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Markus Schinwald

Palazzo Poggi Museum and University Library Bologna
24 November 2006 - 7 January 2007

Coming Soon MAMbo + Museo - Mostre

At the time of their inauguration in 1712 in the halls of Palazzo Poggi, the collections of the Istituto delle Scienze e delle Arti di Bologna were neither exclusively scientific nor artistic. The archaeological finds, the anatomical wax figures of the ceroplastics Ercole Lelli and Morandi-Manzolini, the surgical instruments of the physician Giovan Antonio Galli, the 16th century “theater of nature” of the naturalist Ulisse Aldovrandi, the collections of mineralogy, botany, zoology and palaeontology, were gathered together as the instruments of a multidisciplinary research in ceaseless evolution.

These complex collections, with their continuous overlapping and integration, represent the ideal platform for the exhibition project by Markus Schinwald (Salzburg, 1973. Lives and works in Vienna and in Los Angeles).
Specifically conceived for the historical framework of the museum, Schinwald's intervention at Palazzo Poggi appears as a “fictitious archaeological excavation” within the museum’s itinerary. Borrowing from the mechanisms of performance and of theatrical and cinematic direction, Schinwald confers on the works displayed – paintings, wallpaper, prints, automated sculptures and billowing curtains – a continuous semantic and formal oscillation. Amidst the Institute’s antique showcases and in the frescoed halls that house today, in addition to the museum, the Bologna University Library, the works of Schinwald reflect almost mimetically the ambiguity of the artifacts that could be, at one and the same time, either ancient objects or contemporary artworks.

"I don’t want to be in conflict with the character or feeling of a museum such as this one. On the contrary, I wish to incorporate its flow and overall atmosphere into the exhibition format. A contemporary format that reflects a type of ancient science fiction as if this were an exhibition in translation, as if someone were speaking today in an archaic language". (M. Schinwald)