ARCOMADRID

During the ARCOmadrid fair, the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT announced the winners of the first edition of its new acquisition prize: Tomás Saraceno (Pinksummer Gallery, Genoa, Italy) and Abraham Gonzalez Pacheco (Campeche Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico).

The Foundation has acquired TBC, a painting by Tomás Saraceno and a set of 15 drawings by Abraham Gonzalez Pacheco for the benefit of GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino for a total of 36,000 euro.

The winning works were selected by a board including Chiara Bertola (Director of GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea), Manuel Segade Lodeiro (Director of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia) and Hans Ulrich Obrist (Co-Director of Serpentine Galleries).

The acquisition prize forms part of the Fondazione Arte CRT’s 2024-2027 programme and marks the first time the Fondazione has collaborated with an art fair outside Italy.

Each year, the Fondazione will acquire new work at ARCOmadrid, which will enter its collection and will go on long-term loan to one of two partner museums: GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino and Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. This year, the works by Tomás Saraceno and Abraham Gonzalez Pacheco will go on long-term loan to GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino. In 2025, the winning artwork will go on long-term loan to Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea.

Since 2000, the Fondazione has been building a collection of modern and contemporary art for the benefit of the Piedmont region and its museum network. The collection includes more than 930 works by over 300 artists across multiple mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, photography, and large installations for a total investment of more than €41 million. The Fondazione’s acquisition budget for 2024 is €1 million, up from €515,000 in 2023.

The collection is publicly accessible at GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino and Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, with site-specific works on show at OGR Torino.

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, President of the Fondazione Arte CRT said: “Today the Fondazione Arte CRT inaugurated its first acquisition prize at ARCOmadrid. It is the first time the Fondazione has collaborated with an art fair outside of Italy, forming part of its mission to expand its collection and reach an international audience. I am pleased to announce Tomás Saraceno and Abraham Gonzalez Pacheco as the inaugural winners of the prize. The acquired works will enter the Fondazione Arte CRT collection and be publicly accessible at GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist, representative of the Board, said: “At Arco Madrid 2024, the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT acquired works by the established Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno and the young Mexican artist Abraham Gonzalez Pacheco for GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino. The acquisitions are united by two imaginaries, one based on the power and invisible work of nature, the other on the history of myth and the archaeological fragment.

Abraham Gonzalez Pacheco is one of the most interesting young Mexican artists on the burgeoning Mexican art scene. His practice focuses on drawing, which he develops and applies at different scales, from micro to macro, treating the large dimension with the same intensity as a detail. Gonzalez Pacheco looks at archaeology, but not in a nostalgic way, to show that the future can be reinvented from fragments of the past. He brings the narrative of myth into an everyday, present dimension. 

The role that Tomás Saraceno entrusts to animals, his precious collaborators for more than ten years, is well known. He works with spiders, dogs, insects, leading us to see in nature techniques and solutions that we discover close to our own existence. The work acquired is the imperceptible golden web of a spider, transformed into an extraordinary and precious drawing. We can say that we are in front of an amazing collaboration between species that confirms the necessary relationship between science and art, between ecology and the environment.”

Photo credits ARCOmadrid

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