NOIRE GALLERY - Turin

Turntable is an invitation to tune in to the time that turns and returns, to the energy that envelops things and sets them back into circulation. At its center is Alighiero Boetti , in an exhibition curated by Matteo Noire. All it takes is a gesture—minimal yet radical: a movie camera placed on the platter of a record player spinning wildly. This is how Turntable (1969) was born, an unseen film by Alighiero Boetti and the beating heart of this exhibition. The gaze becomes rhythm, rotation, filmic matter in motion. The exhibition continues with a survey of Boetti’s most significant works: Tra sé e sé ( Between self and self , 1987) — the self doubled on the edge of the page: head, arms, and hands gripping a pencil; the image extends into a totem of shapes that sprout one from another. Insicuro Noncurante (1975) — a small museum of his thought and a homage to Marcel Duchamp. Manifesto (1967) — the names of sixteen artists and their secret combinations of eight symbols. Dossier postale (1969–70) — epistolary tales of imaginary journeys. T erritori occupati ( Occupied Territories , 1971) — Israel’s occupation of territories up to Sinai between 1967 and 1971. Within this same current of energy flow the works of Valentin Carron and Jonathan Monk . Bottle Man (Suavely, 2017) by Carron — the silhouette of a fallen body composed of empty bottles, where the virtual realm of the web turns into physical presence. Each bottle, stamped and replicated, carries the echo of nights of drinking and of images slipping from the screen into the exhibition space. 1111 (2019) by Jonathan Monk — from a fake Boetti tapestry, a challenge to find, in 11 minutes, the greatest number of four-letter English words and transform them into poems. A playful exercise that turns language into visible matter.

Noire Gallery announces a new chapter of the NOIRE CHAPEL series with Pia Fries in the evocative Cappella Noire of San Sebastiano, a space that embodies the artistic tradition of the gallery. The chapel, enhanced by Sol LeWitt’s wall frescoes (Wall Drawing #137, a double intervention: 1st wall – not straight horizontal lines that do not touch; 2nd wall – not straight vertical lines that do not touch, presented at Documenta 5 curated by Harald Szeemann, Kassel, 1972), hosts projects by international artists. The space becomes the ideal setting for a dialogue between two distinct yet related languages: on one side LeWitt’s rigorous conceptual structures, on the other the dynamic and vital flows of Fries’ painting. In Pia Fries’ works, a former student of Gerhard Richter, color and movement intertwine in compositions free from traditional frameworks, capable of opening paths and traces in constant transformation. Her bold and personal pictorial language stages colors, forms, and structures as fragments of an inner order, free from conventional schemes and values. Each work follows its own logic: immediate to the eye yet at the same time enigmatic. Her painting unfolds as a flow in continuous transformation: overlapping, blending, opening paths and traces that emerge from empty spaces. If, on one hand, the essential signs of the American artist evoke order and discipline, on the other, Fries’ chromatic and gestural flows generate movement, traces, and transformations. The encounter between these two opposing yet complementary visions offers a visual experience in which rigor and freedom find a new balance.