Galleria Fumagalli presents the first solo exhibition in Italy since 1978 by Dutch artist Marinus Boezem, one of the main representatives of Land Art, environmental art, conceptual art and process art in the Netherlands since the late 1960s. The project “Bird’s-eye View” by Marinus Boezem, curated by Lorenzo Bruni, features a wide site- specific installation made with various birdseeds. The organic matter, animal nourishment and evocative of the natural life cycle, draws on the gallery floor the physical and conceptual space of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi’s floor plan. The installation, which also includes tree branches on the walls and the work on paper evoking the performance L’Uomo Volante (1979), transforms the architectural interiors in a suggestive space where categories of exterior and interior, culture and nature, history and memory, reality and poetry, require to be reformulated. Boezem invites to reflect on the role of Art in re-establishing the present space and the time of sharing knowledge, focusing on the individual sense of responsibility in rethinking the community in a global and virtual world. Next to the installation Bird’s-eye View (2019), the video A Volo d’Uccello (2010) documents a similar intervention made by the artist on the roof of his studio in Middelburg, and a selection of works (The Vanishing of the Artist (2019), God Bless You (1971/2013), Della Scultura e la Luce (1985), Cartografia (1980)) show how, in the course of his career and from different perspectives, Boezem dealt with the same themes evoked in the new project “Bird’s-eye View”.

“The title of the installation Bird’s-eye View (2019) – explains curator Lorenzo Bruni – does not refer exclusively to the ideal condition of observation of the site-specific intervention: the perimeter of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi displayed in the gallery’s white cube with various seeds on the floor, and the tree branches on the walls suggesting the imminent arrival of birds, as if there were no more separation between inside and outside. But it also refers to the artist’s profound reflection on his long career, which led him to use the floor plans of Gothic cathedrals, such as those of Reims or Assisi, in various ways, decade after decade. In fact, the title of the exhibition “Bird’s-eye View” focuses on Boezem’s research and compare between nature and culture started in the 1960s, with landscape’s interventions and reenactments of climate changes within the museums – an alternative proposal to the American Land Art of the same years –, continued during the 1980s with collages and environmental sculptures inspired by the “medieval perspective”. And it shows the interest of the artist, since the 1990s, for “landscape-sharing” at the time of global communications and social networks. It thus suggests the need to re-establish the concepts of observing and looking, since images are used not to communicate but to control reality. The artist has sought this specific topic since 2010 with landscape- works, adopting surveillance camera to make his videos, so that from every corner of the world and at any moment, night or day, people could follow the process of the work.

Marinus Boezem (1934, the Netherlands) is among the most significant representatives of Conceptual Art and Arte Povera in The Netherlands, together with Jan Dibbets and Ger van Elk. In the 1960s, Boezem started to use elusive elements such as air, weather, wind and light as visual materials and made a name with radical, immaterial works that were far ahead of their time. He was one of the initiators of the ground-breaking exhibition “Op Losse Schroeven: Situaties en Cryptostructuren” (1969) at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and took part in the equally influential exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form” at the Kunsthalle Bern in the same year. In 1969 he created one of his most famous works of art, Signing the Sky Above The Port of Amsterdam With an Aeroplane (1969): as stated in the title, an aircraft’s condensation trails were used to spell out Boezem’s surname in the sky, the ephemeral wording disappearing almost as soon as it was created. Boezem created numerous works in public space and land art such as the Gothic Growth Project (Green Cathedral) (from 1978/1987): 174 Italian poplar trees (Populus Nigra Italica) are planted to reproduce the floor plan and measurements of the Cathedral at Reims, in a flat polder near Almere, the Netherlands. His works are part of many important museum collections, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Gemeentemuseum Den Haag; Museum Kröller-Müller, Otterloo; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar.

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exibart.com

1 April 2019
“Marinus Boezem. Bird’s-eye View. Galleria Fumagalli, Milano”

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askanews.it

24 January 2019
“La natura e l’immateriale. Marinus Boezem a Milano”

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Il Giornale dell’Arte

February 2019
“Land Art francescana”

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artribune.com

25 January 2019
“Natura e precarietà. Marinus Boezem a Milano”

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