THINKING LIKE A MOUNTAIN
EXHIBITIONS, INSTALLATIONS, SCULPTURES
AND COLORFUL COSTUMES IN THE MUSEUM
ATELIER DELL’ERRORE / TEN
A retrospective exhibition retracing ten years of visionary research by Atelier dell’Errore through the most significant cores of its artistic production. Founded as a workshop for neurodivergent children, the collective has become an internationally recognized artistic entity based on two operating principles only: Animals and Errors. Through paintings, drawings, videos, and installations, fantastic creatures inhabit the spaces of GAMeC in a poetic, unconventional journey where every “error” is transformed into beauty and imagination.
PERDO VAZ / BECOMING MOUNTAIN
A large-scale pictorial installation welcomes visitors at the museum entrance. The painting, mounted on a curved structure, depicts a view of Mount Presolana seen through the gaze and direct experience of the Portuguese artist—an approach that reflects his practice rooted in direct contact with remote landscapes explored through expeditions that foster an immersive bodily experience. Vaz’s creative process unfolds between figuration and abstraction.
MERCEDES AZPILICUETA / COSTUMES FOR THE PERFORMANCE QUE ESTE MUNDO PERMANEZCA
For the performance presented in 2024 at the Biodiversity Oasis in Brembate and dedicated to the rediscovery of natural spaces, Mercedes Azpilicueta, together with Alberto Allegretti, designed costumes translating into visual and gestural form the characteristics of three featured birds: the kingfisher, the green woodpecker, and the hoopoe. Created in collaboration with the performers, the costumes become narrative tools expressing the species’ adaptive capacities in the face of environmental change and open up visions of possible worlds, where human beings may learn from nature new ways of coexistence and transformation.
YESMINE BEN KHELIL / RIEN NE POURRA NOUS SÉPARER
Created in collaboration with the “Lorenzo Rota” Botanical Garden, where it was displayed last year in the Winter Garden, the Tunisian artist’s installation consists of a series of paintings on fine cotton canvas that let light filter through, revealing glimpses of the landscape beyond. Using the acanthus plant and its sturdy roots as a metaphor for the complex migratory and cultural dynamics of the Mediterranean, the artist builds a symbolic and cultural bridge, highlighting how nature can serve as an element of connection and mutual understanding.
JULIUS VON BISMARCK / LANDSCAPE PAINTING (MINE)
The museum hosts a large photographic installation documenting Julius von Bismarck’s intervention in the Dossena Mines, which recreates the artist’s pursuit of a two-dimensional perception of space.
GABRIEL CHAILE / VERTOVA
In the Seriana Valley, Gabriel Chaile gathered stories about local traditions of bread and pasta making to create an oven-sculpture that revitalizes these practices and reinforces the sense of community. During a Bread Baking Party held at the Vertova Senior Center, participants prepared Michini di San Patrizio—an ancient blessed bread—and Teedèi, traditional tagliatelle handmade by local women for the occasion. These shared practices turned the celebration into a moment of gathering and collective memory, an expression of hospitality that the artwork—now displayed at the entrance of GAMeC—renders visible and tangible.
MICHELA DE MATTEI & INVERNOMUTO / PARAFLU
The reappearance of wolves in several parts of Italy led Michela de Mattei and Invernomuto to explore the figure of this predator as a symbol of independence and knowledge, conflict and transformation. Paraflu traverses and transcends the landscapes of the Lombard Alps, alternating 16mm footage with AI-generated effects that amplify the sense of estrangement and ambiguity evoked by the wolf. The result is a layered work in which images, optical illusions, and a fragmented narrative montage create a disorienting universe, inviting viewers to confront their own imagination.
CHIARA GAMBIRASIO / M’AMA
The sculpture, created for the village of Rusio, is the outcome of a project developed in collaboration with Fondazione Dalmine and shared with a group of women who, as children, attended the Dalmine summer camp in Castione della Presolana. Through color, the participants revisited memories linked to the camp, while the artist transformed this experience into a broader reflection on the sense of loss that marks our relationship with nature. M’ama evokes the idea of Mother Nature—or a “mountain-mother”: its form resembles a mountain merging with a tree stump, in an embrace that invites visitors to reconnect with memory and the natural world.
AGOSTINO IACURCI / DRY DAYS, TROPICAL NIGHTS
Presented last year inside the Polveriera Superiore, a sixteenth-century military structure now part of the “Lorenzo Rota” Botanical Garden, the work consists of several luminous sculptural elements and reflects on the landscape and its ongoing transformation over time. The title refers to two key environmental indicators—dry days and tropical nights—suggesting that if current climate trends continue, the Po Valley and Italy could transform into a tropical landscape with vast desert areas within a few centuries. The installation is accompanied by a sound piece by Lechuga Zafiro.
FRANCESCO PEDRINI / POLARIS
The photograph documents one of the installations from Magnitudo, the poetic observatory created by the artist in the woods of Roncobello. Taken in collaboration with astrophotographer Antonio Finazzi, it captures the apparent motion of the stars: long trails of light rotating around a tree trunk and the North Star, the single fixed point around which the entire firmament seems to move.
