Fondazione Galleria Milano is pleased to invite you to the opening of Viaggio attorno a un tavolo [A Journey Around a Table]. Alik Cavaliere and Vincenzo Ferrari, curated by Bianca Trevisan and Nicola Pellegrini. Thanks to the discovery of unpublished documents, the exhibition reconstructs the dense web of correspondence between Alik Cavaliere (Rome, 1926 – Milan, 1998) and Vincenzo Ferrari (Cremona, 1941 – Milan, 2012). Having met at the Accademia di Brera at the beginning of the decade, where they both taught, their approaches were different, seemingly distant from one another. The former had a narrative language oriented toward matter, the latter an alphabetic and semiotic one. Yet, in their almost daily meetings, in one or the other’s studio, they found a shared device of thought: the everyday object.
The upper floor of the Fondazione hosts a reconstruction of the installation Attraversare il tempo [Crossing Through Time], created between 1978 and 1979 by Alik Cavaliere and Vincenzo Ferrari and presented in Como, Alessandria, and Milan. Attraversare il tempo is a visionary and impossible journey through space and time, a utopian attempt to render visible the concepts set forth in Einstein’s theory of relativity, a chess match played between the two, a proposed train itinerary that would actually be carried out with the family of their artist friend Bobo Piccoli. The original plates, from which 12 lithographs were made, are accompanied by preparatory drawings, the notebook in which the two artists documented their creative and conceptual process, and photographs of the journey with the Piccoli family. Also on display are other works by the artists from the 1960s and 1970s, which help reconstruct the genesis of their research and understand why, in the end, this exchange came to an end.
As Cavaliere recounts in his notebooks: “We worked together for a year, approaching a theme with our different experiences and working practices […] through reconsiderations and checks, we proceeded by elimination, gradually eliminating… everything.” The works on display nonetheless share common traits, with differing outcomes: both, for example, experimented with works in boxes, or rather in suitcases, taking up Duchamp’s experiment of the boîte-en-valise.
On the lower floor, archival materials, notebooks, and photographs that reconstruct the relationship between the two artists are also on view. Also screened is Raffaele Andreassi’s 1977 film Alik Cavaliere (16 mm, 37′; copy from CSC-Cineteca Nazionale), in which the artist discusses some of his works from those years, including Una storia quotidiana[An Everyday Story], an installation in his studio at via Bocconi 15 in Milan, which reveals his interest in everyday life — a central theme in his discussions with Ferrari during those years — as well as other shared concerns, such as the investigation of space.
The two artists would continue their collaboration into the following decade, when their exchange found fertile ground in a shared interest in classicism. The spatiotemporal challenge of Attraversare il tempo found no resolution, but this mattered little, because what interested them, in Cavaliere’s words, was the process of verification: “In reality, with Vincenzo, it was not a matter of ‘crossing through time,’ as the chosen title suggested, but of a journey around a table, where we played a long match, […] a pretext for testing the game.”
The exhibition is part of the program dedicated to the Centenary of Alik Cavaliere’s birth, promoted by the Centro Artistico Alik Cavaliere. On October 15, at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, an international study day dedicated to the artist will be held, curated by Angela Vettese, Fania Cavaliere, and Giulia Vandelli. Speakers will include Bianca Trevisan, among others, who will further explore the conceptual dialogue between the two artists.
In the image: Alik Cavaliere and Vincenzo Ferrari in the via Bocconi studio, late 1970s. Courtesy Centro Artistico Alik Cavaliere and Fondazione Galleria Milano.