Michael Biberstein
Beyond
Curated by Marina Guida
Opening 16 April, 12 noon
From 16 April to 5 June 2023
Reggia di Caserta – Sala Romanelli
Michael Biberstein’s solo exhibition Beyond, curated by Marina Guida, opens on Sunday 16 April at the Reggia di Caserta: it constitutes an invitation to look beyond, taking the form of an immersive exhibition in which the enigma of perception is the protagonis
The infinite, the sublime and the mysterious are the foundations around which revolvethe Swiss artist’s works, exhibited here for the first time in Italy in an institutional space.
The exhibition, organised in collaboration with the Galleria Giorgio Persano in Turin, was selected by the Museum’s scientific committee as part of the call for participatory enhancement of the Reggia di Caserta for the first half of 2023.
The call is a tool for sharing, experimenting, creating and innovating cultural content. Research institutes, universities, training centres, cultural operators, cooperatives, foundations, voluntary and social promotion associations, associations and other non-profit organisations can submit proposals for cultural activities and the physical or virtual enhancement of the heritage, moments of aggregation and the use of artistic and creative expressions within the Royal Palace, the Park or the Acquedotto carolino.
It is no coincidence that the large canvases chosen for the occasion are presented in a monumental setting so charged with symbolism and spirituality, and evoke dreamlike, alien and ethereal places that seem to emerge from a dense mist, with contrasts between warm and cold tones obtained through the gradual dilution of the density of the paint.
By bringing to the fore mental landscapes, atmospheric spaces, monochrome elements, glimmers of light and rare swirls of colour, Beyond urges us to go through the surfaces of the paintings. It urges us to try to grasp what lies behind what appears as a dull sky, gloomy but at the same time imbued with an electric atmosphere, a luminous energy in power, generating attraction and dismay, a hypnotic fascination that caresses, enchants, but is ready to burst out and, for this reason, makes us uneasy.
As curator Marina Guida points out in the critical text accompanying the exhibition: “Biberstein’s is a creative process based on his ability to remove the visual frills, aiming at the essence of the concept through a careful work of cancelling out the inessential elements, be they iconic or mental.
The artist chooses to subtract rather than add. He subtracts in his works the search for form, hatching, contour; he subtracts the figure, the narrative. We are faced with the zero point of a radical painting with an analytical matrix that reveals itself slowly, through veiling, almost as if to recall the mystical and meditative character of Sumi-e painting”.
Beyond is an invitation to cross a threshold, to imagine what might be there a moment after the progressive thinning of the colours to the point of the invisible.
There are many keys to interpretation, as many as the pictorial layers that overlap and expand on the canvases to create scenarios lying between a meditative feeling and an imaginative effort that takes shape in the eye to find its way into the mind and beyond.
The majesty and eclecticism of the exhibition space, where references to knowledge-based disciplines of all ages (alchemy, theosophy, astronomy, botany…) converge, becomes functional for the exhibition project, leading the visitor along an initiatory path.
Beyond is a tribute to the most secret soul of the Reggia di Caserta, an extraordinary symbol of beauty and wisdom, an invitation to travel to the landscapes of the mind, to see beyond the visible.
Michael Biberstein – Biographical notes
(Solothurn, Switzerland, 1948 – Alandroal, Portugal, 2013).
Since the 1970s, his works have been exhibited worldwide and are in the collections of prestigious museums, including: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía – Madrid, Whitney Museum of American Art – New York, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation – Lisbon, Serralves Foundation – Porto, Museu Coleção Berardo – Lisbon. In 2018, the retrospective of the artist, Michael Biberstein: X, curated by Delfim Sardo, was presented at Culturgest, Fundação Caixa Geral de Depósitos – Lisbon. In 2020, the restoration of the Santa Isabel Church in Lisbon won the Maria Tereza and Vasco Vilalva Prize.
Press Contacts
Press office, Reggia di Caserta: 08231491213 – re-ce.comunicazione@cultura.gov.it
Press office, Exhibition: AnnaChiara Della Corte – 3338650479 – acdellacorte@gmail.com
Thanks to Michael Biberstein Estate
Artworks of exhibitions
