The Orobie Biennial – Thinking Like a Mountain #4

The fourth cycle of Thinking Like a Mountain, the biennial program held by GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo that engages local communities through the participation of international artists, will open on June 7, 2025 with the artistic direction of Lorenzo Giusti.

In Bergamo, between the Upper and Lower Town, Seasons will be presented—a widespread exhibition conceived by Maurizio Cattelan specifically for this occasion, featuring four new artistic productions. The Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale in Villa d’Almè will host Spin and Break Free, a performance by Cecilia Bengolea, while works by Julius von Bismarck and Francesco Pedrini will be presented in the municipalities of Dossena and Roncobello.

At the same time, GAMeC’s Spazio Zero will host an exhibition by EX. (Andrea Cassi and Michele Versaci), offering a preview of the construction of the new Aldo Frattini Bivouac in the Orobie Alps, imagined as a high-altitude satellite venue of GAMeC.

 

MAURIZIO CATTELAN

SEASONS

June 7 – October 26, 2025

Bergamo

The exhibition Seasons by Maurizio Cattelan (Padua, 1960), conceived specifically by the artist for GAMeC’s Thinking Like a Mountain – The Orobie Biennial program, unfolds as a visual journey through the city of Bergamo. It encourages a deep reflection on the cyclical nature of life and history, on generations, on the rise and fall of values, and on the transformations of both the individual and society.

The title of the exhibition is a clear reference to what are universal symbols of transition and renewal—serving as an invitation to reflect on the passage of time, but also as an exhortation to experience reality in all its complexity and drama through art, which does not merely represent the world, but also interprets, questions, and transforms it.

Four sculptures are presented along a route that joins four venues: a recent work in the Sala delle Capriate in Palazzo della Ragione—since 2018 the museum’s summer venue in the heart of Bergamo Alta—two new works at GAMeC’s historic headquarters on Via San Tomaso and at the nearby Oratorio di San Lupo, and a site-specific installation for a public space, in collaboration with the Municipality of Bergamo.

A key symbol throughout the exhibition is the image of the eagle—an animal emblematic of the mountains and unspoiled nature—which has embodied power, domination, and expansionist ambitions since antiquity. The work installed in the Oratorio di San Lupo challenges this symbolic tradition, presenting the eagle in its purest and most vulnerable form.

The second work created for the exhibition in Bergamo reflects on a power that never materializes, exploring the tension between the ambition to build and conquer and the impossibility of acting in a context that restricts every move. Made of glass, the piece suggests a potential act of rebellion that never takes shape—a desire for rupture that goes unfulfilled, a revolution that bears no fruit.

The third work is an installation conceived by Maurizio Cattelan for one of the city’s most iconic locations. The intervention weaves together references to national and local history, the role of monuments, and the crisis of values, encouraging critical reflection on the complexity of our times. The piece also offers a gentle anthem to rebellion and an invitation to reconsider the values of unity in light of ongoing social and historical shifts.

The final work in the exhibition urges reflection on our relationship with marginality, justice, and decay, but also on the sense of freedom that the weakest and most vulnerable may sometimes embody. Made of marble, the sculpture creates a powerful contrast with the exhibition space and questions our relationship with structures of power and societal values.

Though presented independently, the four works stand in close dialogue with one another. They reflect our lived experiences and convey a message that concerns not only the past but also challenges the present and the future of our society as well as each of us as individuals. They become symbols of a broader reflection on our existence and our responsibilities toward the environment and the community.

Completing the exhibition will be a communication campaign that, in addition to a series of street posters, will also involve Bergamo’s “Kilometro Rosso,” for which the artist has imagined a special site-specific adaptation of the project’s visual identity, specifically conceived for the portals of the iconic red wall designed by Jean Nouvel.

 

CECILIA BENGOLEA

Spin and Break Free

June 7, 2025

Villa d’Almè

An artist, choreographer, and dancer whose practice spans video, sculpture, and performance, Cecilia Bengolea (Buenos Aires, 1979) often uses dance as a means to stimulate empathy and encourage emotional exchange.

In her recent research in the Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale (National Linen and Hemp Mill) in Villa d’Almè, Bengolea connects the era of the Industrial Revolution with her own practice of Free Dances, which were created by famous and lesser-known choreographers between the two wars.

