshops.

The magnificent obsession will for a whole year offer the museum's public a series of new itineraries through its collections—which are particularly packed, wide-ranging and rich in contrasts. An unprecedented project for the Mart, this exhibition has been defined by the director, Cristiana Collu, with an accumulation of adjectives: "Self-taught, water-diviner, auto-da-fé of works. Victim or protagonist, recomposed collection, disturbing and provocative, maniacal and fetishist. Obscure object of desire. Secret, sharing, intoxication, celebration. Giddiness of blending".

The magnificent obsession claims a vision that is radically free of temporal dimensions; the works are placed alongside each other in accordance with a criterion that might be defined "anticipation of the present" or "archaeology of the future." For this reason, the visitor will encounter an itinerary that is indeed chronological, but which in reality advances through major shifts in theme.

Of the over 1200 works on show, hundreds are on display for the first time; it will be possible to meet international artists in residence, like Paco Cao, or special guests, such as Emilio Isgrò and Liliana Moro, Christian Fogarolli and Paolo Meoni; it will be possible to examine the exciting work of a team that has shared the construction of the project, working in line with very different attitudes and sensitivities. So this has been a choral work, in which the layout seeks to cancel out any visual hierarchy and recreate a sensitivity close to the criteria of collecting and to the visual conditions of reality, rather than to a presumed neutrality of modern and contemporary exhibition rooms.

The magnificent obsession
Ort: Mart Rovereto
Kuratorin: Cristiana Collu

Künstler: Nicoletta Boschiero, Veronica Caciolli, Margherita de Pilati, Duccio Dogheria, Daniela Ferrari, Mariarosa Mariech, Paola Pettenella, Alessandra Tiddia, Denis Viva, Federico Zanoner.