Time after Time, Space after Space is a calendar of events centered on performance, organized by Fondazione Furla and Museo del Novecento. From September 2017 to April 2018, the Sala Fontana at the Museo del Novecento is brought to life with works by Alexandra Bachzetsis, Simone Forti, Adelita Husni-Bey, Christian Marclay, and Paulina Olowska, who reinterpret the space through new pieces or reenactments of milestone performances from their careers. At bimonthly intervals, the program presents five solo projects featuring artists of different generations and backgrounds who employ a range of approaches to the language of performance, to give a sense of the complex experimentation that has characterized this form of expression for years now.
Time after Time, Space after Space, co-produced with the Museo del Novecento in Milan, is the first edition of the Furla Series: through this project, launched in 2017, Fondazione Furla will organize exhibitions and events dedicated to some of the leading artists from the Italian and international scene, in collaboration with Italy’s foremost art institutions.
The collaboration between Fondazione Furla and the Museo del Novecento is a unique opportunity to weave together past, present and future, forging a conversation between twentieth-century masters and key figures of our time. This awareness led to the idea of exploring performativity through a dialogue with the work of Lucio Fontana, who played a fundamental role in focusing attention on the artistic potential of material gesture, paving the way to subsequent experimentation in the spatial and performative realm. In the year that marks the fiftieth anniversary of Fontana’s death, and the months leading up to it, Time after Time, Space after Space celebrates the importance and topicality of this artist’s oeuvre through a succession of performances lit by his famous Struttura al Neon per la IX Triennale di Milano (1951).
The series as a whole is a sort of exhibition in installments and is accompanied by an extensive public program spread across its duration and employing different formats—talks, lectures, workshops, and guided tours—to create a rich calendar of parallel activities.
The catalogue – published by Mousse Publishing in a bilingual edition (Italian/English) – features an introduction on the project and five essays dedicated to each artist and exploring their approach to the language of performance (texts by: Helga Christoffersen, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Hendrik Folkerts, Aram Moshayedi, Bruna Roccasalva, Joanna Zielińska). The book also includes an extensive photographic documentation of the performances in the Sala Fontana.
Cover photo by: Lucio Fontana, Struttura al neon per la IX Triennale di Milano, 1951 (2010). Reconstruction authorized by Fondazione Lucio Fontana for Museo del Novecento, Milan 2010 © Fondazione Lucio Fontana by SIAE 2017 Photo © Masiar Pasquali