She also looks at the machines that spin linen threads and develops a metaphor of dancers concentrating on one single action, with machines and workers collaborating on a meditative, generative, and potentially liberating mental state induced within the performer’s body. The condition brought about by the body’s repetitive rotation can activate energies that translate into movements full of spontaneity and vitality, capable of disrupting mechanical repetition and giving way to improvisation.

For Thinking Like a Mountain, the artist has come up with a new performance to be presented on June 7 in the former twisting room of the linen and hemp mill. To bring the project to life, Bengolea collaborated with five young dancers from the Danzarea school in Mozzo (Bergamo), drawing inspiration from the mechanical, rotary movements of the machinery once used in the plant’s hemp and linen spinning departments and from Free Dances from the 1930s. 

Raw linen fabrics play a central role in the costumes worn by the dancers, whose qualities vary depending on the stage of processing of the linen and hemp used.

Created in collaboration with costume designer Alberto Allegretti, the costumes are inspired by the Theyyam ritual, held annually in Kerala, India, during the harvest season, where dancers wear garments made from the fibers of pepper, cardamom, and vanilla plants.

The choreography devised by the artist unfolds through a sequence of initially mechanical actions, collective choreographies, and elements of the Free Dance repertory, while a number of house dance rhythms are also integrated into the composition. Reflecting on contemporary alienation, the work draws a parallel with the historical alienation associated with labor during the Industrial Revolution.

The performance is part of the fourth edition of ON AIR – Argentina-Italia Art Residency, a residency program created through a collaboration between GAMeC and Fundación PROA in Buenos Aires, aimed at fostering the exchange of experiences and promoting the artistic potential of both countries.

 

JULIUS VON BISMARCK

June 7 – September 14, 2025

Dossena

In Dossena—home to the oldest mining complex in the Brembana Valley, where iron ore and fluorite were extracted for centuries—German artist Julius von Bismarck (Breisach am Rhein, 1983) will create his fifth landscape painting: a painting both of and within the landscape, in which the pictorial gesture dissolves the boundary between the subject depicted and the surface it is rendered on.

For this work, the artist draws inspiration from the aesthetics of engravings and mine studies that marked the work of many key figures in art history, from Albrecht Dürer to Caspar David Friedrich, and from Paul Cézanne to Paul Klee. In particular, von Bismarck references are eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian landscape views, woodcuts, and copper engravings—images that sought to portray the landscape as realistically as possible.

Adopting a diametrically opposite approach, the artist intervenes on the rock walls inside the mine, creating a “reversed” trompe-l’œil: rather than hinting at three-dimensionality through tricks of perspective, he paints lines and hatchings—reminiscent of traditional engraving techniques—that flatten the view of the quarry into a two-dimensional image.

In this way, von Bismarck does not merely represent the landscape, but physically enters it, confronting its scale in an act that becomes at once measurement, struggle, conquest, and transformation. The painted marking, applied directly to the rock, becomes a monumental gesture that—though impermanent—visibly inscribes itself onto the environment. As time goes by, the image will slowly dissolve through the action of atmospheric agents.

Through this process—whereby the mountain dissolves into black lines on a white background—the artist deconstructs the tradition of landscape painting, aiming to expose its contradictions and reveal how the representation of nature has always been filtered through idealizations and anthropocentric perspectives.

Ultimately, von Bismarck’s intervention seeks to reposition the human being within nature—not as something pre-human and “other,” but as a cultural construct that evolves through history.

 

FRANCESCO PEDRINI

Magnitudo

June 7 – September 14, 2025

Roncobello

The project by Francesco Pedrini (Bergamo, 1973) for the community of Roncobello involves the creation of a new observation point for the night sky at Passo del Vendulo.

The choice of location was determined by a combination of historical and serendipitous factors: the Upper Brembana Valley is an area of great archeo-astronomical interest, and Passo del Vendulo is a crossroads of trails, including the one leading to the Porta delle Cornacchie. Here, in an area where it was necessary to remove red spruces that had been attacked by the bark beetle—an insect that particularly targets this type of tree by feeding on its inner bark layers—a suitable space has been created to host a new “poetic sky observatory,” as the artist defines it.

Pedrini’s work stems from a reflection on the transformation of the forest ecosystem, caused by climate change and the spread of red spruce monocultures that have facilitated the proliferation of the bark beetle, now destroying vast forest areas.

