Up to 1 July 2018

At the time of the 15th edition of the Festival Letterario Isola delle Storie in Gavoi, Sardinia, the MAN is pleased to present 100 Years, an exhibition by Hans Peter Feldmann, one of the most renowned German artists of his generation, to be held in the renovated rooms of Gavoi’s Civic Museum. The exhibition is curated by Luigi Fassi and Alberto Salvadori.

Feldmann's work, from his beginnings in the 1960s, concentrates on exploring the potential of individual and collective memories which the artist has continued to collect and conserve as his personal archive in the form of images he has come across: picture postcards, clippings from magazines, posters and his own photographs. Each of these elements, which he has classified with his own personal scheme, bears witness to the conservation of memory as an ideal tribute to the cycle of life and its unrepeatable diversity. The recurring themes of his works are a reflection on the notion of time and an investigation into the value of the work of art with respect to the concepts of uniqueness and reproducibility.

In the work 100 Years (2001), Feldmann photographed one hundred and one people from among his family members, friends and acquaintances from the age of eight months to a hundred years. Each photo thus corresponds to a specific phase in life, from early infancy to old age. Arranging them in order by increasing age, the photographic testimony of a hundred different individualities is sorted by gender so that 100 Years creates an impassioned serial portrait of human life through time, a choral homage to humanity that brings together in harmony the dimensions of past, present and future.

We wish to thank the Enea Righi Collection of Bologna for lending the work.

Hans Peter Feldmann (1941) lives and works in Düsseldorf.

Among his most recent exhibitions: MoMA, New York, 2017; Serpentine Gallery, London, 2012; Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2009; Museo Nacional Centro De Art Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2011; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010; MoMA PS1, New York, 2005.His work was presented at Documenta 5, 1972 and Documenta 6, 1976.