In Bergamo the fourth edition of the Orobie Biennial: there is also a new project by Cattelan

GAMeC - Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo inaugurates on June 7 Think Like a Mountain - Biennial of the Orobie - 4th cycle of events, the second director of the 2025 project, which takes contemporary art out of museum venues to meet the communities, landscapes and infrastructures of the mountains. Five main interventions are planned.

In Bergamo, Seasons, a site-specific project conceived by Maurizio Cattelan (Padua, 1960), is being developed from June 7 to October 26, 2025, between the Upper City and Lower City. The artist presents four new sculptures in as many locations: the Sala delle Capriate of Palazzo della Ragione, GAMeC, the Oratorio di San Lupo, and an urban public space. The works, conceived as a reflection on the cycle of life, the decay of values and power as representation, take their cues from seasonal symbolism and use the image of the eagle as a recurring key. A communication campaign and street posters accompany the intervention, with an additional visual installation designed for the Kilometro Rosso technology hub.

On June 7 in Villa d’Almè, in the industrial spaces of the former winding mill of the Linificio and Canapificio Nazionale, Cecilia Bengolea proposes Spin and Break Free, a performance built on the rotary movements of old textile machines and the Free Dances of the 1930s. Five dancers from Mozzo’s Danzarea school, with linen costumes made together with designer Alberto Allegretti, give body to a choreography that reflects on industrial labor and contemporary alienation.

In the municipality of Dossena, within the old mining district of Val Brembana, from June 7 to Sept. 14, 2025, Julius von Bismarck (Breisach am Rhein, 1983) creates Landscape Painting (Mine), his fifth “landscape painting.” The artist intervenes on the rock walls of the mine with a trompe-l’œil that reverses pictorial perspective: instead of simulating three-dimensionality, he transforms the actual volume into a flat surface, blurring figure and background. The pictorial gesture here takes on an ecopolitical significance, questioning the distinction between nature and culture.

In Roncobello, also from June 7 to Sept. 14, 2025, Francesco Pedrini (Bergamo, 1973) presents Magnitudo, a project that stems from an observation of the effects of the climate crisis on the forest ecosystem. Due to the spread of the bark beetle, an insect that has affected spruce forests, a new space has opened at the Vendulo Pass, where the artist installs a poetic observatory of the sky. Three observation devices allow people to explore the vault of heaven, transforming an area of logging into a point of sensitive relationship between man and the universe.

In the summer of 2025, the widespread cycle is completed by the Mountain Forgets You project, which anticipates the reconstruction of theBivacco Aldo Frattini in Valbondione, at about 2,300 meters on the Alta Via delle Orobie. The bivouac, designed as a symbolic headquarters for GAMeC at high altitude, will be accessible to hikers and travelers, without hosting events or exhibitions. It is being designed by EX. - laboratory founded by Andrea Cassi and Michele Versaci-in collaboration with the CAI of Bergamo. At the museum’s Spazio Zero, between June 7 and Sept. 14, the design process that led to the new structure will be presented, with research and documentation materials.

The exhibition also includes Thermocene, an audiovisual work by Giorgio Ferrero and Rodolfo Mongitore, created from the Corradini and Berrone bivouacs designed by EX. in the Piedmont Alps. The sound composition, built from environmental noises and radio waves, is configured as a choral song that explores the coexistence between nature and human presence, suggesting the impossibility of conceiving a totally uninhabited planet.

All the interventions are part of a complex reflection on the Anthropocene, understood as a cultural, historical and political condition in which human actions produce systemic effects. The project invites the public to recognize the mountain as a field of experimentation, memory, and transformation. GAMeC accompanies the 2025 edition with a bilingual guide in Italian and English, which includes critical texts, iconographic apparatus and interviews. The publication will be available at the museum bookshop and disseminated in specialized bookstores. A public program of events, meetings, screenings and workshops is also planned, in line with the participatory and process-oriented approach of the entire project.

In Bergamo the fourth edition of the Orobie Biennial: there is also a new project by Cattelan

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