The exhibition presents a selection of fourteen works, including the world premiere of two films commissioned and produced by Fondazione Nicola Trussardi. For "Still Life", Dean has chosen to show only film, making a circular journey through the rooms of the palazzo, moving from works related to portraiture to those about natural phenomena, landscape and the sea, and then into a recent group that reference still life. For her exhibition with the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, with the assistance of the Museo D'Arte Moderna di Bologna Tacita Dean obtained access to an extraordinary location: she was invited to visit the Bologna studio of painter Giorgio Morandi and film the original spaces and furnishings of the small studio in Via Fondazza where Morandi worked for over 50 years. Her two new films capture the traces left by Morandi and reconstruct his meticulous explorations: in Still Life (2009), which lends its title to the entire show, Tacita Dean focuses on the meticulous markings and measurements found on the paper Morandi placed underneath his objects. A cartographer in search of lost time, Tacita Dean rediscovers Morandi’s work through marginal, forgotten signs. In Day for Night (2009), Dean looks at Morandi’s objects themselves. Unable to touch or move the bottles and vases, Dean filmed them singly, making random groupings in contrast to Morandi’s studied and mathematically rigorous compositions.
In the pictures, from above: Prisoner Pair, 2008; Amadeus, 2008; Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage's composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007; The Green Ray, 2001; Banewl, 1999.
Images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, Parigi/New York e Frith Street Gallery, Londra
