Performing PAC

The PAC Pavilion of Contemporary Art presents the new edition of PERFORMING PAC, an exhibition entirely devoted to exploring the use of materials, forms of expression and layers of meaning through the practices of collage, of theassemblage and theinstallation. In keeping with the methodological approach that characterises this format, the curatorial project, led by Silvia Bignami, Iolanda Ratti e Diego Sileo, takes its cue from the “restaging” of a key historical exhibition held at the very same venue in Milan: Kurt Schwitters. Collages, paintings and sculptures 1914–1947, originally edited by Karin Orchard in collaboration with Luigi Sansone.

The title of the exhibition evokes the famous closing lines of the poem The Waste Land (The Wasteland) of T.S. Eliot, a literary work that is deeply in tune with the artistic exploration of Schwitters the desire and the need to “build from the rubble”, carefully gathering up the scattered fragments of the Western culture to counter the moral and social collapse and the spiritual desolation of the the modern world.

Taking as their starting point this fascinating process of addition, construction and formal reworking undertaken by the legendary avant-garde master, the following have been invited to engage in a dialogue within the spaces of the CAP seven leading figures from the creative scene, who, through their works and large-scale multimedia installations, effectively carry on his conceptual legacy and visual inspiration. Visitors will thus be able to explore the artistic research and output of Jacopo Benassi, John Bock, Gabriella Ciancimino, Roberto Cuoghi, Thomas Hirschhorn, Lucia Marcucci e Mika Rottenberg, artists capable of reinterpreting the poetics of the material fragment and the visual short circuit.