GIULIO SQUILLACCIOTTI / MUT
The film tells, through the experience of two young herders and their parents, the cyclical rhythm of life in the alpine pastures. The title—“mountain” in the Bergamasque dialect—reveals the central role of the mountain, omnipresent yet discreetly shaping the rhythms and experiences of those who live with it. The square format of the short film focuses on details and interactions among family members and their animals. This stylistic choice, rather than limiting the visual scope, immerses the viewer in an intimate perspective, forgoing sweeping landscapes to reveal the profound bond between the mountain and its inhabitants.
GAMeC
Opening Hours
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: 3:00–7:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday: 10:00 am–7:00 pm
Closed on Tuesday
Tickets
Full price: €10
Reduced: €8
INSTALLATIONS, MONUMENTAL WORKS,
AND ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORIES ACROSS THE MUNICIPALITIES OF THE PROVINCE
GAIA FUGAZZA / MOTHER OF MILLIONS
Sottochiesa (Val Taleggio), Stalla Gherba, Borgo Santa Rosa
Developed in collaboration with NAHR – Nature, Art & Habitat Residency following a residency in Val Taleggio, the large-scale sculpture represents a figure inspired by a plant whose unique ability to sprout new shoots from its leaves captivated the artist. Installed in a traditional Val Taleggio stable, the work weaves a close relationship between the vegetal and human worlds.
Visiting dates:
Saturday 1 November, 1:00–4:00 pm
Saturday 6 December, 1:00–4:00 pm
Saturday 27 December, 1:00–4:00 pm
Saturday 3 January, 1:00–4:00 pm
Google Maps Coordinates (Via Santa Rosa)
Google Maps Coordinates (Stalla Gherba)
Info: biglietteria@gamec.it
BIANCA BONDI / GRACES FOR GEROSA
Gerosa (Val Brembilla), Church of Santa Maria in Montanis
Developed in collaboration with the Val Brembilla community, the South African artist’s work engages with the architecture and interior of the deconsecrated church of Santa Maria in Montanis, drawing on local history. Seven life-sized figures enact a suspended choreography: headless and crowned with lush bouquets of flowers, corals, and crystallized matter, their bodies become vessels of energy and rebirth.
Sunday 7 December, 10:15 am
DANZANTI
Activity for families with children aged 6 and up
Val Brembilla (Loc. Gerosa)
Church of Santa Maria in Montanis
The workshop, led by museum educator Clara Luiselli, is activated through the bodies of participants, each marked by unique characteristics. Bodies that ally, resonate, breathe, dialogue, and dance together with the body-works created by Bianca Bondi in Graces for Gerosa.
An activity open to everyone, requiring no specific skills—just the desire to feel part of a lively, dancing community.
Meeting point: Via IV Novembre, junction with Via Santa Maria
Google Maps Coordinates
After the activity, the Val Brembilla Pro Loco offers a guided tour of a local farm and lunch at Ristorante Belvedere:
11:45 am – Guided tour at Azienda Agricola Rasmo Salumi
12:30 pm – Lunch at Ristorante Belvedere, Val Brembilla
It is possible to join individual activities or the entire programme
Info and booking: biglietteria@gamec.it
AGNESE GALIOTTO / THE MOUNTAIN DOES NOT EXIST
Almenno San Bartolomeo, Villa dell’Amicizia
Agnese Galiotto’s fresco revisits the theme of the relationship between humans and birds—central to her practice—creating a visual dialogue between flight and Mount Albenza, rising behind the building.
The fresco is always visible
Google Maps Coordinates
E-mail: biblioteca@comune.almennosanbartolomeo.bergamo.it
Tel. +39 035 643484
ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS / AN UNSTABLE AND PRECARIOUS SELF-PORTRAIT MUNCHING SOME TRADITIONAL FRITOS, SIPPING A COUPLE OF CABALLITOS OF CASA DRAGONES, AFTER A BUSY JOURNEY WITH SOME DEAR FRIENDS, LISTENING AT THE SAME TIME TO THE ‘CLAIR DE LUNE’, PERFORMED BY MENAHEM PRESSLER, AND ‘FOLIE À DEUX’, BY STEFANI JOANNE ANGELINA GERMANOTTA
Dalmine, Fondazione Dalmine
Abraham Cruzvillegas created a site-specific installation in the outdoor spaces of Fondazione Dalmine, involving local associations in a participatory experience. The work, made from everyday objects and discarded materials sourced from the area, explores with irony the notions of progress linked to the industrial imagination.
The installation is always visible from Via Adamello and open for guided visits on selected dates listed on the Fondazione Dalmine website.
fondazionedalmine.org
JULIUS VON BISMARCK / LANDSCAPE PAINTING (MINE)
Dossena, Mines
By intervening directly on the walls of the oldest mining complex in the Val Brembana, the German artist has transformed the quarry into an “inverted trompe-l’œil”: rather than simulating depth, lines and hatchings cancel out three-dimensionality, returning a two-dimensional vision of space.
E-mail: info@visitdossena.it
Tel. +39 0345 49443 | +39 339 5884292
FRANCESCO PEDRINI / MAGNITUDO
Roncobello, Passo del Vendulo
For the community of Roncobello, Francesco Pedrini has created a new sky observatory at Passo del Vendulo. Born from a reflection on forest decay caused by climate change and the spread of the spruce bark beetle, the project transforms an area affected by tree die-off into a “poetic observatory” composed of three immersive installations.
E-mail: proloco@roncobello.com
Tel. +39 0345 84085
