Gianfranco Baruchello
Psicoenciclopedia possibile
“Psicoenciclopedia possibile is devised as though it were a volume of the Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, but it isn’t” (G. Baruchello, 2020)
The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is pleased to present, for the first time outside Italy, Gianfranco Baruchello’s Psicoenciclopedia possibile.
Gianfranco Baruchello (1924, Italy) is an artist, filmmaker and writer who has experimented with the transversality of artistic languages since the late 1950s. He has in particular created short-circuits between apparently irreconcilable domains and fields like art and agriculture, or the regulations of governance of a fictitious company and economics. His painting contends with uncertainty and uses white as a field of the possible. In these spaces, he imagines the coexistence of essences of images and words, which he organises in all directions. Thus, writing is present in one way or another in all his practice and constitutes the very essence of the work presented at the Project Space (4th floor).
In parallel of the exhibition, the Centre is showing a series of films made by Baruchello between 1968 and 2008 on the subject of processes of classification, archiving and inventory, the editing of which has similarities with the procedure used in the Psicoenciclopedia.
List of the films presented in loop at Cinema Dynamo :
Norme per gli olocausti, 1968
Il grano, 1974-1975
A cause des mouches, 1978
Inventario di ottobre, 1976-1996
Quaranta immagini, 1996
Retard, 1996
Tic Tac, 1998
Nodi, 1999
Quanto, 1999
Pena di morte, 2000
In bilico, 2006
Un altro giorno, un altro giorno, un altro giorno, 2007 Notizie in due minuti, 2008
The exhibition project has been conceived as an organic whole, embracing a catalogue, the exhibition at Project Space, the Cinema Dynamo film programme, and the readings and performances aimed at celebrating, in spite of its obvious and — perhaps — necessary incompleteness, this umpteenth colossal effort by this legendary Italian artist.
This exhibition is part of a cycle of presentations of the Psicoenciclopedia possible undertaken by the Fondazione Baruchello, which benefits from the support of the Italian Council (7th Edition, 2019), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. After Geneva, Baruchello’s Encyclopaedia will be presented at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (25 September–24 October) and at CIMA in New York (6–12 December).
A first edition of the Psiconeciclopedia possibile will be published in French for the occasion. It will include an extract translated from the entries as well as essays that offer a French-speaking public a fundamental introduction to Gianfranco Baruchello’s colossal project. A pocket edition of the Psiconeciclopedia possibile will also be published by the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana founded by Giovanni Treccani to mark this cycle of presentations and exhibitions. These two editions will both be available at the Centre’s Bookshop.
This exhibition will is curated by Andrea Bellini and Carla Subrizi, with the collaboration of Ambroise Tièche.
