Christian Fogarolli: Decade

Refined, precise and clear, Fogarolli’s work is a delicate and respectful reflection on illness and marginalisation in an exclusionist society.

The exhibition Decade at The Galleria Civica of Trento entails thirty works and represents the path of research taken on by the Trento artist Christian Fogarolli. On exhibit are the works produced in the early years of his “mature” career, which also coincides with his first appearance at the Mart di Rovereto. In 2013, Fogarolli was invited by the then director Cristiana Collu to exhibit in the monumental exhibition La magnifica ossessione [The Magificent Obsession]. The Mart has dedicated one of the ADAC monographs for internationally renowned contemporary Trento artists to Fogarolli.

Decade therefore also represents the last stage of a partnership that has accompanied the artist’s professional growth, reaffirming the Mart’s commitment – through the work of the Galleria Civica and the ADAC, the living archive headed up by Gabriele Lorenzoni, curator of this exhibition.

The exhibition opens at the Galleria Civica with Leaven. In this work from 2015, the artist brought together all the volumes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the scientific manuals that classify “mental disorders”.

Fogarolli’s entire piece is built on this, and in the language of contemporary art, explores the theme of deviance: from scientific and statistical categorisation practises, to those of exclusion and marginalisation, with a special focus on historical 20th-century events and scientific research, through archives, asylum institutes, study centres and the application of new technologies. With scrupulous respect, Fogarolli focuses his investigation on that which is abnormal, outside the social norms.

Fogarolli’s work has a strong political component, and is backed up by unrelenting study of archive materials and historical sites, as well as the most modern centres for scientific and medical research. Notions, stories, data, and analyses provide the starting point for works created with different media, both traditional and contemporary: photography, drawing, video, installation, and sculpture. Fogarolli’s poetics follow a line in which the concepts outweigh the materials.

Three of the artist’s most seminal works are featured with others in the spaces of the Galleria Civica – including Pneuma, Krajany and Correction. 

The solo show will also be accompanied by a monographic publication with texts by Eugenio Viola, Elisabetta Barisoni, Pier Paolo Pancotto, Lucrezia Longobardi, Angel Moya Garcia and Denis Isaia.