GRASSO. Giuseppe Gabellone and Diego Perrone

Curated by di Elena Volpato
Floor -1, Video Library / Media Collection

Opening 1 November 2024, cocktails from 6 - 8 pm

GAM is happy to present the ‘GRASSO’ exhibition dedicated to the first seven issues of the magazine conceived in 2016 by Giuseppe Gabellone and Diego Perrone. The name reflects the unusual size of the magazine, a true oversize, which in order to be read has to be unfolded in a large room as it measures two metres wide by three metres in height.

Thanks to the support of the Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, it was possible to produce the seventh issue entitled Amedeo Special, the name of a cocktail invented in the 1940s by Amedeo Gandiglio, barman of the historic Turin bar Chatam, and revisited for the occasion by Marco Torre, of Bar Cavour, at the invitation of the two artists.

‘The cocktail stands out in full size in the magazine – wrote the Curator - as the equal and opposite of advertising photography. The exaggerated pop dimensions remain, but the eye-catching glitter and vital energy have vanished. In their place, crepuscular pink, green and brown penumbrae slip into the image, as if shaded by absinthe vapours from old cafés.
Each issue of GRASSO devours a related but different language of the visual arts. Issue 02 captured and embedded the narrative flow of a performance in a mosaic of photos; issue 04 transformed a long interview into a tapestry, enhancing it to the limit of illegibility; issue 06 is filled by a drawing in which the unyielding iconographic and stylistic rules of Japanese manga are intertwined with Judaeo-Christian culture and a certain desire for painting...

GRASSO is beautiful, like paradoxical projects, like all things that are enormous and fragile: a giant with feet of paper.’

The exhibition is part of the collecting commitment that GAM and Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT have been making with regard to artists' books and magazines since 2017 with the establishment of the Fondo Giorgio Maffei.

On the evening of the opening, it will be possible to taste the cocktail prepared by Head Bartender Marco Torre, from 6 pm to 8 pm.

GRASSO #7: a project by Giuseppe Gabellone and Diego Perrone, curated by Elena Volpato, with the artistic direction of Studio Fludd, photos by Massimo Bianchi, and with the support of the Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT and the GAM of Turin.

Consultancy from Corrado Beldì, case designed by Dallas, printed by Artistica Savigliano and coordinated by Federica Panelli.
With thanks also to Bar Cavour, Turin and Marco Torre