Trondheim kunstmuseum reopens its main venue next to Nidaros Cathedral on April 22 with an exhibition of works from one of Europe’s most important collections of contemporary art, Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, shown for the first time in Norway at TKM.
Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo was started in the 1990s by Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, since 1995 the President of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin.
In addition to an impressive history of acquisitions, exhibitions, commissioning and production of important works, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has also played an important part in spreading knowledge of contemporary art through loaning extensively. Selections from the collection have recently been shown at Macro in Rome and Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. For this exhibition, the curators and the director at TKM have made a selection of around thirty works to be shown at the museum until the end of 2017.
The exhibition’s title, If on a Trondheim’s Night a Traveler…, pays tribute to Turin-based writer Italo Calvino’s novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler from 1979. In the novel, the protagonist—‘the reader’—and his companion Liudmilla, attempt to read ten different novels but ten times leave each one incomplete. Each of these beginnings reflects a different style and a different relationship to the world. The novel that contains them all not only plunges the actual readers—us—into compelling narratives, but also reminds us how every book is born out of, and sits in relation to, others.
Similarly, the works in the exhibition at Trondheim kunstmuseum represent a variety of different techniques and media: photography, drawing, sculpture, film, painting and installation. Placed next to each other, they enter into dialogues that span a number of approaches and perspectives in art since the 1970s, including feminism, postcolonial studies and psychoanalysis.
Over an exhibition period of eight months, the changes in seasons, as well as of paradigm-shifting world events, are mirrored in the light and conditions of the galleries in which the works are displayed. Against the backdrop of this changing environment, and through the artworks in this important collection, the public will be able embark upon many different travels into many narratives concerning our historical uncertainties as well as the commercial exploitation of how we live, love and see ourselves.
Artists included in the exhibition:
Tauba Auerbach
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd
Roberto Cuoghi
Berlinde De Bruyckere
Trisha Donnelly
Francesco Gennari
Zoe Leonard
Sharon Lockhart
Sarah Lucas
David Medalla
Raymond Pettibon
Charles Ray
Wael Shawky
Cindy Sherman
Paul Thek
Rosemarie Trockel
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Trondheim kunstmuseum (TKM) is one of Norway’s leading art institutions. Founded in 1845 as a “kunstforening” modelled on German Kunstvereins, TKM has been dedicated to the art of its time from the very beginning and houses one of Norway’s largest public collections, with key works of Norwegian nineteenth and twentieth century art, as well as works by leading international figures.
