One of the most important contemporary art museums in Northern Europe, the SMAK in Ghent (Belgium), presents itself at the MAN in Nuoro through a precise selection of around seventy works taken from its own collections. The choice, made by Philippe Van Cauteren and Cristiana Collu, is not accidental: it aims to document the moment of transition between a “before” and an “after” that contemporary art has experienced since the 1950s.
The metaphor of this passage is Something else!!!! , the pioneering album by American jazz musician Ornette Coleman. It was 1958 when Coleman and his quartet decided to break the conventions of the jazz world by exploring new territories, from improvisation to atonality.
A similar caesura, almost the effect of a very vital short circuit, can also be felt in the SMAK Collections at the moment in which the legacy of the contemporary is violently overcome by new languages and new protagonists.
And precisely with the aim of making this perceived Something else!!!! ”, this “something else!!!!” that, among the two thousand works belonging to the SMAK, the selection was made of those destined for exhibition at the MAN in Nuoro.
The Something else!!!! , if we want to anchor it to a historically definable period, is recorded in the aftermath of the Second World War, when new themes and new languages burst into art, as well as new protagonists, which overlap, despite their discontinuity, on the previous definable as ” historical”. It is precisely this moment of transition that the MAN exhibition intends to tell, trying to understand whether, beyond the effect of sometimes violent rupture, one cannot still find the lines – as in Ornette Coleman’s music – of a complex, layered and sophisticated melody.
Something else!!!! proposes a comparison, rather than a clash, between historical works and others of more recent and very recent acquisition, highlighting, for example, the dialogue between Jannis Kounellis and Luc Tuymans, between Pierre Alechinsky and Patrick Lebret, between Wilhelm Sasnal and Andy Warhol . But Something else!!!! it is at the same time an important moment of in-depth analysis around the theme of art-reality, where art is a reflection on social phenomena in which it itself participates. At the same time, the exhibition is also an opportunity to delve into the history of a museum and evaluate its acquisition policies, a reflection which, in Nuoro, takes on a completely peculiar interest in relation to the very evolution of the MAN. But, beyond everything, Something else!!!! , with the exhibition of 70 works by 50 artists, is a celebration of art and imagination.
Something else!!!! presents, among others, works by Arman, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Patrick Lebret, Allen Jones, Jannis Kounellis, Ricardo Brey, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Lois and Franziska Weinberger, Maria Serebriakova, Johanna Billing, Jennifer Quando and Guillermo Calzadilla, Guillaume Bijl , Jan Fabre, Wilhelm Sasnal, Wim Delvoye, Thomas Schütte, Zoe Leonard, Edward Lipski, Jan Van Imschoot, Bruce Nauman, Walter Leblanc, Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Mekhitar Garabedian, Sven ‘t Jolle, François Morellet, Panamarenko, Herman Van Ingelgem , Federico Fusi, Mike Kelley, Fabrice Hybert, Andy Warhol, Willem Oorebeek, Luc Tuymans, Pierre Alechinsky, Jan Vercruysse.
Exhibition curated by Philippe Van Cauteren and Cristiana Collu, promoted by the MAN Museum of Art Province of Nuoro in collaboration with the SMAK of Ghent.
