Maurizio BologniniMaurizio BologniniMaurizio Bolognini
MPT (Museophagia Planet Tour), print on fabric, cm 120 x 140

Museophagia, 1998-99

"Con l'azione Museophagia avevo coinvolto molte gallerie, prelevando oggetti (arredi, telefoni, strumenti di misura) e trasportandoli da una galleria all'altra e da un continente all'altro, fino a compiere un completo giro del mondo. Mi interessavano il vuoto delle gallerie e la visione satellitare......."
Un’azione iniziata alla Galleria Cavellini, Brescia (1998), poi estesa a gallerie d’arte di altre città, tra cui Parigi, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Papeete, Sydney, Bangkok..., raggiunte compiendo un giro del mondo (Museophagia Planet Tour, 1998-99). Da ciascuno spazio espositivo sono stati presi mobili e oggetti, accumulati in una raccolta itinerante, trasportati da una galleria all’altra e da un continente all’altro.
Museophagia was an action which spread from the Cavellini Gallery in Brescia (1998) to art galleries in many other cities, including Paris, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Papeete, Sydney, Bangkok... reached by going on a trip around the world (Museophagia Planet Tour, 1998-99). The artist took pieces of furniture and objects from each of these galleries, putting together a travelling collection which was transported from one gallery to another and from one continent to another.

  Maurizio Bolognini

Museophagia, Galleria Cavellini, 1998. Lambda print, cm 30  x 40



Galleria Cavellini, 1998. Lambda print, 70x100 cm   


Galleria Cavellini, 1998


MPT (Museophagia Planet Tour), 1998-99
About Studio, Bangkok;  Archivio Cavellini, Brescia (sponsor);  Archivio Gualco, Genova;  CACTicino, Bellinzona;  Galerie Air de Paris, Paris;  Galleria Neon, Bologna;  Galleria Cortese, Milano;  Galleria Leonardi V-idea, Genova;  Galleria Minini, Brescia;  Galleria Persano, Torino;  Gering Gallery, New York;  Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney;  Jennjoy Gallery, San Francisco;  Musée Gauguin, Papeari, Tahiti;  Museo Bunkier Sztuki, Kracow;  Studio Morra, Napoli;  Telles Fine Arts, Los Angeles

 


 
  Palazzo Ducale, Genova, 2000

  
  thevirtualgallery.org



    Museophagia:  Sandra Gering Gallery, New York, 1999, lambda print, 29x97 cm (2 elementi).  


   Museophagia: Musée Gauguin, Papeete (Tahiti), 1999, lambda print, 29x97 cm (2 elementi).
  


Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genova, 2005

Museophagia, the name says it all, means the tendency or habit of eating museums. It is something that the Internet is beginning to do right now, or at least it is taking nibbles. The first evidence of museophagia, in fact a kind of digital bulimia, was the attempt of Bill Gates, through a company called Corbys, to gobble up by fact of digitization and scanning all the contents of museums and galleries that Corbys deemed fit, to regurgitate them on line, at a cost, of course, via proprietary channels. 
Museophagia, the website and the subject of this book, is more modest in its intentions than those of Bill Gates, it merely purports to consume via digitization objects (furniture, fixtures etc.) that Maurizio Bolognini took from art galleries of various cities, during a world tour starting from the Cavellini Foundation Gallery. Fair game......" 
Derrick de Kerckhove

When I stand before a work by Maurizio Bolognini I feel: [...] contrary to the conviction of what one would call the de-subjectivised, de-passionalised ambit of this post-electronic age, I feel. I see as in a flash the gesture carried out around that time of showing the unshowable, as in the exhibitions le vide and le plein held in Paris at the Gallerie Iris Clert by artists who still thought that the product and not the concept represented the great future challenge. [...]  Bolognini, on the other hand, who also thinks of the present world - techno-productive, hard and soft - works at a 'decisional' level. He is 'political'. He handles machines, software, contexts, constituting a paradoxical pattern of 'modes of use', and only at the end (at the end of the decision and once the action has been made) will he perhaps clarify or give a glimpse of the non-sense that belongs as much to the work as to the appointed place........"
Simonetta Lux