Noise: a Hole in the Silence

Silence. Noise. And, in the middle, between the two poles, every possible variation and gradation. Noise: a Hole in the Silence brings together works by twenty-one artists. Each work helps to outline a particular fragment within the complex panorama of sounds, noises, hums and silences that make up the exhibition, which takes its inspiration from Een lek in het zwijgen: noise, an event conceived and organized by Gwy Mandelinck (poetry) and Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (visual arts) at Watou (Belgium) during the summer of 2007 and judged the best exhibition of the year in Belgium.

Visitors are free to wander around the exhibition, and to accept the invitation to "listen to me" that is repeated on their encounter with each work. The material of sound, at times strongly present, at others mysterious, is articulated and modulated through different languages: the sound fragments, multiplies, vanishes for a moment to reappear in a laugh or in the sculptural and material presence of a piano, or simply in the gust of wind that makes a rod attached to the branch of a tree vibrate.

The protagonists of this exhibition: Joseph Beuys (Germany), Marcel Broodthaers (Belgium), John Cage (USA), Mircea Cantor (Romania), Giuseppe Chiari (Italy), Jimmie Durham (USA), Jan Fabre (Belgium), Lara Favaretto (Italy), William Kentridge (South Africa), La Monte Young (USA), Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Italy), Kris Martin (Belgium), Shirin Neshat (Iran), Melik Ohanian (France), Yoko Ono (Japan), Adrian Paci (Albania), Diego Perrone (Italy), Miguel Angel Rios (Argentina), Luigi Russolo (Italia), Mungo Thomson (USA), Bill Viola (USA), Jordan Wolfson (USA).

The works are accompanied by poetry intersecting with art and offering the visitor a listening experience that continually creates new impressions and new meanings. In the exhibition there are the poems of: Hugo Claus, Charles Ducal, Gerrit Komrij, Rutger Kopland, Anton Korteweg, Erik Lindner, Lucebert, Gwy Mandelinck, Eugenio Montale, Erwin Mortier, Fernando Pessoa, Juan Manuel Roca, Camillo Sbarbaro, Geert van Istendael, Peter Verhelst.

The curator of the exhibition, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, is director of the GAMeC - Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo. Professor of art history at the Accademia di Brera, he was first editor-in-chief and then assistant editor of Flash Art Italia from 1986 to 1992. Among the many exhibitions he has organized, we can single out here the one on Russian artists staged as part of the event A Passage to the East at the 1993 Venice Biennale. He is a member of the board of governors and vice chairman of the AMACI (Association of Italian Museums of Contemporary Art).

The poet Gwy Mandelick (1937, Belgium) is a member of Academie Royale pour Literature Nederlandaise; from 1980 he is the director of the Summer in Poetry festival, important event that takes place every year in Watou. Many of his poems had been translated in French, German, English and Italian languages. He won many literary prizes.

Noise: a Hole in the Silence exhibition promoted by the Province of Milan

curators: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Gwy Mandelinck

Noise: a Hole in the Silence
Kuratoren: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Gwy Mandelinck

mit Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Mircea Cantor, Giuseppe Chiari, Jimmie Durham, Jan Fabre, Lara Favaretto, William Kentridge, La Monte Young, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Kris Martin, Shirin Neshat, Melik Ohanian, Yoko Ono, Adrian Paci, Diego Perrone, Miguel Angel Rios, Luigi Russolo, Mungo Thomson, Bill Viola, Jordan Wolfson
Hugo Claus, Charles Ducal, Gerrit Komrij, Rutger Kopland, Anton Korteweg, Erik Lindner, Lucebert , Gwy Mandelinck, Eugenio Montale, Erwin Mortier, Fernando Pessoa, Juan Manuel Roca, Camillo Sbarbaro, Geert van Istendael, Peter Verhelst