El Palacio de las Tres Historias, first solo show by Carlos Garaicoa at Fondazione Merz

Fondazione Merz presents El Palacio de las Tres Historias, the exhibition of Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa, from October 30, 2017 to February 4, 2018. The exhibition, curated by Claudia Gioia, consists of a series of large-scale site-specific installations, photographic works and videos specially commissioned for the exhibition. El Palacio de las Tres Historias continues Garaicoa's ongoing exploration of the themes and architecture of the city as an ideal space and symbol of failed realities. For the first time, this project draws its inspiration from the city of Turin. "Carlos Garaicoa looks at cities, architecture and underlying dreams, those cast aside and those that can still be realized. Just as Havana constituted a starting point for investigating the meaning and possibilities of our society, so Turin becomes a metaphor of contemporaneity through the words, images and history of an industrial utopia, transforming itself and becoming something that still needs to be understood," expressed Claudia Gioia. Garaicoa is drawn to Turin, to the economic, social and political transformations that began with the industrial crisis and their impact on the urban landscape. The artist focuses on different aspects that characterize the city: the industrial, the rationalist, and the re-using of abandoned buildings that become a new possibility for a re-imagined society. The largest installation, entitled El Palacio de las Tres Historias is a double height steel structure that echoes the physical form of the Foundation, transforming the interior architecture and suggesting new pathways and perspectives, where inside and outside merge. A building within a building, the deconstructed Palacio recalls the utopian visions of the twentieth century, and the architecture that has preserved its history. Garaicoa's visionary reworking uses traces and places to build a new space for criticism and enchantment, whilst assuming unexplored possibilities. The exhibition includes a series of installations as Campus or the Babel of Knowledge, an architectural machete of an imagined university campus in a mythical place. Here the artist builds an alternative future, whilst addressing failed utopian schemes. The show closes with a new animated video work, Abismo based on the musical score, Quatuor pour la fin du temps by 20th century French composer Olivier Messiaen, composed in a concentration camp in 1941. The video sees two isolated and seemingly anonymous hands conducting a symphony. Garaicoa has taken the hand gestures alluding to fascist dictatorship and removed them from their original context, thus creating new historical narrative. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue in Italian and English with texts by Claudia Gioia and renowned Cuban writer, Leonardo Padura.