Inspired by the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, an Indian astronomical site, Magnitudo will have simple yet evocative functions and will consist of three installations: Posa is a flat area, leveled with wooden planks, that invites contemplation of the night sky and, during the day, allows the tracing of a solar analemma—a geometric figure resembling the infinity symbol that reflects the Earth’s movement around the sun over the course of a year.

The other two works are made of larch wood, typical of the area and resistant to weather: Polaris is a log tilted to about 42 degrees—the latitude of Passo del Vendulo—which directs the observer toward the Polar Star, long a guiding light for explorers and scientists; in Aerofono, a tree is transformed into a hollow structure that captures the sounds of the sky, offering an immersive listening experience.

During the summer, the works of Francesco Ferrero, Gianmarco Cugusi, and Roberto Picchi—winners of the 2024 edition of Sentieri Creativi—will also be presented in the municipalities of Dossena and Roncobello. This project was born from the synergy between Bergamo per Giovani, the Municipality of Bergamo, and the Politecnico delle Arti “Donizetti-Carrara”, with GAMeC collaborating on the launch of a new residency program format. The start of the summer cycle will serve as a prelude to the announcement of the winning artists for the 2025 residency program, who will stay in Dossena and Roncobello between June and July to produce new works.

The projects by Julius von Bismarck and Francesco Pedrini, as well as the works by Francesco Ferrero, Gianmarco Cugusi, and Roberto Picchi, are staged in partnership with the municipalities of Dossena and Roncobello as part of the project Na.Tur.Arte – The Valparina Wilderness Area amid Hospitality, Art, and Nature.

 

EX.

Mountain Forgets You

Toward the new Frattini Bivouac

with Thermocene, an audiovisual work by Giorgio Ferrero, Rodolfo Mongitore (Mybosswas), and EX.

Summer 2025

In the summer of 2025, GAMeC will present a special project in collaboration with the Bergamo section of the Italian Alpine Club: EX., a design laboratory founded by Andrea Cassi and Michele Versaci, will oversee the reconstruction of the historical Aldo Frattini Bivouac in Valbondione, located at around 2,300 meters along the stunning Alta Via delle Orobie Bergamasche in the Seriana Valley.

Conceived as a high-altitude GAMeC “venue,” the new structure will not host exhibitions or events, but due to its location and design—closely linked to its primary function as a place of shelter and protection, always open—it will offer a unique aesthetic experience.

The new Aldo Frattini Bivouac, the design of which recalls that of an alpine tent—a symbol of early expeditions and high-altitude feats—is conceived to minimize environmental impact and maximize space, with reversible features to reduce land consumption. It will remain a safe and comfortable refuge for hikers and mountaineers, offering protection from the elements, thermal insulation, and essential functionality.

What makes the new bivouac especially distinctive is its potential to serve as a base for environmental monitoring and scientific research, contributing to the understanding and protection of mountain ecosystems. Thanks to the use of new technologies, GAMeC will become the hub where collected data will be continuously transmitted and analyzed.

The lead-up to the opening of the new Frattini Bivouac will include a series of events. From June 7 to September 14, the exhibition project Mountain Forgets You will be on view in GAMeC’s Spazio Zero.

Through research materials—including documents, drawings, and sketches—selected by EX. in collaboration with Studio Folder and supported by Luca Gibello and Francesca Chiorino, the exhibition will showcase the design process behind the new Aldo Frattini Bivouac. It will trace the development from the definition of core design principles to the contextualization of the bivouac within the broader evolution of high-altitude architectural typologies and technologies.

Alongside this historical perspective, a more contemporary viewpoint is introduced with the presentation of Thermocene, a visual and sound symphony created by Giorgio Ferrero and Rodolfo Mongitore (Mybosswas), produced by MYBOSSWAS, EX., ARTECO, and KINO Produzioni. Immersed in the glacial solitude of the Corradini and Berrone Bivouacs—both designed by EX. in the Piedmont Alps—the two composers transformed noises and radio waves—human traces rendered invisible—into a choral song, exploring the conscious collaboration between nature and humanity. This work aims to foster a new collective awareness, showing that it is impossible to imagine a planet without a pervasive human impact.

Finally, in September, a multidisciplinary roundtable will foster dialogue among artists, architects, and professionals. This gathering will not only be a moment of reflection but also a concrete opportunity to address the complex relationship between humans and mountains, on a day dedicated to architecture and the role of alpine bivouacs over the past century.