Deborah Schamoni

The Weight of the Concrete is a comprehensive tribute to Ezio Gribaudo’s versatile career as both artist and publisher. The exhibition reassesses his work at a time when many young artists are working transdisciplinarily and regeneratively between the visual and applied arts.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Il Peso del Concreto (1968), a seminal book that featured Gribaudo’s early graphic work alongside an anthology of concrete poetry edited by the poet Adriano Spatola. Central to both this publication and the exhibition is Gribaudo’s emblematic series of Logogrifi, which the artist developed from the 1960s onwards, from embossments on blotting paper to wooden and polystyrene reliefs. Throughout his life, the Logogrifi articulated a closely interwoven relationship with his activities as a maker of books, as well as his fascination with new industrial printing processes, typefaces, language games, and relief matrices.

The exhibition’s scenography is created by the Italian artist Davide Stucchi who operates in the visual arts, design, fashion, and scenography. Stucchi’s own artistic approach and interventions echo and amplify Gribaudo’s in the way they use ready-made objects and industrially produced materials. The exhibition also includes a sound program that focuses on the vocalization of experimental poetry to explore Gribaudo’s combinations of visual art, poetry, printmaking, and design from a new perspective.

The exhibition is produced by Grazer Kunstverein in collaboration with Archivio Gribaudo, Turin, and Museion.

Curated by Tom Engels and Lilou Vidal in collaboration with Leonie Radine 
Text: Museion
Images: Ezio Gribaudo, The Weight of the Concrete, in a scenography by Davide Stucchi at Museion, Bolzano, 2024
Courtesy: the Archivio Gribaudo, Davide Stucchi and Museion, Bolzano