Retrospective – Jean Tinguely

Europe’s motor city plays host to a comprehensive collection of works by Jean Tinguely, in a retrospective that brings the pure essence of visual and sonic kinesis to a city synonymous (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati…) with blurring the lines between art and industry.

“I am a movement artist. I started with painting, but I got stuck, I was at a dead end” (from “Tinguely talks about Tinguely”, interview broadcasted by Belgian Radio Television on December 13, 1982).

As one of the most important exponents of kinetic art, Jean Tinguely revolutionized the concept of the artwork itself. At the heart of his work is the exploration of the machine, its function and movement, its noises and sounds, and its inherent poetry. Tinguely was one of the first artists to use found objects, gears, and other materials, which he then welded together to create noisy, cacophonous working machines equipped with real motors. His sculptures also have a performative quality because of their constant movement and the peculiar way in which they engage the audience. Gears, especially the wheel, are often the basic element in the works of Tinguely, who deliberately disrupts their conventional function, liberating the machine from the tyranny of utility and encouraging the unexpected and ephemeral in his absurd, surprising contraptions.

The exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca will be the most comprehensive retrospective held in Italy since the artist’s death and will feature more than thirty works from the 1950s to the 1990s. The exhibition will include landmark works in the evolution of Jean Tinguely’s practice, such as the experimental méta-mecanique sculptures of the mid-1950s, Gismo (1960) an imposing mechanical sculpture equipped with wheels and a motor, Ballet des Pauvres (1961) made with household objects, and large machines such as Requiem pour une feuille morte  (1967); Plateau agriculturel (1978) made with various agricultural machines; the Philosopher series of 1988 and 1989, dedicated to ancient and modern philosophers (who theorized anti-materialism); musical machines such as Méta-Maxi; and works such as Pit-Stop of 1984 and Shuttlecock of 1990, which reveal the artist’s great passion for Formula 1 and speed racing.

The mechanical works will find a spontaneous link with the vastness of the former industrial space which is Pirelli HangarBicocca, and give the public the possibility of entering into contact and deep examination with the Swiss artist’s practice which saw art as removed from the authorial, and therefore never unambiguous and definitive: an art often realized as performance, sometimes located in public spaces, transitory and, thanks to its interactive elements, engaging and fascinating.

Jean Tinguely October 10, 2024 – February 2, 2025
Curated by Camille Morineau, Lucia Pesapane and Vicente Todolí with Fiammetta Griccioli.
Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan.