press release Art Intervention by Alberto Garutti in the

press release
12 september 2016
Art Intervention by Alberto Garutti in the Hannoversche
Allgemeine Zeitung on 3 September 2016
Alberto Garutti for the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Kestner Gesellschaft, 2016,
courtesy Galleria Massimo Minini
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Kestner Gesellschaft, on 3 September 2016 a special edition
of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung was published: the Italian artist Alberto Garutti realized one
of his famous art interventions in the Saturday edition. Thanks to the newspaper’s wide distribution,
Garutti’s work was present in public spaces throughout Hanover and the daily lives of its readers. The
presentation of Alberto Garutti’s artistic intervention in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung will be
exhibited in November at the Kestner Gesellschaft.
Alberto Garutti explores public spaces with his artistic interventions, which show the relationships
between private and public institutions embedded in social structures. He makes people’s personal
memories and experiences visible, to which he has a special relationship through the sharing of public
spaces. Following an anthropological approach, he creates site-specific interventions, installations, and
processual group projects between the artist and the inhabitants of a city. A characteristic and
recurring element of Garutti’s oeuvre is dedications that communicate with a public audience in the
form of short, lyrical inscriptions. All of Garutti’s artworks for public spaces are accompanied and
explained by these inscriptions in order to attract not only knowing viewers but also random passersby to the work. For instance, in one of his works, Garutti links the streetlamps in a part of the city
with the local hospital and dedicates the work to every baby born there. The moment of birth is
translated into a discreet flickering and dimming of individual streetlamps. Despite their site-specific
anchoring, these short texts aim to reach as broad an audience as possible and appear in different
forms depending on the respective context. In the form of billboards, newspapers, or placemats in
restaurants, Garutti’s artistic interventions overcome the boundaries of traditional art institutions and
integrate themselves into the daily lives of the broader public.
»Alberto Garutti was once called an ‘invisible director of a theater of reality’—a very fitting description
of his artistic approach and also the reason why I suggested him for the art project in the
Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. As a reader of a daily newspaper, one can witness this ‘theater of
reality.’ Against the background of our rapidly changing relationship to information and time,
smuggling art into a newspaper, which systematically inscribes itself into existing structures, struck
me as an especially interesting idea, « says Christina Végh, director of the Kestner Gesellschaft.
Alberto Garutti (*1948 in Galbiate, Italy) lives and works in Milan. His work has been featured in solo
exhibitions at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa,
Japan, and the Marta Herford, among others. In addition to his work as an artist, Alberto Garutti also
teaches at the Università Iuav di Venezia and the School of Design at the Politecnico di Milano.
Press contact
Gudrun Herz
Phone: +49 511 70120 16
[email protected]

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