Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo

Sources in the Air gathers a broad array of works completed over the past decade and interacts with the particular environment of the exhibition space, radically modifying the layout and selection of the works, in an ever-changing dialogue amongst existing works, new site-specific productions and the architecture of each museum.David Maljkovic (1973, Rijeka, Croazia) has emerged in recent years as one of the most significant artists on the international arena, thanks to a body of works with which he investigates the cultural, social and political heritage of his country through an ongoing comparison of past, present and future, interpreted as hypothetical and interconnected dimensions of reality.David Maljkovic freely rearranges this material to highlight the tension between the avant-garde utopias of Yugoslavia under Tito and the potential for renewal ignored by recent national history, suspended between a collective “state” identity and a future with an uncertain cultural memory.As much as these cultural roots constitute the heart of Maljkovic’s research, the artist’s practice is distinguished by the freedom of the language with which he conducts a universal reflection on the mechanisms of collective memory, and by the detailed attention he pays to the strategies and exhibitional mechanisms.Alongside works, such as Monochromes (2013), Lost Pavillion (2008) and the Temporary Projections series (2011), the retrospective aspect of his solo exhibition at GAMeC will be embodied by a series of photographic collages that the artist created for the exhibition in Bergamo, in which pictures of works executed by Maljkovic throughout his career are superimposed and almost condensed in order to construct a visual and conceptual mapping of his artistic practice. Thus, the idea of a “travelling exhibition” is critically re-examined. The works are not merely transported from one place to the next: instead, they become devices that can react to both space and time. The artist’s capacity to reflect on the mechanisms of vision, reproduction and the transmission of images overturns the concept of “retrospective” and its allegedly rigid structure.The theme of collective amnesia often present in Maljkovic’s production (which includes videos, photographs and installations) is developed in the Temporary Projections series and in Monochromes. Here, the instruments used to record, reproduce and preserve memory – like film projectors and slides, photographic equipment and archival materials – are presented as silent tools, often used “against themselves” in contradiction with their functions.For the GAMeC exhibition, Maljkovic has conceived an installation for presenting the works that, by dominating the rooms of the Spazio Zero, alters their perception: a stage and a series of structures will constitute a set through which visitors can interpret the retrospective path of the exhibition, understood as a dynamic mise-en-scène.Display for Massimo Minini is one of the artist’s most recent works. Never displayed in Italy before, it is a retrospective reflection using all the invitations produced in the forty years of activity of the Galleria Massimo Minini, which currently represents the artist in Italy. Maljkovic thus not only pays tribute to an extremely significant figure in the history of contemporary art in Italy, but he also creates a link between the past history of a commercial gallery and the present day of his solo show at the museum, between the public space of the museum and the private space of the gallery, between individual memory and its conveyance in the social arena.Curators: Alessandro Rabottini and Andrea VilianiOpening: October 3 2013, 6.30 p.m.Sources in the Air is a collaboration among Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven – BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead – GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo