September 14, 2024 – February 16, 2025
Greatness, loneliness, myth, frailty of human beings. gres art 671 presents a new exhibition in Bergamo dedicated to Marina Abramović, one of the most influential artists of our time.
This exhibition is unique. In fact, not only does it encapsulate my performance, but also my latest research on the use of new materials and different formats, as in my most recent work, Seven Deaths, an opera that I initially created and later transformed into a video installation. Marina Abramović
Titled ‘between breath and fire’, this project investigates some key themes that characterized the artist’s fifty-year long career: breath, body, the relationship with the Other and death. 30 of her recent and iconic works, displayed both indoors and outdoors, create an osmotic relationship with the exhibition space and, for the first time, also the garden featuring the Tree soundscape. Here, the sound of birds resonating among the trees, blurs the lines between nature and artifice, reality and fiction, mortality and transcendence.
A complete yet complex path which revolves around Seven Deaths, the cinematic installation that Marina Abramović dedicated to Maria Callas, of whom she becomes a kind of alter ego. The love for the singer has blossomed since the teenage years of the Serbian artist, when she recalls hearing Callas’ voice in her grandmother’s kitchen in Belgrade and being moved to tears by its emotional power.
I didn’t understand the words - it was in Italian - and I remember that I stood up, feeling the electricity going through my body, and with this incredible sensation of emotions passing through me. I started to cry uncontrollably, and it was such an emotional effect that I have never forgotten it. Marina Abramović
A series of analogies and references between the lives of the two artists find fulfillment in the operatic film. An immersive experience that commemorates and enacts the tragic and untimely demise of the seven heroines portrayed by Maria Callas and played by Marina Abramović, accompanied by the soundtrack of seven solos by the soprano.
She was so strong on stage, but so unhappy in her life. Also, she really died for love. Once I was also so much in love in my life, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even think, and then my work saved me. Marina Abramović
"We are thrilled to host at gres art 671 the exhibition of a world-famous artist who has always placed the observer at the centre of her works and her art. Our cultural centre was born with the ambition of involving visitors as much as possible, making them interact with the space and the works, making them an active part of the journey. After the preview, on the occasion of the Italian Capital of Culture 2023, hosting "between breath and fire" now means that we can aspire to have, in a single perspective, the vision of an extraordinary artist with the mission of a cultural place, a perfect combination that honours us and that will certainly arouse strong emotions" concludes Roberto Pesenti, President of gres art 671.
